The History of Colchester Royal Grammar School/Chapter 1
CHAPTER 1
There is a stone tablet over the entrance to the main school building that must have caught the eye of all Colcestrians, with its inscription, VITÆ CORONA FIDES, 1539—1909. The second date marks the completion of the building, while the first is that officially accepted as the beginning of the School's history, being the year when King Henry VIII granted to the "Bailiffs, Burgesses, and Commonalty" of Colchester the income of two Chantries in the town "to found and maintain within the said town a free School" (ad erigendum et stabillendum infra dictam villam unam liberum Scholam).
Forty-five years later, in 1584, the Letters Patent containing this decree were cancelled as certain conditions therein had not been fulfilled, and a new decree for the foundation of a "free Grammar School" was issued by Queen Elizabeth. To the Colchester School, therefore, falls the rare distinction of owing its foundation, as we hear in the School Prayer, both to Henry VIII and to Queen Elizabeth. Officially, then, the School completed its fourth century in the year 1939, the opening year of the Second World War.
Except perhaps for its doubly royal foundation here is a typical English grammar school, founded in the Tudor period; but there is a current belief to be considered that what was effected in 1539 was not the creation of a new school so much as the refounding of an old one which had already been in existence for more than three centuries, as well as a somewhat vague theory that this earlier school is the oldest English grammar school on record.
The truth of the matter is briefly this: There was an earlier school. It is probably the lineal antecedent of the modern school, though this is open to debate. And, lastly, its claim to be the oldest grammar school could be true only in one special sense. The remainder of this chapter is devoted to these three issues, but the reader is to be warned that they are extremely complex. At the end of the chapter, however, a simplified summary will be found, to which those who wish may pass on forthwith.
It will be best to dispose first of the theory that the Colchester school is perhaps the oldest English grammar school on record-the record in question belonging to the year 1206. This is a respectably early date, but since there are schools, as for instance King’s School at Canterbury or St. Peter’s at York, tracing a continuous history from before the Norman Conquest, a claim to priority based on a document of 1206 would be patently absurd. How, then, has this claim arisen? The argument would seem to have been something like this:
"In the document of 1206 the school is described as a town school (scolae ejusdem ville Colcestr'). Presumably this is (by far) the oldest record of a town school. Grammar schools of today are essentially town schools. Therefore the Colchester school is the oldest English grammar school on record."
It will be seen that the validity of this argument depends on whether there is justification for equating grammar with town school. For the grammar school of today the parallel is undoubtedly just, but the medieval grammar school was altogether different, both in curriculum and status; and since the argument covers both periods, medieval and modern, there is bound to be ambiguity. To avoid this the term "grammar school" should be avoided, and the claim should be simply that the Colchester school is the oldest town school on record. Yet even thus limited the claim is of considerable importance historically. It would need to be judged on the strength of the contemporary evidence on which it is based, and this is quoted verbatim in Appendix 1. It is a matter for the specialist in medieval "diplomatics," and a discussion of the problem would be clearly out of place here. The claim, however, is really something more substantial than merely a verbal quibble. This can be seen if it is considered in its historical setting. Originally all English schools except the purely primary (infant school, etc.) were "grammar schools" in the sense that they all taught "grammar" (the principles of Latin composition, and cognate subjects), which was the curriculum then universally accepted as the basis of all true learning. Accordingly in its original form every really ancient school will necessarily have been a grammar school. In an account of these schools Mr. R. P. Hepple (Historical Association Pamphlet, No. 90, 1932) lists as many as seven types, of which six, including all the earliest examples. were ecclesiastical (cloister, cathedral, chantry school, etc.), the Church then being recognised as the natural protector, patron, and provider of education. But Mr. Hepple's seventh type, which he designates "Town school," was exceptional in being secular. It was also a late type, originating in the fifteenth century, or at earliest little before the year 1400. It is nevertheless this exceptional secular type of town school that is the original of the grammar school of to-day, for at the Reformation the ecclesiastical schools largely died out, leaving it a clear field. From Tudor times onwards these secular schools multiplied rapidly, being founded in town after town for the sons of the burgesses, sometimes by royalty, but more often by some wealthy local merchant. Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and later these schools carried forward the tradition and even the curriculum of the medieval grammar school, but in the eighteenth century, owing to the increase in population and to changing conditions, private "academies" began to appear, offering a wider syllabus of studies; and in turn the grammar schools followed suit, substituting (for better or for worse) instruction in many subjects for training in a few. The name given to this modern curriculum is "secondary," first applied to schools in 1861. Until yesterday (Education Act of 1944) the curriculum, if we except technical schools, was approximately the same in all secondary schools, and the grammar school differed from the rest only by reason of its semi-official status of town school. Thus what has been carried down from medieval into modern times is not the curriculum of the grammar school, but its (originally exceptional) status of town school; and in this sense there is nothing extravagant in claiming that the Colchester school is the oldest English grammar school, but we must bear in mind that we are using the term in its modern specialised sense rather than in its true original meaning.
