SCHOOLS 



premises accruing and remaining, to the poor of the aforesaid town for the time being.' The patent 

 then went on to grant that 



the Warden or Keeper of the College of the Blessed Mary of Winchester in Oxford, commonly called 

 New College, Oxford, and the fellows of the same ... or the major part of them, shall nominate, 

 elect and admit the said Master and Usher of the aforesaid School in the aforesaid town, and for good, 

 just and reasonable causes and occasions, may and shall change and remove them from time to time. 



It ended with a licence to any person or persons to grant lands and possessions to the corpora- 

 tion without the further usual requirement of an inquisition ad quod damnum, an inquiry by the 

 king's escheator to ascertain that neither the king nor anyone else would be damnified by the pro- 

 posed grants in mortmain, and without payment of any fine. This last provision was not unusual 

 in the case of the foundation of schools, especially under Henry VIII, as for instance in Dean Colet's 

 foundation of St. Paul's School. 



The terms of this patent, especially the grant of the appointment of the schoolmasters to New 

 College, and the provision for the maintenance as well as the teaching of poor boys, suggest that the 

 patent was only reviving a pre-existing school founded on those conditions : while it seems probable 

 that the marriage portions and the doles were also existing charges on a pre-existing foundation. 

 They are precisely such as were common in foundations of college and chantry-schools. At Eton 

 as at Ewelme, both founded in 1440, an almshouse was an integral part of the school foundation. 

 When Archbishop Rotherham in 1480, an old King's man, founded his College of Jesus at Rother- 

 ham he provided for the maintenance of poor boys and doles for the poor at his obit, and so did 

 Roger Lupton, provost of Eton, when he founded his chantry school at Sedbergh in 1525. At the 

 latter school the appointment of master was vested by the founder in St. John's College, Cambridge. 

 Though confiscated under the Chantries Act, yet when the school was re-endowed 15 May, 1551, 

 and called Edward VI's School, the appointment of the master of the school was again given to 

 St. John's College. So at Berkhampstead, John Incent, dean of St. Paul's, a fellow of All Souls 

 College, Oxford, had in 1542 given the appointment of master to the college. The chantry was 

 dissolved under the Chantries Act and refounded by an Act of Parliament in 1549, which again 

 gave the appointment of master and usher to that college. 



It may therefore with fair certainty be concluded that there was some anterior connexion 

 between Bedford School and New College, or we must suppose that there was some personal con- 

 nexion between Sir William Harper or his family and the college, such as that which led Sir Andrew 

 Judd to connect Tonbridge School ^^ with All Souls College. The connexion in that case is said 

 to have been that Judd, who was a skinner, was of kin to the founder of the college, Archbishop 

 Chicheley in the reign of Henry VI, being son of a grand-niece. There is, however, no evidence 

 forthcoming of any such connexion between Harper and William of Wykeham, or the college he 

 founded. In an eighteenth-century paper preserved at New College an attempt was made to 

 identify Sir William Harper with a William Harper who was a fellow of New College from 1503 

 to 1527, and then vicar of Writtle, a college living in Essex, the 'Sir ' being explained to be the 

 clerical Dominus, like Sir William Evans in the Merry Wives of Windsor. But Harper's own deeds 

 and his brass are extant to show that he was no cleric, but a knight. So he cannot be identified 

 with William Harper the fellow. William Harper the fellow, moreover, is described as born at 

 Axbridge, Somerset, whereas it is practically certain, though there is no contemporary evidence 

 of it that Harper was a native of Bedford. Harper is too common a name to allow us to assume 

 that the two were relations. The name of Harper is of course no more uncommon than the 

 practice of harping. The spelling of Harpur which has perversely been adopted at Bedford has no 

 contemporary authority. Though spelling at that time varied not merely with the individual but 

 with the mood of the individual. Harper never appears in the Bedford foundation nor in the 

 Merchant Taylors' records, nor in the contemporary diary of Machyn, the London undertaker, 

 except as Harper, Harpar, or Harpare, never as Harpur. 



Of Harper's family little can be ascertained. There are no borough records, other than 

 charters, at Bedford older than the reign of Henry VII. Then the earliest extant records of the 

 borough court bring us at once to the name of Harper. On Monday before St. Thomas's Day, 

 1508, William Harper with Thomas Rowthe and Richard Good sued Richard Walter in an action 

 for debt for lyj., and on St. Laurence Day (10 August) following in the bailiflf's court again sued 

 Richard Wylter, as he is now called, for 40/. The first Mayor's Court Book begins at Michaelmas, 

 1 5 12. On Monday after 24 June following, 15 13, we find William Harper plaintiff against 

 William Seller in a plea of detaining $s. and half a white blanket, and also on a plea of debt for 

 ds. ()d. On St. Anne's Day (26 July) John Hardinge, being sued for a debt of ;^ii and having 

 no goods, was committed to prison till released on the surety of William Harper and William 



*' Septimus Rivingtou, Hist, of Tonbridge School, 1898, p. 7. 

 157 



