BLISWORTH GRAMMAR SCHOOL - FROM VICTORIA COUNTY HISTORY

Blisworth School, called 'Roger Wake's Chauntre and Free Scole, was founded by Roger Wake, 'esquyre', who died in 1503, and Lady Elizabeth his wife, to maintain a priest, 'being a graduate of Oxforth', 'as well to pray for the souls of the most noble King Henry VII and the founders of the same as also to keep a free grammar school for all that shall repair thither.' The chantry-priest-schoolmaster received the whole rental of the lands, 'as well in Northamptonshere as Bukkinghamshere,' worth £12 4s., which, the king's tenths deducted, left a net income of £11.   John Curtes, 42 years old, 'well lernyd,' was the schoolmaster, and 'hath at this present 30 schollers.'   The lands were confiscated by the crown, the school was continued by the warrant of the Chantry Commissioners under John Curtes with the fixed stipend charged on the revenues of the crown in Northamptonshire of £11.

But the accounts appear to show that no payment was made to him or any schoolmaster there during Edward VI's time, as the entry of the amount payable is made in each year at the rate £19, not £11 a year; but at the end of the entry, where the amount actually paid in the year is stated, appear the words 'nothing, because not paid.' Probably Curtis had obtained other preferment and no successor was appointed. In the first year of Philip and Mary John Orton, 'schoolmaster assigned out of the foundation of the chantry of Blisworth', was paid £10. For the rest of the reign no entry of any sum paid or payable to the school can be found. In the reign of Elizabeth the payment was revived by a decree of the Court of Exchequer, and Philip Colinson, 'Schoolmaster (Ludimagistro) of the Grammar School of Blisworth, received £11, the full and proper amount. In 1617 Samuel Preston,' 'Schoolmaster of Blisworthe', received the payment, and the school continued. No later benefactor came to its rescue. By the time of the Restoration the shrunken value of money must have made the stipend merely nominal. In 1818 Carlisle could obtain no information about its condition. At the time of Lord Brougham's Commission all trace of a grammar school had disappeared, and the stipend has ever since been a mere nucleus for the salary of an elementary schoolmaster. Such was the result of Edward VI's great Act for the amendment of chantries by converting them ' to good and godly uses as in erecting of Grammar Schools to the education of youth in virtue and learning ' on a foundation which at its inception in 1503 gave its master a larger salary than that of Eton. Yet, by a strange perversion of history, in the chronological list of schools furnished by the Endowed Schools Commission in 1867 Edward VI figures as the founder of the school he brought to nought.

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Northampton History Society? magazine extract:   Having read Mr. George Freeston's interesting snippets on the Blisworth Endowed School in the last edition of History News, Mr. Douglas Shearing, Lecturer, History of Education, at Nene College, has written to report the existence of a description of the school as it was in the late seventeenth century. The document is in the Northamptonshire Record Office, in Miscellaneous Book 18, un-foliated. (Box X646, Peterborough Diocesan Archives), which Mr. Shearing has used as a basis for the following description:

Apparently, an inspection was made by Peter Whaley, the Rural Dean, on 6 December 1686. He was acting on the instructions of the Bishop of Peterborough, Thomas White and reported that both the schoolhouse and the dwelling house of the master, Charles Griffiths, were in sad need of repair. A useless barn, about 18 by 13 feet, built of wattle and mud, had been demolished by Griffiths, but he had thoughtfully stored the good pieces of old timber in the schoolroom. There was also a very ruinous cellar-like store, about 12 by 8 feet, which was let to a butcher whose house adjoined it. Finally, the school had a close or playground, about 3 roods in size, which was overgrown with ash trees.

Mr. Jonathan Yates, the Rector, thought that the responsibility to effect repairs was the villager's and not the master's, A sum of £3 would be sufficient and he was prepared to offer £5.   Griffiths showed Whaley some papers stating that the school was erected during the reign of Henry the 4th (this seems improbable). Its founder was said to be Roger Wake, who died in 1503 and the original annual rent from lands given towards maintaining the school was £12.4.0.

The references in this document to the master are incorrect. He was, of course, Charles Griffin, who taught at Blisworth from at least September 1674. A letter of his dated 3 August 1675, to Christopher Wase at Oxford University, is quoted by W. A. D. Vincent, 'The Grammar Schools: Their Continuing Tradition, 1660-1714, (1969) p.33.

The following is a list of early masters traced to date :
John Curtis circa 1548 N. Carlisle, Endowed Grammar Schools' (1818) p.202.
John Orton circa 1554 V.C.H., p. 230.
Philip Collinson 1568 V.C.H., p.230.
Mr. Barrowdell 1609 E.V.B., 6.
Mr. Box 1610 E. V.B. , 6.
Samuel Preston 1611 to 1617 E.V.B., 6, V.C.H., p.230.
Hugo Prichard 1670 to 1672 E.V.B., 8.
Charles Griffin 1674 to 1686 E.V.B., 8, 12, 14.
Job Kirke 1692 to 1699 E.V.B., 15, 18.

Abbreviations: V.C.H. Victoria County History.
E.V.B. Episcopal Visitation Book (at NRO)