We must now turn to consider the other issues, still in connection with the document of 1206 and the others to be found in the Appendix. Actually our quest for information about the earlier Colchester school takes us back even farther than 1206, to Domesday Book, the Great Survey of England compiled in 1086 for King William I. According to this survey Colchester then contained 414 houses, of which 355 were held by 276 royal burgesses, and 59 by certain magnates of the realm. Of these one was the Bishop of London, who held two properties—one of four acres and fourteen houses exempt from all tax other than what the Bishop himself might impose; the other, doubtless an agricultural holding outside the town, more than 200 acres in area, which was sublet to a certain Hugh with liability to the usual taxation. This indicates that the first property was separate from the second, and in addition was a privileged holding.
Further, it seems possible to identify this privileged property with one mentioned in a fine of 1206.[1] This fine, published in Trinity Term, 1206, in the eighth year of the reign of King John, records a dispute between William, Bishop of London, and his tenant William Fitz-Benedict, over a soke in Colchester, the case being heard before the Barons of the Exchequer. A soke was a property the holder of which enjoyed special privileges, such as of jurisdiction, and thus the holding in question was in the same privileged class as that recorded in Domesday Book, and in both 1206 and 1086 the owner was a Bishop of London.
The Bishop's soke is described in the fine as extending "from St. Mary's Lane as far as to the Lane against Havedgate and as far as to the wall of Colchester toward the West and as far as to Havedstrett toward the East." This definition, which is discussed later (p. 9), provides another clue to the identity of the soke, for the area within these boundaries, making allowance for minor changes in the course of seven centuries, is four acres, the same as that recorded for the Bishop's holding in Domesday Book.
In the fine Fitz-Benedict acknowledged "all that soke with all its appurtenances: viz., with the School of the same township of Colchester (cum scolis ejusdem ville Colcestr') and with the advowson of the Church of the Blessed Mary of the Wall and with the Chapel of St. Andrew and with the Capital Messuage which belongs to the soke to be the right (esse jus: i.e. to be in the jurisdiction) of the said Bishop and to belong to the Barony of the Bishopric of London "; and in return for this acknowledgment the Bishop granted the soke and its appurtenances to Fitz-Benedict. But certain qualifying clauses were included, still further emphasising the Bishop's authority, and Fitz-Benedict and his heirs were forbidden to sell or mortgage any part of the soke without the licence of the Bishop.
These qualifying clauses indicate that the Bishop had by no means lost his control over the soke, including the school—authority resting with him, ownership with Fitz-Benedict. That is to say, while such concrete possessions as the land, the capital messuage, and the school building belonged to Fitz-Benedict, the actual jurisdiction, such as the advowsons, was retained by the Bishop and his successors. And this power will have been exercised also over the school, for it seems from the fine that what had passed to Fitz-Benedict was the school building merely. Indeed, the Bishop's authority may be traced down to recent times, until in 1899 by a new scheme the Bishop of St. Albans[2] took his place by receiving the power to appoint a nominee to the Board of Governors.
In 1844 the Bishop of London, with the Dean of St. Paul's, had already once recast the School’s "Statutes and Ordinances," acting therein upon the authority of the Letters Patent of 1584, by which not only was the Bishop of London, in consultation with the Dean of St. Paul's, empowered to frame suitable "statutes and ordinances in writing concerning and touching the appointment, government, 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.[3] 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 .png)
The area in St. Mary's Parish referred to in Chapters 1 and 4, and Appendix 2.
First let us examine once more the fine itself. Church Street North[4] is the successor of "St. Mary's Lane," and although the older lane seems to have run somewhat straighter than the modern street, both make for the postern in the Roman wall, and the northern boundary is thus established. As for the eastern and western limits, these survive today in Head Street and the Town Wall. Only concerning the southern boundary does any real doubt exist. Even so, the " Lane by Headgate " may reasonably be accepted as a continuation of the long walk inside the South Wall now known as Short Wyre Street, Eld Lane and Sir Isaac's Walk; and its east end may accordingly be placed where Church Street South now joins Head Street, and from that point we may reasonably consider it to have run straight on to the south-west corner of the Walls. It is true that today [1947] Church Street South extends for less than half this distance, and then it is continued as a footpath diagonally across the churchyard, but this arrangement dates probably only from 1714, when the church was rebuilt and the paths laid out (Morant). It is interesting to note that this area conforms almost exactly to the insula which occupied the south-western corner of the Roman town.
