In that year also lands, etc., at Nether Methop in Westmoreland to the value of £530 were purchased, according to the directions of the will of the Rev. James Barker, rector of Thrandeston, Suffolk, which required his executors to buy lands sufficient to yield an annual rent of £30, and to settle such property on ten trustees, elected by the bailiffs and principal burgesses of Kirkham; the trustees were ordered to apply the rental to the following uses:—£10 yearly to the schoolmaster; £12 yearly in half-yearly instalments, as an "exhibition or allowance to such poor scholer of the towne as shall then be admitted to the university," such exhibition to be open to any pupil born in Kirkham and educated at the school, and in case no scholar was ready and fitted to take advantage of it the sum was to be used in binding out poor apprentices; £5 for the purpose of binding apprentices; and the remainder to be expended in defraying the cost of an annual dinner for the trustees when they met to "enquire concerning the demeanure of the scholler at the univerty," in whose case it was appointed that if they should find him "to be riotously given, or disordered and debauched, they should withdraw the exhibition."
In 1701, the Drapers' Company issued the following order touching the admission of girls to the benefits of the charity:— "From henceforth no female sex shall have any conversation, or be taught, or partake of any manner of learning whatsoever in the free school at Kirkham, any former custom to the contrary notwithstanding."
In 1725 £400 was bequeathed to the trustees of the school by William Grimbaldson, M.D., to be invested in lands, and the rental to be added to the stipend of the head-master, if "he should be a scholar bred at Westminster, Winchester, or Eton, and a master of arts," but if not the rental to be devoted to binding apprentices, for which purpose it is used at present. In addition this physician left £50 to be similarly invested, and the income to be spent in buying classical books for the school. The management of the school has been in the hands of trustees from the time of Barker's bequest.
Since the establishment of the exhibition under Barker's trust twenty-eight youths have been assisted in their university careers by its means.
