Part 20

ARMS OF BEVERLEY GRAMMAR SCHOOL. ]

As far back as the year 1100 there is mention of the schoolmaster in the Minster records. But the earliest known mention of the school is contained in a letter written in 1276 by Walter Giffard, Archbishop of York, to his bailiff at Beverley. In this letter the bailiff is directed to

maintain John Aucher and his two companions attending school at Beverley from Michaelmas last, with 2s. a week, and their small necessaries in fitting style; and pay 36s. for three gowns for their use.

But centuries before this the Beverley Grammar School must have been in existence. For it was part and parcel of the Collegiate Church of Saint John of Beverley, and one of the first duties of a collegiate church was to establish and maintain a school for the education of youth. Therefore, just as the Minster of St. Peter at York maintained a school—and a very famous one too—as early as the year 730, so the Minster of St. John of Beverley will undoubtedly have maintained a school for many years before the Norman Conquest. Its foundation is, in fact, believed to date from the eighth century.

Beverley Grammar School is, far and away, the oldest school in the East Riding. But not long after, if not before, the date of the first written evidence of it, there was in existence another East Riding School—the HOWDEN GRAMMAR SCHOOL. Its origin was similar to that of the Beverley school, for in 1265 the parish church of Howden was turned into a collegiate church, and the rector was replaced by a body of canons, whose duty it became to establish a school. This duty they fulfilled, and the Howden Grammar School thus came into being some time before 1312.

The beginnings of BRIDLINGTON GRAMMAR SCHOOL are shrouded in mystery. It was originally a school attached to the Bridlington Priory, and its earliest mention occurs in a document promising that a royal grant formerly paid to the ‘Prior and Convent of St. Marie, Byrdlington,’ should be continued, whereas other similar grants were then being withdrawn. This was in the year 1450.

The fact that this document was issued by King Henry VI. gives the Bridlington Grammar School some claim to the title of ‘A Once Royal School.’ The royal grant was made—using the King’s words—‘for the great affection and singular devotion that we have to the glorious confessor, Saint John of Bridlington’; and by it the Prior and Canons of Bridlington were bound

as in finding of XII. Quarasters, and a maister to teach them both gramer and song.

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The HULL GRAMMAR SCHOOL is a notable example of a chantry school. It owes its existence to the piety of John Alcock, Bishop of Rochester, who in 1482 founded ‘The Chauntrie of Bisshoppe Alcocke in the parish churche of the Trinities in Hull.’

This means, in other words, that the founder purchased lands and gave them to the Church, on the understanding that the rent of these lands was for ever to be used for the stipend of a priest who should each day

at th’aulter of Our Ladie and St. John the Evangelist ... pray for the soules of King Edward IV., the founder, and all christien sowles.

But Bishop Alcock’s chantry priest was to do more than this. For the license granted by the King states that he

is bounde to kepe a fre scole of grammer within the saide towne of Hull, and teche all scolers within the saide towne of Hull, and teche all scholers thither resorting, without taking any stipend or wages for the same, and should have for his own stipende £10, and shoulde paie yerelie to the clarke to teche children to sing 40s., and to 10 of the best scolers in the scole every of them 6s. 8d. by yere.

The Grammar Schools of Hull and Pocklington resemble each other in that each was founded by a distinguished churchman and associated with a parish church. As John Alcock, Bishop of Worcester, founded the one, so John Dowman, Canon of St. Paul’s and Archdeacon of Suffolk, founded the other.

But whereas the Hull school was founded in connection with a chantry, the POCKLINGTON GRAMMAR SCHOOL was closely associated with a Religious Gild. Its foundation deeds—dated 1514—speak of it as the foundation of

the Master, Wardens and Brethren of the Brotherhood or Gild of the Name of Jesus, the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Nicholas in the parish church of Pocklington.

The same deeds state that the founder, John Dowman, endowed the school with lands sufficient to pay £13 6s. 8d. a year to the Master and Wardens of the Gild for

finding with the same a fit man sufficiently learned in the science of grammar to teach and instruct all and singular scholars resorting to the town of Pocklington for the sake of education.

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Each of the five East Riding Schools mentioned has been spoken of as a _Grammar School_. This name exactly describes their purpose; for they existed in order that boys might learn the mysteries of Latin Grammar. Together with the study of this went the reading of Latin authors, usually taken in the following order:—Aesop and Terence, Vergil, Cicero, Sallust and Cæsar, Horace and Ovid.

If you should find yourself wondering why this great attention to the study of Latin, there is a very simple explanation to be given. Latin was then the universal language of professional men. It was written, spoken, and read by all those of the educated classes. Priests, doctors, lawyers, merchants—all used it. The building-accounts for the Beverley North Bar are written in Latin, the Minster records are written in Latin, the Town records are written in Latin. A knowledge of Latin Cwas the gateway to a commercial as well as a professional career.

