A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE 



boarding school. In i8g8 it was wholly transferred by the company to the head master, the 

 Rev. C. F. Farrar, of Lincoln College, Oxford, formerly assistant-master at Manchester Grammar 

 School. It is thus, in fact, a private school, and as such hardly comes within the limits of this 

 article. It is now full with 212 boarders, the limit of its accommodation. In consequence of the 

 foundation of county council schools it is now called the Elstow School, being partly within that 

 parish and close to the old Elstow nunnery. It has a fine pile of buildings, which form a 

 conspicuous object from the railway on approaching Bedford from the south. 



DUNSTABLE SCHOOLS 



At Dunstable the earliest mention of the school is about iioo, for it is recorded ' of Geoffrey, 

 elected abbot of St. Albans 1 1 1 9, that 



he came from Maine where he was born, and was summoned while still a secular by his predecessor 

 Abbot Richard (1097-1119) to teach the school at St. Albans. But when he arrived, not having 

 come in time, the school had been given to another master. He taught (legit) therefore at 

 Dunstable while waiting for the school at St. Albans, which was again promised him. There he 

 made a certain play of St. Katherine, which we call in the vulgar (French) tongue a miracle play 

 (quem miracula vulgariter appellamus.) To give it splendour he asked and obtained from the sacrist 

 of St. Albans the loan of some choir copes. The next night Master Geoffrey's house was accidentally 

 set on fire and burnt with his books and the copes. So, not knowing how to repair the loss to God 

 and St. Alban, he offered up himself as a holocaust to God, taking the habit of religion in the honour 

 of St. Alban. And this was the reason why after he was promoted to be abbot he was so diligent in 

 making precious copes for that house. 



Now this school at Dunstable cannot be claimed as a monastic school, as the school of the 

 priory of Dunstable, since the priory was not then in existence, but was of the foundation of 

 Henry I about 11 32, a generation after the incident recorded of Geoffrey of Maine. The 

 pie-existence of the school might suggest that here as at Bedford there had been a collegiate church 

 of secular canons, who were dispossessed for the regulars. But there is no trace of any such 

 church. Dunstable itself is not mentioned in Domesday Book, but seems to have been a later 

 development from a settlement of merchants in the royal manor of Houghton Regis. That they 

 were real travelling merchants and did a good trade may be inferred from the recorded avidity of the 

 prior of Dunstable, who, in 1 22 1,' sued the burgesses of the town for tithes on their business 

 ' wherever carried on.' In 1224 Dunstable School seems to have been extremely flourishing, and 

 Dunstable to have been one of the towns which, like Stamford, Northampton, and Salisbury, 

 threatened to become dangerous rivals to the still youthful university of Oxford. For the 

 chronicler records how in that year 



While Master Richard ' of Stamford was teaching school at Dunstable, such a quarrel arose between 

 the burgesses and scholars that many were wounded on both sides, and one burgess was found mortally 

 stricken. When after a few days he died, Robert a clerk of Sirinctone was accused by the wdfe of the 

 deceased, but fled before he could be arrested. In the following autumn Richard was made a canon of 

 Dunstable. 



This statement is conclusive proof, if proof were wanted, that he was a secular clerk, not a 

 regular, before. 



Two years later the growth of Dunstable borough was stopped by the grant of it to the priory 

 by the king. The school, no doubt, shared the fortunes of the town. 



As to education in the priory itself, there does not seem to have been much. It was a small 

 house which only had a prior and thirteen canons at the time of the Dissolution, and in earlier days 

 it seems to have been no larger, for there were only twenty-five admissions to it in 52 years, from 

 1223 to 1275.'' When Bishop Buckingham visited the priory, 20 August, 1379,° he found that no 

 canons were sent to the university ' ad studendum, as provided by the constitutions of St. Benedict and 

 other holy fathers,' referring of course to the Benedictine statutes of 1337, which however were 

 certainly not the first to make the requirement. The result of the visitation was an ordinance of 

 Thomas Marshall the prior, by which, ' seeing the advantage of learning and the necessity of preach- 

 ing, the priory being in a populous place,' he set aside ' for the exhibition of a scholar at the 



' Gesta Abbot. Mm. Albanl, i, 73 ; Cott. MS. Claudius, E. iv, 98a, 321(7. 

 ' Annals of Dunstaple, Ann. Mon. (Rolls Ser.), iii, 14. ; V.C.H. Beds, i, 371, 



' Ibid. 85. 'Eodem anno Magistro Ricardo de Stanford regente scolas Dunstaplie, orta est rixa inter 

 burgenses et scolares.' 



' Ibid. cf. y.C.H. Beds, i, 374. » Line. Epis. Reg. Buckingham, ii, fol. 82a'. 



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