That in 1206 the School stood somewhere within this area seems certain : the very fact that it was under the Bishop's jurisdiction implies as much, for there is no reason to suppose that his authority extended beyond the boundaries that have been described. The School is one of four appurtenances (pertinentia)—a chief dwelling, a church, a chapel, and a school. The Church of St. Mary, the only survivor of the four, stands as we know within these boundaries, while the "Capital Messuage," a term applied to the Lord's own dwelling, must assuredly have lain within his holding. There is no mention elsewhere, to my knowledge, of a Chapel of St. Andrew, and it may perhaps have been a free-standing building situated in the, churchyard; it cannot have been the church of St. Andrew in the remote suburb of Greenstead, which, moreover, in 1086 belonged to Count Eustace and not to the Bishop of London ; and, later, to St. John's Abbey (Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum). And if the other appurtenances were within the soke, would not one suppose the same of the school ? Or, if contrary to every probability it had indeed lain outside the boundaries, would not some specific mention have been made of the fact ? The inference to be drawn then, from the 1206 fine would seem to be that the ancient school stood somewhere within the sake, ln the south-west corner of the town. More than that the document does not vouchsafe, but from the well-known dependence of medieval education on the Church one might reasonably assume that the Bishop's "town school" would probably be near his church of the Blessed Mary, and there is indeed evidence in support of this surmise. This is provided by later references to a medieval school to be found in the borough records, which, scanty though they are, all appear to relate to the same site, apparently that of the school of 1206. For the most explicit of these references we are indebted to the misdemeanour of a fifteenth-century headmaster, of whom otherwise we should not have heard. The record of this court case belongs to the year 1464.
In the Colchester Court Rolls for that year it is recorded that "the Master of the Schools is in the common habit of casting the dung of his school over and beyond the stone wall of the town at le posterne and there making a dung hill"—for which offence he was fined 4d. (Translation of Court Rolls, unpublished. The plural form scholae was the normal usage for the time and doubtless here means " school," singular.) That the postern by St. Mary's is referred to seems certain from the next entries in the Rolls :— That William Beeche and John Foster act similarly with the slops of St. Mary's Church; and That John Cratoun has made a dung hill at le posterne. Furthermore, of the three posterns in the town walls this appears never to have been known by any other name than merely (West) Postern, whereas the other two have long borne the name of " gate " (Scheregate and Rye-gate).
The reference thus limits the area in which we shall seek to place the actual school building. Its wording indicates that the offence had been practised for some time, and that the ditch had become the refuse dump for the school, as also for the church, and as such rubbish would not be carried any great distance it seems a fair inference that the building was close to the town wall, hard by the postern, and to the south of it. Evidently, or it would have been outside the boundary of the sake. The case for locating the building near the town wall is perhaps strengthened by an earlier reference in the Court Rolls, where in a will registered in 1353 one, Waryn Parker, bequeathed seven acres of land "opposite the great school." From the wording and from the size of the plot of land, seven acres, we may reasonably assume that it was arable land outside the wall, in which case the school must have occupied some prominent position near the wall in order to be cited as a landmark. Moreover, the term " great school " would be more appropriately applied to the " school of the township " than, for instance, to a parish or chantry school.
All the references to an early school building in Colchester that I have been able to discover have now been reviewed. In none of them is the exact situation described ; indeed, it is not possible to prove that they all refer to the same school, although the inference is strong that they do. While these sources are thus admittedly indefinite in their reference to the school's position they are at least coherent, and if we may venture a guess we shall be tempted to place the ancient building in the space between the west end of St. Mary's Church and the town wall. A "great school" so situated would provide a fitting landmark for the 1353 will; would be suitably placed for the dumping of refuse over the wall near "le posterne," and moreover would lie within the Bishop's soke, and alongside his church—that is, precisely where on general grounds we should expect to find it. In the Middle Ages not only were the schools normally under the control of the clergy, but often were lodged within the fabric of the church itself, as, for instance, in a chamber above the porch ; and although for the scolae ejusdem ville of 1206 and the "great school" of 1353 a larger and more conspicuous building is required it may, nevertheless, have been attached to the church, as a western extension to the nave. Today the church tower, the lower stages of which are late fifteenth—century work, occupies this position, which is indeed the normal position for a western tower, but the body of the present church, which was rebuilt in 1714 and again in 1872, stands on a more northerly site than before, so that the relation of tower to church has been altered: formerly the tower was not on the central axis of the church, but at its north-west corner (Morant, ii, 4). Now such a position was most unusual, a central situation, according to the high authority of Dr. J. C. Cox, being almost invariable in the later Middle Ages- unless the tower "occupied some other position, generally due to exigencies of the site or to some defect of the ground." As there is here no such defect the anomalous position of the medieval tower must presumably be attributed to "exigencies of the site," or in other words to the presence of some other building at the west end of the nave when in the fifteenth century it was decided to add a western bell-tower. The fact that this was not added to the end of our suggested extension to the nave implies that it was a secular building rather than a part of the church, and the only secular building likely to occupy such a position will be a school, for there is no reason whatever to suppose that at any date dwelling houses have clustered about this rather isolated church. In 1086 Domesday Book gives only 14 houses in the whole of the four acres of the soke, and even two centuries later, as appears from tax assessments of Edward I's reign, the population of the town had increased by little more than 40 per cent (Morant, i, 47). Overcrowding, then, cannot have been the reason for erecting a building near the church.