Until 1349 it was the custom for boys to translate their Latin authors into Norman-French, this being the ordinary language of ‘gentlefolk.’ But then the change of making English the medium of translation was introduced; and thirty-six years later an English chronicler lamented that, because of the change, ‘grammar-school children knew no more French than did their left heel.’

What a lively time the schoolboy had in those ‘good old days’! Hours of study, from early morning till bedtime; subjects taught, Latin grammar and Latin authors—these being plentifully varied with such pleasant interludes as that pictured in the seal of Louth Grammar School. Little wonder that Shakespeare, himself an ‘old boy’ of the Stratford-on-Avon Grammar School, had memories of

... the whining schoolboy, with his satchel And shining morning face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school.

Little wonder, also, that in the churchwardens’ accounts for Howden there occur numerous payments for ‘glasse for repairing the schollehouse windows.’ Boys will, of course, be boys, as long as the world lasts, and even in the seventeenth century they had to work off their excess of high spirits somehow or other.

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_Grammar Schools_ were not the only class of schools in existence during former days. There were two other kinds. _Song Schools_ were closely connected with the services in large churches. They ranked below the Grammar Schools, and their scholars were taught to read, write, and figure, as well as to sing the various portions of the church service. The Choir School attached to Holy Trinity Church, Hull, is a modern representative of the mediæval Song School.

Of less rank, again, were the _Reading Schools_. Populous towns might possess a school of each kind, as did Howden in 1401. But often the Song School and the Reading School were combined in one; and sometimes, as at Bridlington, the Grammar School was also a Song School.

But generally the vicar or the chantry priest was the master of the Grammar School, while the parish clerk was the master of the Song School. Any decrepit old man who had sufficient learning, but who had fallen on evil days, might be the master of the Reading School; where it would be his duty to teach the _petits_, or little ones, their ABC. Sometimes the _petits_ had their name changed into English, and were then known as the _Petties_, or as the _ABCies_. The latter of these two names was usually written in a very quaint form—_abseies_.

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In the extracts from the foundation deeds of the Hull and Pocklington Grammar Schools given on pages 325 and 326 are two noticeable points. First, in both the master is to teach all boys who may come to the school, and in the one first quoted it is expressly stated that he is not to take ‘any stipend or wages for the same.’ The school was to be a _Free Grammar School_.

This does not mean that no charges at all were to be made. The teaching was free; but all boys were expected to pay for luxuries, such as fires, candles, writing and washing materials, cock-fights, and birchings. Cock-fights, especially on Shrove Tuesday, were a regular school institution, and Pocklington Grammar School still preserves its silver cock-fighting bell. Doubtless school cock-fights were well worth a special fee, but fancy having to pay a fee for the privilege of being birched—a sure case of insult added to injury!

Boarders, too, were not kept for nothing. Far from it. John Aucher and his two companions at Beverley Grammar School had their board paid for at the rate of 8d. each per week, and they were also provided with pocket-money for their ‘small necessaries.’

The foundation of a Free Grammar School was looked upon as a great benefit to the town in which it was established. This we see clearly in the complaint made in 1660 by the Vicar of Pocklington on behalf of the inhabitants of the town. The complaint stated that there were then

not above eight or nine little boys in the school, whereas formerly, by the pains and industry of some former masters, there had been six or seven score scholars in our school, of which three or four score of them hath been _tablers_, gentlemen’s sons, which was a great benefit to this our town.

Secondly, the salaries paid to the masters of the Hull and Pocklington Grammar Schools are interesting. The Pocklington master was to be paid £13 6s. 8d. a year, the Hull master £3 6s. 8d. less. But in a few years’ time the salary of the latter had risen to be almost as high as that of the more-favoured master at Pocklington.

In 1548, ‘John Olyver, Bachelor of Artes, incumbente, being of thaidge of 46 yeres, of honeste conversacione and lyvinge, and well lerned,’ was to receive a ‘yerely stipend of £13 2s. 3d.’ Shameful to say, this was not paid in full, the amount actually received by John Olyver being first £13 2s. 2¾d., and later £13 2s. 2½d. Then, the source of income becoming stopped, the poor master got nothing, until the Mayor and burgesses took up his cause and successfully sued the Court of Exchequer for the amount due yearly.

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With the Reformation there came in 1548 what was called the CHANTRIES ACT. This, by confiscating their revenues, put an end to all such chantries as that founded by Bishop Alcock. It proved also a death-blow to all Song Schools and to many Grammar Schools. Their ancient endowments were seized by the Government, which engaged itself to replace the endowments of the Free Grammar Schools with fixed annual payments; but as it promptly forgot all about its engagements these did not prove of much value.

