SCHOOLS 



INTRODUCTION 



NOTTINGHAMSHIRE ranks high 

 among English counties in the 

 amount of its provision for secon- 

 dary education. In spite of its 

 having been in the Middle Ages 

 largely forest, and even the chief church of its 

 chief town reputed as the scene of incursions and 

 alarms by the fabled Robin Hood, in meeting 

 which the sheriff of the county invariably came 

 off second best, its education was not neglected. 

 No less than three of its existing schools can 

 produce documentary evidence of their existence 

 in the 14th century and earlier. It is practically 

 certain that Southwell Grammar School, and 

 reasonably probable that Nottingham High School, 

 existed before the Conquest, while Newark School 

 no doubt dated from the time when the town 

 became a ' new work ' of great magnitude. 

 There were, apparently, a great many more 

 grammar schools in pre-Reformation times which 

 have perished without leaving a discoverable 

 trace of their existence. 



It will be seen in the history of Southwell 

 Grammar School that the earliest known statutes 

 of Southwell Minster witness to the existence of 

 unknown schools in places where their existence 

 has never even been suspected. For one of these 

 statutes, made in 1248, forbids schools being 

 held on the prebends or possessions of the 

 canons except according to the custom of York, 

 to which diocese, until 1837, Nottinghamshire 

 belonged : * Item, quod non teneantur scole de 

 grammatica vel logica infra prebendas canoni- 

 corum nisi secundum consuetudinem Ebor.' 

 This custom brought the schools under the 

 jurisdiction of the chancellor of the minster (not 

 of the diocese), so that no one could keep a 

 school without his licence ; and then he used to 

 appoint a master for three years only, with 

 power of extension for a fourth, and the master 

 was necessarily an M.A. Schools on the pre- 

 bends of the canons can hardly have been very 

 rare when we find them thus the subject of 

 statute. Yet of none have we any knowledge, 

 except of one in the 14th century at Dun- 

 ham. 



In 135 1 ^ Hugh son of Robert Payn (Paganus) 



' Cornelius Brown, Hist, of Newark, ii, 176. 



of Upper Laneham quitclaimed to John of 

 Nagenby of Dunham on Trent all the right 

 which he had in all the lands and tenements 

 which belonged to Robert le Taillour, formerly 

 master of the Grammar School of Dunham, in 

 the towns and fields of ' Dunham, Wystone, 

 Derletone, Draytone, and Ragenhille.' 



In 1472 there will be found in the history of 

 Nottingham Grammar School mention of a rival 

 grammar school at Wollaton, restricted by the 

 chapter of Southwell in virtue of their jurisdic- 

 tion as ordinary over all schools in Nottingham- 

 shire to 26 'boys and men.'^ 



We shall see under Southwell Grammar 

 School when we come to Elizabethan times, and 

 the licensing of schoolmasters was again for a 

 season rigorously enforced, mention of several 

 other schools in the Liberty of Southwell, at 

 Caunton and Bingham, and elsewhere.'"' Whether 

 they were descendants of ancient grammar schools, 

 or more modern schools of a private adventure 

 type, there is nothing to show. As the ancient 

 endowment of Southwell Grammar School itself 

 seems only to have been ;^2 a year, which was 

 not increased with the diminution of the value 

 of money, it seems probable that if the schools on 

 the outlying prebends were endowed they died 

 of inanition w^hen the value of money fell ; and 

 they had no secondary resources, like the chan- 

 tries or vicar-choralships of Southwell Minster, 

 to supplement them. 



It is perhaps the case that these schools were 

 not endowed at all, but depended solely on 

 tuition fees for their support. When the move- 

 ment for the foundation of grammar schools 

 sufficiently endowed to be free grammar schools 

 — free, that is, from tuition fees — began under 

 Henry VI, and, partially stopped by the Wars of 

 the Roses, was resumed with accelerated force 

 during the reign of Henry VII and the later 

 Tudors, Nottinghamshire seems to have enjoyed 

 its share of such foundations. Besides East Ret- 

 ford Grammar School, the history of which is 

 separately given, we hear of several others which 

 came to an untimely end. 



About 1530 a grammar school was founded 

 at Kneesall. By will,' 4 March 1527-8, John 



" Infra. '" Infra. 



' lest. Ebor, (Surt. See), v, 240, from Reg. Test. 

 Ebor. X, izb. 



179 



