A HISTORY OF LANCASHIRE 



man, who gave two farms in Little Lever and 

 the tithes therefrom to the trustees, who were to 

 employ the rents 



for the erecting purchasing and maintaining a library 

 at or in the said school house of the best sort of school 

 boob and such other profitable books as they should 

 think fit or necessary. 



Afterwards they were to pay 4OJ. a year to the 

 ' upper schoolmaster,' and 20s. to the ' usher or 

 under master.' The residue was to go to 



maintaining and providing the said library as well 

 with desks, tables, boxes and shelves as also with such 

 other necessary ingenious and profitable books, moral 

 or divine, or for history, mathematics or other 

 learning 



as the feoffees should decide. 



A considerable number of the old books ot 

 this library are still preserved. There is no 

 catalogue older than 13 February, 1735, when 

 it contained Scapula's Lexicon, Cooper's Dictionary, 

 and Fox's Martyrs in folio, Littleton's Dictionary, 

 Bithner's Lyra, Godwin's de Presulibus Anglie in 

 quarto, Livy, Pliny, Quintilian, Cornelius Nepos, 

 Terence, Juvenal, &c. The only Greek books 

 were Busby's Greek Grammar, Xenophon, Iso- 

 crates and Hesiod. 



In 1 69 1, the question having been raised, 

 the feoffees declared their opinion ' that the 

 freedom of this school doth only extend unto 

 the whole parish of Bolton and no further.' 

 This was in the time of Mr. John Shelmerdine, 

 who became head master in 1687. In 1704 

 his salary was raised to ^29 ^^* ^^- ^ X^^ 

 and that of the usher to j^i6 1 3/. ^d. Next 

 year Shelmerdine died and James Bateman was 

 appointed. The age of long head-masterships 

 had now arrived. Bateman held for twenty- 

 one, and his usher, James Horrocks, for thirty- 

 one years. 



Bateman had the most distinguished pupil the 

 school ever produced in Robert Ainsworth, the 

 author of the Latin Dictionary published in 1 736, 

 which, revised by successive editors, remained 

 the standard work until superseded by the 

 Americans, Lewis and Short, in 1870. It is 

 stated in a notice of Ainsworth's life prefixed 

 to the second edition of the dictionary published 

 in 1746 not only that he was a pupil of the 

 school but that he himself ' afterwards taught 

 school, in the same town.' His name cannot be 

 found in the feoffees' minute book ; probably he 

 was an assistant master directly employed by the 

 head master and not the usher. He afterwards 

 had ' a considerable boarding school at Bethnal 

 Green,' then of course a rural suburb, and at 

 Hackney, and died 4 April, 1743, at the age of 

 eighty-three. So that his dictionary, dedicated 

 to Richard Mead, physician of George II, must 

 have been the child, not of his Bolton days, 



but of his old age. There were several Ains- 

 worths among the school feoffees from 1801 



onwards. 



On Bateman's retirement through ill-health a 

 pension was provided at the expense of his suc- 

 cessor, Richard Ashburne, who died after nine- 

 teen years' service in 1744. Joseph Hooley, the 

 first to be called ' Reverend,' was appointed at 

 /40 a year, but after two years resigned. Thomas 

 Shaw, B.A., from Blackrod, was appointed in 

 1747, and acted also as treasurer for forty-one 

 years. His salary was at first ^^50 a year, ad- 

 vanced in 1775 by ;^io, the usher also receiving 

 j^io more on condition of teaching such boys as 

 are recommended by any two trustees and the 

 master writing and accounts, which subjects 

 were not to be taught in school hours. The 

 usher at the time was Thomas Boardman, jun., 

 whose father, Thomas Boardman, sen., had pre- 

 ceded him from 1736 to 1771. 



In 1784, while the head-mastership was vacant 

 after the death of Shaw, the trustees obtained a 

 Private Act of Parliament to enable them to 

 develop the estates. The Act states that the 

 income was then ^150 a year, and on dropping 

 in of leases would amount to ;^200 a year. 

 The Act incorporated the governors, and in the 

 narrow spirit then prevailing provided that only 

 freeholders of £100 a year, part of which 

 should be in Bolton, who were members of the 

 Church of England, should be governors. On 

 the other hand the Act enlarged the curriculum, 

 providing that the master and usher, who were 

 to have not less than ^^80 and £^0 a year re- 

 spectively, were to teach not only * in grammar 

 and classical learning, but also in writing, arith- 

 metic, geography, navigation, mathematics, the 

 modern languages.' 



An additional estate was bought under the 

 Act, and according to the report of the Com- 

 mission of 1828 the income had risen to ;^485 

 a year. The first master appointed after the 

 Act in 1790 was the Rev. John Lempriere, the 

 famous author of the Classical Dictionary, ' with 

 £^^ a year and the house in Churchgate, late in 

 the occupation of Mr. Shaw.' But the governors 

 took to interfering in the management of the 

 school, and in 1792 passed a rule that when the 

 masters had 



any charge or complaint to make against any of the 

 schoolboys then such masters shall call in 4 of the 

 Trustees who shall hear and determine upon such 

 complaint. 



The effect of this appears soon after in a 

 minute : — 



The behaviour of Thomas SmaUwood having been 

 extremely impudent and atrocious to the head master 

 and usher, we do direct his expulsion. 



But this divided jurisdiction could not last, 

 and Lempriere resigned in 1793. The gover- 



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