Under these circumstances the inhabitants of Beverley made known their grievances to King Edward VI. Their town was, they said—

a market towne and the greatest within all Estryding of your Majesties countie of York, having a grete nombre of youthe within the same, and fife thowsaund persons and above, whereof some of them be apte and mete to be brought up in learning, whiche are not, for so much as there is neither gramer schole, or any other schole, as yet founded, wherewith they might be brought up in any vertuous studdie.

No satisfactory reply was forthcoming to the inhabitants’ petition that the King would, out of the confiscated revenues of the Minster of St. John, found ‘one Fre Gramer Scole’ in their town. So it was left to the Town Governors to take over the finances of the old school. The school which had its origin in the Minster was thus re-established by the Town—an historic event which is embodied in its modern coat-of-arms.

The town records contain mention of many interesting payments made on behalf of the school by the Town Governors. In 1567 there occur the following:—

Item gyven to the Schole maister his players 17s.

Item payd to the waits for playing when the 3s. 4d. Schole maister’s players played

In 1606 a new school was built in the Minster Garth, and during the following years there are several records of the purchase of books for the school:—

Item for a dictionary for the Schollers 3s. 4d.

Item for another booke bought at Crossfaier, 6s. 6d. and for bringinge one fro Cambridge

Item for a booke and for chaines for two 18s. 10d. other bookes in the schole

The Beverley Grammar School still possesses its ancient library of books; among which are an edition of _Vergil_ printed in black letter at Florence, one of _Terence_ printed at Paris in 1552, one of _Cicero_ printed at Basle in 1553, and a very early edition of Foxe’s _Book of Martyrs_, containing gruesome illustrations of practical methods of torture. But there is now no need for chains to preserve these books from being surreptitiously ‘borrowed.’

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The Grammar School at Hull also had its revenues confiscated, but these were afterwards in part restored. In the reign of Queen Elizabeth the school was rebuilt, mainly at the expense of Alderman Gee, who contributed for the purpose the sum of eighty pounds and twenty thousand bricks. In his will, Alderman Gee put a further bequest thus:—

I give and bequeath to the schoole of Hull which I builded through God’s goodnes, two houses in the Butchery.... I give these houses for ever for and towards the said Schoolmaster’s fee for his good teachinge and bringinge upp youth.

Pocklington Grammar School was saved through the efforts of Thomas Dowman, the nephew of its founder, who obtained a private Act of Parliament to continue the existence of the school.

What happened to Bridlington Grammar School is uncertain. But we know that in 1636 an inhabitant of Bridlington, by name William Hustler, gave ‘forty pounds yearly out of his estates for the maintenance of a schoolmaster and usher in a school-house, by him to be founded and erected.’ This endowment still forms a part of the revenues of the school.

Howden Grammar School also managed to survive, and lives to-day in the side chapel of the parish church that has been its home for several centuries.

Other smaller Grammar Schools, founded by private individuals, formerly existed in the East Riding. Marmaduke Langdale founded one at SANCTON in 1610, Lord D’Arcy founded another at KILHAM in 1633, and John Blanchard in 1712 left funds for the salary of a grammar school master at BARMBY-ON-THE-MARSH.

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We have now reached the beginning of the eighteenth century, and there has so far been no mention made of Girls’ Schools. The reason is not far to seek. There were no schools for girls in the far-off days when the Grammar Schools of Beverley, Howden, Bridlington and Hull came into being.

Girls were then not considered to need any more education than that which they could get at home. To know how to cook a meal, to make wool into cloth, and to make cloth into clothes—what more was it possible for girls to learn? These very useful lessons they could learn at home. A few specially favoured girls of high birth were probably brought up and taught book-learning in some of the nunneries of the East Riding; but of this there are no records.

The first endowed school for girls as well as boys was founded in 1655, and from this date onward numerous girls’ schools came into existence. Some of these were styled _Boarding Academies for Young Ladies_; others of a humbler nature were known as _Charity Schools_.

One of the latter was that founded by Alderman Cogan at Hull in 1753. This provided clothing and instruction for twenty poor girls, each of whom could remain at the school for three years. The number of girls was afterwards increased to sixty. They wore white straw bonnets, brown merino frocks, and blue cloth cloaks, all trimmed with orange. The COGAN CHARITY SCHOOL still flourishes, but the old-time charity costume is no longer worn.

Several old charity schools formerly existed in the towns of the East Riding. Bridlington had a SPINNING SCHOOL in which twelve poor girls were taught ‘carding, spinning, and knitting.’ Beverley had its BLUE-COAT SCHOOL for boys, a school afterwards amalgamated with the Grammar School; and three other Spinning Schools were in existence in Hull at the close of the eighteenth century.

