A HISTORY OF LANCASHIRE 



title of Hugh Oldham to be the chief bene- 

 factor, as having been the donor of what until 

 quite recently was the main endowment of the 

 school, the corn-mills of Manchester. These 

 were the old manorial water corn-mills on the 

 River Irk, at which every demesne tenant of the 

 lord or other resident in the township of Man- 

 chester was bound to grind his corn and pay the 

 fees exacted for doing so. As lately as 1834 

 these fees, though reduced only to fees for malt, 

 brought in j^2,000 a year. 



Where Hugh Oldham was born or what 

 family he belonged to has been a matter of dis- 

 pute and guessing. He is chiefly known as a 

 pluralist cleric, who between 1485 and 15 04 

 held as many as eleven benefices scattered up and 

 down the country, which were relinquished 

 in 1505 on his appointment as bishop of Exeter. 

 These ecclesiastical preferments were the re- 

 ward of official and legal work in connexion 

 with the Court of Chancery, in which he per- 

 formed minor services,* and held from I August, 

 1499, the dignified position of clerk of the 

 Hanaper.' He was then rich enough to found 

 an educational establishment, not on the gor- 

 geous scale of Wykeham or Wolsey, the multi- 

 millionaires of their age, but on the lower 

 plane of Lord Mayor Sir Edmund Shaa at 

 Stockport in 1487, or of Lord Mayor Sir John 

 Percival at Macclesfield in i 502. 



Oldham's foundation has been commonly 

 represented as an imitation of an example first 

 set by Colet, in that it was a school of the 

 Renaissance and free from clerical control. But 

 both foundations were the outcome of a long- 

 standing movement, and both copied a much 

 older model, dating far back in the ages to the 

 beginnings of English history. In point of fact 

 Oldham's benefaction was not entrusted origin- 

 ally to lay trustees, there being only one such in 

 the first deed of 1515. Nor were lay trustees 

 for schools a novelty. Lay trustees began with 

 the first grammar school founded by a gild, and 

 when that was, it is difficult to say. The 

 grammar school at Stratford-on-Avon was in the 

 hands of the gild of Stratford, who were practically 

 a town council, in 1402- 3; William Seven- 

 oaks, mercer of London, who founded Sevenoaks 

 Grammar School in 1432, established a body of 

 lay trustees and prescribed that the master should 

 not be in holy orders. A generation before 

 Colet's foundation Sir Edmund Shaa had in 

 1487 placed Stockport Grammar School in the 

 hands of the Goldsmiths' Company of London. 

 In 1500 the mayor and town council of Lan- 

 caster were, as we saw, the governing body of 

 the local grammar school. 



Oldham, indeed, according to the old story,' 

 which refers to a time several years earlier than 



* Exch. K.R. 14-16 Hen. VII, 218, No. 10. 



'Pat. 7 Hen. VII, pt. 5. 



° Holinshed, Chron. (1808), iii, 617. 



Colet's foundation, is supposed to have advised 

 Richard Fox, bishop of Winchester, when like 

 other successful statesmen he contemplated ex- 

 piating by some religious or charitable founda- 

 tion any misdeeds he may have committed, 

 to make a college for secular clergy, not to 

 ' build houses and provide livelihoods for a com- 

 pany of bussing monks, whose end and fall they 

 themselves might live to see.' Yet, when he 

 himself came to endow Manchester Grammar 

 School, the original deed of 15 15' did not place 

 the foundation in lay hands, but in those of the 

 warden and fellows of the college of Our Lady 

 of Manchester, who were all bound to be 

 priests, while one of these very ' bussing monks,' 

 the abbot of Whalley, was a party to the deed, 

 a member of the governing body, and in default 

 of the college was to act as trustee, and the 

 master was to be either ' a secular or a regular ' 

 — i.e. a secular cleric, one of the ordinary 

 clergy, or a ' bussing monk,' or regular canon, 

 or even a friar. In fact, Oldham was imitating 

 William of Wykeham, as he had imitated the 

 founders of the earliest schools in England, in 

 giving the control to a collegiate church of 

 secular canons. 



As has been said, the major part of the endow- 

 ment of the school was the corn-mills of Man- 

 chester, with certain lands on the banks of the 

 Irk ; and a fulling mill or ' walk ' mill on the 

 same stream (so called because the cloth was 

 walked on in water mixed with fuller's earth), also 

 with lands attached. The exact interest which the 

 school trustees had in these properties before 

 Oldham's death in 15 19 is difficult to determine. 

 At that date a perpetual lease obtained from 

 Lord De La Warr, 3 October, 1509, must have 

 come into operation by which Hugh and Joan 

 Bexwyk and Ralph Hulme were to hold at a 

 rent of ^9 13^. /^d. The 'walk' mill, with 

 lands attached called the ' Heaths,' had been 

 leased by Thomas West, knt., and by Lord 

 De La Warr, lord of the manor of Manchester, 

 and Elizabeth his wife at a rent of jTi 1 6s. 8d. 

 for fifty-one years to Oldham as early as 22 

 June, 1495, and as late as 2 September, 1 5 18, 

 Oldham gave to Nicholas Galey a twelve years' 

 lease of the ' Heaths,' with a three years' occu- 

 pancy, subsequently to become annual, as manager 

 of the ' walk ' mill. Oldham at his death prob- 

 ably bequeathed his interest to the school trustees. 

 The corn-mills, with lands on both sides of the 

 Irk, were leased for ever by Lord De La Warr, 

 3 October, 1509, to Richard Bexwyk for 

 ;^8 1 3/. 4^., and on the same day the reversion was 

 granted to Hugh and Joan Bexwyk and Ralph 

 Hulme, the school trustees, at a rent of ^{^8. At 

 that date the corn-mills were held by John Rad- 

 cliffe, gentleman, and William Galey, 'milner of 

 Manchestre mylls,' under a forty years' lease from 

 Lord De La Warr, obtained 9 March, 1500, at a 

 ' See in/ra, p. 581. 



580 