Thus, in 1464, when the curtain falls for the last time on the medieval school, we see it as a satellite to the Church of St. Mary-at-the-Walls at the western extremity of the town. When next it rises, a century later, the scene has shifted to the parish of All Saints in the eastern half of the town, to a house in Culver Street, where the Royal School has now been established. But before turning to this new chapter in the School's history it will be convenient to recite here for the sake of completeness two further items from the borough records. What we have already considered has concerned the school building; the remaining references are to a schoolmaster. They tell us little or nothing about the School, and so in the present context do not call for extensive comment.
In the Court Roll for 1357 (20th March, Monday before the Feast of St. Benedict) under the heading essoigns occurs the name of Alice, "maid of the school—master" (magistri scolarum). In this, as in the next item, it is significant that the reference is to a "school-master." While many churches and chantries had their own schools, the instructors there were the parish priests and would presumably be described as such in official documents; and thus these references to a person specifically employed as schoolmaster tally with the ideas evoked by the references to a "scolae ejusdem ville" and a "great school."
The other reference, as translated by Sir W. G. Benham from the Court Rolls (4th June, 1425) records :—
"That the Master of the scholars of the Town of Colchester on the Feast of St. Nicholas the Bishop, 1 Henry VI (i.e. 6 Dec., 1422) at Colchester, in the parish of St. Nicholas, made an assault on the son of Roger Sebryght, then Bishop in the said church, with force and arms, and violently pulled him from the highway into the mud, making him dirty and treating him shamefully; and that he committed other enormities, etc. . . . Also that the same Master is in the habit of demanding from his scholars unreasonable fines and customs, namely from the son of Nicholas Ferrour, on the ground that they were Crossbearers of the Bishops, namely 2d. each."
For this he was fined 6d.—more than two years, it will be noted, after the offence.
Some explanation is perhaps necessary here. The "Bishop in the said church" would be a schoolboy, elected on December 6th, St. Nicholas' Day, by his fellows, and holding office with his attendants until Holy Innocents' Day (Dec. 28th), during which period the "Bishop" would conduct services in full pontificals. It will be observed once again that the scholars are described as of the town of Colchester and not of the church; the choice of St. Nicholas' Church for the ceremony has its obvious reason, and there is no implication that the school was in any way connected. The Boy-Bishop custom was a recognised feature of medieval school life, and was found all over Europe. Although frequently banned by the Church it persisted in England until the Reformation, and later still in parts of the continent. In Switzerland it is recorded as late as 1797 (Hone, Ancient Mysteries Described, 193 sq.).
SUMMARY
Information about the early school at Colchester is provided by some ancient documents, mostly from the borough records (see Appendix 1). From these it is certain that there was a school in Colchester at least as early as the reign of King John. This is described in two of the documents as the " town—school," and in another as the "great school." It stood probably alongside the Church of St. Mary-at-the-Walls, and may indeed have been joined to its west end. This early school was almost certainly in some manner under the control of the Bishops of London; and since the modern school from 1584 until recently was always under the control of the Bishops of London it is presumed that this indicates that the modern school is directly descended from the earlier.
- ↑ A fine was a document recording a transfer of property, it being customary in the Middle Ages in such a transfer for the ownership to be disputed in a (usually) mock legal action, with the recipient as "plaintiff" and the grantor as "defendant".
- ↑ St. Albans is a new diocese, in which Colchester was then included, established in 1875. The diocese of Chelmsford was established in 1914. The first appointment of a Suffragan Bishop of Colchester, at least in recent times, was in 1882.
- ↑ 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."
- ↑ Church Street North (and South), now [1947] Church Street (and Walk).