and direction of the Master and Scholars of the said School," but was required, as were his successors after him for all future time, to see to it that they were obeyed.[1] The " Statutes and Ordinances " framed as a result of this decree were drawn up in the following year (1585), and remained in force until they were altered (by the same dual authority) in 1844.
The very wide powers given to the Bishop need not surprise us if we recall the measure of authority which he enjoyed over the "School of the same township" in 1206. The most reasonable explanation of this great authority would be that he had always controlled the town's school, and that when in 1584 the new school was founded his authority remained. It is true that it had not been maintained in the Letters Patent of 1539, when not only were the Bailiffs, Burgesses and Commonalty empowered to found their school without " molestation " from the Bishop of London (the clearest of indications that the Bishop might expect to have a voice in the matter), but moreover the statutes were to be framed by a layman, Thomas Lord Audley. These precautions against ecclesiastical control, echoed in similar precautions concerning the chantries then secularised, obviously derive from Henry's anti-clerical policy at that date. Between 1539 and 1584, however, came the Church Settlement; and so far were the framers of the second Letters Patent from sharing Henry's anxiety to exclude clerical influence that, reversing the process, they gave the Bishop as wide powers as we may imagine had been enjoyed by his predecessors.
In basing a case for the continuous existence of a school on the continuing authority exercised by the Bishopric of London it has not been overlooked that until recent times education was always under the control of the Church, and Colchester always in the Diocese of London, so that at any date its Bishop might be expected to be the patron of any school which happened to exist in the town. Indeed, if this contention were true, there would be but little force in the foregoing argument. Certainly, since about 1539, a monopoly in ecclesiastical authority has been enjoyed by the bishop of a diocese, but before the dissolution of the monasteries the Bishop of London's remote influence was overshadowed by the prestige and local authority of two great Monastic Houses (one, St. John’s Abbey, a mitred Benedictine house ; the other St. Botolph's Priory, the premier house in England of the Order of Augustine Canons), by whom his patronage within the town is likely to have been jealously confined to the four acres occupied by his ancient feudal holding. In 1206 the "town school" was governed by the Bishop not because the town was in his diocese, but because the school was in his sake. It is thus the situation of the early school that is the crux, and we must now turn to this topographical aspect of the problem. From the 1206 fine, already quoted, and
- ↑ These are the words of the royal decree: "Volentes insuper quod dicta Schola et Pedogogus et Scholares ejusdem Scholae perpetuis futuris temporibus sint et existent sub visitatione et correctione Episcopi London' et successorum suorum pro tempore exist'ium."
