A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE 



At the Inquisition held 21 March, 1658-9, evidence was given that at least from 1558 the 

 schoolmaster enjoyed the cottage and the annuity until the property was bought by Sir Erasmus 

 Fountaine. Henry Pigott, age sixty-seven, said that at the age of seven, i.e. 1598, he had boarded 

 in the house of Richard Wally, who then occupied ' the capital messuage,' and had gone ' to schoole 

 with one John Bond schoolemaster,' who lived in the cottage and received the ;^io a year : while 

 Nicholas Retchford, who was bailiff to the new purchaser and had been bailiff to the trustees of the 

 former owner. Lady Camden, remembered Bond the schoolmaster, and said he enjoyed as appurtenant 

 to the cottage common pasture for cows on the cow pasture called Almend and kept two or three 

 cows and six to ten sheep there. Jonathan Francis of Layston, Herefordshire, clerk, said that he had 

 been himself schoolmaster there about ten years before, and received the rent-charge and let the 

 cottage for £pL 2s. a year. When Sir E. Fountaine bought it, he said he did not know how it was 

 due, Francis thereupon sent him a copy of a decretal order of Lord Chancellor Bromley confirming 

 the charity, which Fountaine simply kept and stopped the payment. So Francis, 'seeing he could not 

 gett the said jTio a year paid him, he left teaching there' and there had been no master since. 

 The fact that Francis was a ' clerk,* i.e. in holy orders, shows that the school was a grammar school. 



The commissioners on 18 April, 1659, decreed that the cottage and ;^I0 rent-charge should be 

 restored to a schoolmaster, and Sir E. Fountaine was ordered to pay ;^I20 for six years' arrears, partly 

 for rent of the cottage, which was worth £10 a. year, for the repair of the cottage, and ' to be laid out 

 for the building and providinge a convenient house in Holme for the teaching of schollers.' Foun- 

 taine took exception to the commissioners' decrees, which were referred to a new commission 1 1 July, 

 1660. The upshot does not appear, but no doubt the decree was confirmed. In 1821 the rent- 

 charge, now grown to ^^13 a year, was duly paid by Earl Spencer, the increase being probably due 

 to compensation for the disappearance of the common. The trust was then considered as limited to 

 eight poor children, and they were merely given an elementary instruction in the later elementary 

 school founded by Sir John Cotton of Conington, bart., by his will 29 September, 1725. The 

 school has remained elementary. 



HOUGHTON CONQUEST SCHOOL 



Of like fate was the later attempt at a school in Houghton Conquest, which bears no relation 

 to the older foundation at Houghton Regis, being in quite a different part of the county. This was 

 founded by Sir Francis Clerke, knt., by deed 5 June, 1632. He gave to Sir Richard Conquest and 

 seven other trustees ' a newly erected messuage with a pightle of pasture and a dove-house ' and a 

 yearly rent-charge of ^^24 out of the manor of ' Dame Ellensbury ' in Houghton, for an almshouse, 

 and schoolmaster's lodgings over the three rooms on the west. The schoolmaster was to be 

 appointed by Sidney-Sussex College, Cambridge, to which Clerke 'had given a good part of his 

 possessions,' and was to be ' one of the scholars of the foundation of the said Clerke in the said 

 college that should have taken the degree of M.A.' This is a sure proof that the school was to be a 

 grammar school. His pay was to be ;^I0 out of the rent-charge of £24.. 



At an Inquisition of Charitable Uses held under the Commonwealth 13 April, 1659, it appeared 

 that the school had been duly maintained. John Hind, clerk, having been ' placed schoole master 

 of the sayd school by the master and fellows of Sidney College at Lady Day 1655 . . . and at 

 Lady Day 1658 William Carr was placed . . . and hath continued.' But the rents had been 

 detained by Edmund Wild, the sole surviving feofiPee of the trust, and he was now ordered to pay 

 the arrears and make a conveyance to new feoffees. How long the school continued as a grammar 

 school does not appear. In spite of a small increase of endowment by 12^ acres of land bouo^ht in 

 1 72 1 under will of Edmund Wylde, the Commissioners of Inquiry reported in 1821 that Tt was 

 ' sixty years since the school was maintained as a Grammar School.' It has remained elementary 

 ever since, and is now called a Church of England school. 



LUTON SCHOOL 



Luton Secondary School has taken a long time in getting under way, having been under dis- 

 cussion at the time of the Royal Commission on Secondary Education in 1894, and not opened till 

 September 1904. It has been fortunate in its selection of a Principal, Mr. Thomas Arthur Edwin 

 Sanderson. He was educated at the City of London School, and a major scholar of Trinity 

 College, Cambridge, Bell Scholar and twenty-first Wrangler in 1890. He was an assistant-master 

 at Hulme Grammar School, Manchester, and at Bath College. The school is a mixed school for 

 boys and girls, and there are five masters and three mistresses. The tuition fees are /4 loj. a 

 year. At the end of 1906 there were 115 pupils. With the County Council to back it and 

 finance it there should be no doubt of its success. 



180 



