A HISTORY OF LANCASHIRE 



title of master {ma^ister) at that date betokened 

 the university graduate, and that being so, the 

 grant of lands was probably an endowment for a 

 master to teach the Grammar School. This in- 

 ference is rendered more probable by the fact that 

 Master Thomas of Kirkham subsequently appears 

 as schoolmaster of Lancaster. 



However that may be, the school is quite defi- 

 nitely referred to in 1358, when 'John, clerk of 

 Broughton, schoolmaster of Preston,' was indicted 

 with others for a riot in connexion with the 

 proclamation of a pardon to a murderer. The 

 matter-of-course way in which the schoolmaster 

 is mentioned shows that the school was no new 

 thing. 



The school next appears in the deed of appoint- 

 ment (5 January, 1 399-1 400) of Richard Mar- 

 shall, clerk, to the mastership of Preston Grammar 

 School {ad scolas gramatkales de Preston regen- 

 das). He is identified by Colonel Fishwick with 

 Richard le Marishall, who is described as school- 

 master on the Gild Roll of 141 5, in which he 

 appears with two sons, showing that he was not 

 in holy orders. An Alexander Marescall had 

 paid 2s. for the tenth in 1333-4, and John le 

 Marisshall was one of the aldermen of the gild in 

 1397 and mayor in 1400. The next school- 

 master mentioned was equally well connected. 

 On 20 May, 1474, Thomas Preston, master of 

 the school of Preston, received letters dimissory 

 for orders from Archbishop Neville, Preston being 

 then part of the archdeaconry of Richmond in 

 the diocese of York. Nicholas Preston was 

 mayor in 1468. 



The school was concerned in a dispute as to 

 the chantry of Our Lady in the ' paroch ' church 

 of Preston in 1528.^ Roger Lewyns, priest, had 

 filed a bill in Chancery against the mayor and 

 burgesses for trespass in turning him out of the 

 chantry of which he had had peaceable possession 

 from 1518, when he succeeded George Hale, 

 clerk, until I 526. 



According to Lewyns' story he was appointed 

 on St. Luke's Day, 15 18, by Thomas earl of 

 Derby. But in 1526 the mayor, with Henry 

 Clifton, Nicholas Banastre, and other burgesses, 

 came into the church armed with ' bylles, swor Js, 

 and bucklers,' and just as he had finished ' his 

 masse and before he had space to dof his albe and 

 amyce . . . cruelly and violently brake one cofur 

 standing at his altur end ' and carried off the 

 chalices, vestments, books, and 'juelles' belong- 

 ing to the chantry, and Lewyns went in ' great 

 perell of his lyfe ' and of being 'cruelly slayn and 

 murdered.' The mayor in defence pleaded ' that 

 Lewyns had neglected an essential part of his duty, 

 viz. that of keeping a free school for the children 



' End. Char, for Preston, Rep. to Char. Com. by 

 G. W. Wallace ; Com. Pal. 312, 1905, p. 32, firom 

 Duchy of Lane. Plead. Hen. VIII, 1 7, L. 6. 



' Duchy of Lane. Plead. Hen. VIII, 1 7, L. 6a. 



of the inhabitants, and that this was the reason 

 for his forcible ejection. We learn from his 

 statement that his chantry had existed for eighty 

 years, had been instituted by a previous mayor 

 and the burgesses, and was supported out of the 

 profits of certain lands and tenements (of the 

 annual value of £6) in Preston and Walton, 

 the gift of 'dyverse and sondrye well disposed 

 persons'; also that Lewyns was not appointed 

 by, but accepted by the town at the instance of, 

 the earl. 



The ' Chantrie at the altar of our Ladie ' 

 within the said ' paroch ' church of Preston 

 was, according to the Chantry Certificate of 

 1546, 



of the foundacion of Helene Houghton, ther to 

 celebrate contynuallie for his sowle and all cristen 

 sowles, and th'incumbent thereof to be sufficiently 

 lerned in gramer to th'entent to have a fre gramer 

 skole kept ther also, as by the seyd foundacion it doth 

 appere. 



There was a Helen Hoghton, nle Masson, who 

 in 1450 married Henry Hoghton and obtained 

 on 16 March, 1468, a papal bull to legitimise 

 their issue, because the marriage had taken place 

 without the consent of the husband's father. If 

 Mayor Walton was correct it could hardly have 

 been this Helen Hoghton, but an earlier one, 

 who founded the chantry, as eighty years before 

 1528 brings us to 1448. The Hoghtons had 

 long been connected with Preston ; between 

 1 37 1 and 1524 several members of the family 

 held the office of mayor. It is of course possible 

 that the chantry was not a Hoghton chantry 

 but a Masson chantry. For the other chantry in 

 the church, that of the Holy Rood, was a 

 Hoghton chantry, founded by Sir Richard of 

 Hoghton, who died in 1341. Or Helen Hoghton 

 may have merely conveyed the property as heiress 

 of a last surviving feoffee on behalf of the 

 town. 



In the Valor of 1535 the value of the chantry 

 is given as £2 14.S. lo^d., and Nicholas Banastre 

 was priest and schoolmaster, as he continued till 

 its dissolution in 1548. The Chantry Com- 

 missioners of 1546* and 1548' reported that the 

 chantry was ' to teach one Fre Grammer Schole,' 

 and that the yearly income was ,^3 2s. 4^. 

 Banastre's age in 1548 is given as forty-two, so 

 that he could hardly have been the Nicholas 

 Banastre who was made mayor by Sir Richard 

 Hoghton's orders in 1528, and set aside on 

 appeal to the chancellor of the duchy. Sir Thomas 

 More. But he was probably his son. There 

 were Banastres mayors at intervals from 1346 

 downwards. By a warrant signed by Sir Walter 

 Mildmay and Robert Kelway on 1 1 August, 



' A. F. Leach, Engl. Schools at the Reform. 1 1 7, from 

 Duchy of Lane, class xxv, bdle. v, 3rd portion, m. 45. 

 * Ibid. 122, from Duchy of Lane. Div. xviii, 26b. 



570 