Of the same class is the MARINE or NAVIGATION SCHOOL belonging to the Hull Trinity House. This, founded in 1786, now provides board, clothing, and education for about 150 boys, who are intended for a sea-faring life. So valuable is the education they receive in all that belongs to a sailor’s life, that each of the ‘white-ducked’ boys is said to ‘carry a captain’s certificate in his pocket’ when he leaves the school.

A school of a very special kind was that conducted on board the H.M. TRAINING SHIP ‘SOUTHAMPTON.’ The _Southampton_, an old ‘three-decker,’ after serving as a battleship in the early years of last century, was sent to the Humber to become a floating _Industrial School_. For forty-three years it fulfilled its duty, during which time some 2,600 boys were educated on it for a life at sea.[74]

Footnote 74:

A photograph of the _Southampton_ is given on page 299.

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In towns private schools of all classes were increasing rapidly when the nineteenth century opened. _A Directory of Hull_ for the year 1831 shows that there were then in the town seven Ladies’ Boarding Academies, four Gentlemen’s Boarding Academies, twelve Classical and Commercial Academies, and no fewer than seventy-four Day Schools.

The following is the advertisement issued by the Principal of a _Commercial and Mathematical Academy_ in the year 1787. In it the mysterious letters appended to the Principal’s name may be taken to stand for ‘Writing Master.’

HULL, JULY 11th, 1787.

_At the Commercial and Mathematical Academy._

On the SOUTH-SIDE of the DOCK,

Facing the NEW-BRIDGE;

GENTLEMENS’ CHILDREN are instructed in the first principles of English, so as to be enabled to read and write their native Language with elegance and propriety; the English Grammar agreeable to the strictest rules of Syntax, resolving a sentence into its different parts of speech. The free and natural method of Writing, and striking by command of hand; Arithmetic, Merchants’ Accounts, or the Italian Method of Book-Keeping; Mensuration; Gauging; Surveying of Land; Plain and Spherical Trigonometry; Euclids Elements; Navigation; Algebra, and the Use of the Globes.

By _J. WATSON_, W. M.

YOUNG GENTLEMEN are Boarded and taught Geography, by familiar lectures, founded on rational principles and demonstration, and such as are of age and capacity taught to read Milton and Young, with proper emphasis and cadence.

N.B. A separate Apartment for YOUNG LADIES.

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Meanwhile many of the old Grammar Schools in England had fallen on very evil days. In 1840 some of those to which the term ‘decayed’ could be most fitly applied were converted into _Elementary Schools_. Twenty-four years later a Schools’ Enquiry Commission was appointed by the Government to enquire into the condition of the Grammar Schools throughout the country. The following are details from the report of the Commissioners.

At Beverley in 1865 there were only fifteen boys, and the school premises were ‘dirty and the furniture out of repair.’ At Hull no classics were taught; only two boys out of sixty-seven were learning French, and two German; Algebra and Euclid were ‘not attempted.’ At Sancton the children paid nothing, and ‘received instruction which was worth nothing.’ At Barmby-on-the-Marsh the vicar was receiving £97 from the Grammar School endowment, and out of it paying £2 to the village school.

Bridlington Grammar School was, we know, held in 1866 in a room near the Corn Exchange in the ‘Old Town’; and some eight or ten scholars were in attendance. It was then temporarily closed, and its funds were carefully nursed by Mr. Thomas Harland, who meanwhile succeeded in interesting others in its refoundation.

As the result of Mr. Harland’s labours, various funds were amalgamated, including those of the Spinning School previously mentioned; and eventually a site for the school was obtained, and new buildings were erected. These were opened in 1899 by Lord Herries, the Lord Lieutenant of the East Riding, and have since been twice enlarged.

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It has been shown how Hull and Pocklington owe their Grammar Schools to pious founders. That the days of pious founders are not wholly past and gone, we have proved to us in the existence of HYMERS COLLEGE at Hull.

‘Hymers’ owes itself to two brothers, John and Robert Hymers, each a native of the North Riding and an ‘old boy’ of Sedbergh School. [Illustration:

_Photo by_] [_Turner & Drinkwater_

Bridlington Grammar School.

]

The elder of these two brothers, who was born in 1803 at Ormesby in Cleveland, became a distinguished mathematical scholar, and a Fellow of St. John’s College, Cambridge. Somewhat late in life he was appointed rector of Brandesburton, where he spent his last thirty-five years. On his death in 1887 it was discovered that he had left almost his whole fortune for the foundation of a Grammar School. The wording of a portion of his will ran as follows:—

And, subject to the payment of my debts ... I give and bequeath all the residue of my real and personal estate and effects whatsoever and wheresoever to the Mayor and Corporation of the port of Kingston-upon-Hull, in the county of York, wherewith to found and endow a Grammar School in their town on the model of the Grammar Schools at Birmingham and Dulwich, for the training of intelligence in whatever social rank of life it may be found amongst the vast and varied population of the town and port of Hull.