A HISTORY OF NOTTINGHAMSHIRE 



canon of the prebend or the chapter aforesaid, be 

 removed by the same Prior and Convent, and another 

 presented by them in his place shall be admitted. 



That this grant may have the strength of per- 

 petual endurance the Chapter of Southwell and the 

 aforesaid Prior and Convent have put their authentic 

 seals on one side and the other to this writing. 



Written in the margin is the note already partly 

 quoted apropos of Southwell School. 



Because the collations of grammar schools through- 

 out the whole archdeaconry of Nottingham belong 

 solely and wholly to the prebendary of Normanton in 

 the collegiate church of Southwell, as chancellor in the 

 same church, and although some pretended agreement 

 as to the collation of the grammar school of the town 

 of Newark may have been made, yet it can be of nq. 

 authority, as appears from its tenor, because it sins in 

 several respects. 



This is a remarkable document, and the note 

 is even more important than the document. It 

 sounds strange that an Italian bishop, the pope, 

 should have to interfere in a contest between 

 the chapter of Southwell and the convent of 

 St. Katharine, and that a canon of Southwell 

 should be an absentee Italian priest and a cardinal, 

 who should be represented in a dispute as to 

 the rights of the chapter, not by the chapter, 

 but by a monastic abbot. It sounds stranger 

 still that a monastery at Lincoln — for such 

 St. Katharine's was — should claim and efFec- 

 ti\ely maintain a right to appoint the master of 

 Newark Grammar School. 



The claim of the convent of St. Katharine's 

 of Lincoln to appoint the grammar school- 

 master arose from their being the rectors of the 

 church of Newark, which had been appropriated 

 to them. Newark had belonged to Godiva of 

 Coventry fame, who, according to a spurious 

 charter in the Eynsham chartulary, circa 1 05 5, 

 granted it to the church of St. Mary of Stow. 

 This church has been talked of as if founded as 

 a moiinstcrv — a convent of monks. But it was 

 not. It was founded as a collegiate church of 

 secular canons. 



Stow was in Lincolnshire, and the minster 

 there seems to have occupied the same sort 

 of position in regard to the Mercian bishop of 

 Dorchester that Southwell Minster did to the 

 Northumbrian Archbishop of York. For a Saxon 

 charter, which reads as if it was authentic, 

 begins : — 



Here is sho\vn in what manner was had that agree- 

 ment between Wulwi [otherwise WuKvig] the bishop 

 and Leofric the earl and Godgifii wife of the earl 

 made concerning the minster^ of Saint Mary at Stow. 

 They established priests there and wished to have 

 altogether the same service there as is had at St. Paul's 

 in London . . . and let this bishop have for his 

 table all those things which Bishops .(Etheric and 

 -•Ednoth had before him of those things which by 



' Brown, Hist, of 'Sezcr.rk, i, 



right belong to the bishopric ; namely, two parts of 

 all things which belong to the minster, and let the 

 priests have the third part, two festivals excepted . . . 

 the lands which the bishop and earl and Godgifu and 

 pious men shall have given it shall always be annexed 

 to that holy place for the brethren and the repairs of 

 the minster. 



It is this last word which has been mistrans- 

 lated 'monastery,' and so an entirely different 

 complexion has been given to the foundation and 

 its history, and the inhabitants of Stow have 

 been called monks. But in the foundation 

 charter of Exeter Cathedral by Edward the 

 Confessor,'' the life of secular canons is spoken of 

 as the ' minster life.' The distinct statement that 

 it was for priests and the reference to St. Paul's, 

 London, as the model, shows that Stow was a col- 

 lege of secular canons, not a convent of regular 

 monks, just as Warwick collegiate church ° was to- 

 be on the model of St. Paul's and Salisbury. 



Remigius apparently turned Stow into a monas- 

 tery, and his successor, Robert Bloet, trans- 

 ferred it to Eynsham near Oxford, where he 

 endowed the monks with other lands, and so 

 regained sole possession of Newark to his own use. 

 But while Bloet's successor, Bishop Alexander,, 

 made Newark his principal place of residence 

 and built the castle, the next bishop, Robert of 

 Chesney, who founded or assisted Gilbert of Sem- 

 pringham in founding one of his bi-sexual houses 

 of Gilbertine canons and canonessesatSt. Katha- 

 rine's, just outside the city of Lincoln, gave the 

 church of Newark to the newly-created prior 

 and convent about the year 11 48. Gilbert him- 

 self was much interested in education ; indeed,, 

 he had started and kept a school for boys and 

 girls before he founded his order for men and 

 women. Hence, no doubt, when the chancel- 

 lorship of Southwell had fallen into alien and 

 distant hands, it vexed the soul of the prior of 

 St. Katharine's that there was delayer neglect in 

 the appointment of a schoolmaster at Newark. 

 Moreover, the gift of the church not unfrc- 

 quently carried with it the gift of the school, as 

 we saw in the cases of Warwick, Thetford, and 

 Gloucester elsewhere, schools being essentially 

 ecclesiastical institutions, and the superior of the 

 principal church being prima facie the governor 

 of the school. The alien chancellor was content 

 with the acknowledgement of the authority of 

 the chapter implied in the requirement that the 

 prior and convent should present the schoolmaster 

 they nominated to the chapter. But the marginal 

 note, probably written by a later chancellor, 

 part of whose duty it was to compose charters 

 and chartularies, shows that the chapter had re- 

 pudiated the agreement of 1238 before the 

 compilation of the Liber Albus in the 14th 

 century, and, as we shall see, had recovered, if 

 they had ever in fact abandoned, the right of 



' Kemble, CoJ. U'lpl. iv, 118, no. 791. 

 ' r.C.H. Waru:. ii, 300. 



200 



