CHAPTER 2.

THE SCHOOL AT THE TIME OF THE REFORMATION
AND IN THE REIGN OF QUEEN ELIZABETH.

The great changes which took place in religion in the sixteenth
century naturally had their effect on education, especially since the
Protestant Reformers disbelieved in the efficacy of prayers, for
the dead. Their opinion found expression in Edward VI's reign,
when Parliament passed an Act abolishing chantries.   At the
same time the Act stipulated that lands which were used for the
upkeep of a chantry priest were, in future, to be used for the up-
keep of a schoolmaster. Unfortunately for English education, the
last part of the Act was not carried out.   In most places the
chantries were abolished and the lands belonging to them passed
into the hand of the Crown or of private individuals.   But the
people of England realised the value of education, and almost
immediately they began to agitate for the continued existence of
their schools. In a number of places the townsfolk were allowed
to keep their school on condition they paid something to the Crown
for that privilege. Nevertheless, such schools lost their endowed
lands, for the Crown retained possession of them and paid a fixed
stipend to the schoolmaster. Thus, the Reformation in England
proved at first a severe blow to education, for some of the
mediaeval schools disappeared altogether, while others were re-
founded, but deprived of their endowments.   However, some
attempt to recover lost ground was made in the reign of Mary
Tudor and especially in the reign of Elizabeth I, when numerous
people founded schools. For example, Lawrence Sherriff founded
a school at Rugby, Robert Johnston, Archdeacon of Leicester, a
school at Uppingham, and Archbishop Sandys of York, a school
at Hawkshead, of which Wordsworth was, later, a pupil.

The Kibworth School was more fortunate than most Grammar
Schools in England during this period, for it continued its existence
without any break and managed to keep most of its endowments.
It owed its good fortune to the then lord of the manor of Kibworth
Beauchamp, John Dudley, Earl of Warwick and later Duke of
Northumberland.   Dudley was Lady Jane Grey's father-in-law
and was leader of the plot to place her on the throne. He was a
greedy, grasping and ambitious character, but his sordid figure is
somewhat redeemed by his concern for education.   Many years
ago. Leach, the chief authority on the history of English Grammar
Schools, pointed out that some schools which did manage to sur-
vive the early days of the Reformation without suffering any
damage owed their escape to Northumberland. Leach ascertained
that Northumberland saved the Grammar Schools of Macclesfield,
Louth, Morpeth, Grantham and Birmingham (King Edward's).
We can now add Kibworth Grammar School to this list of schools
which owed their survival to him.

The proof of Northumberland's intervention is to be found in
a statement made by a witness in the seventeenth-century lawsuit
to which we have already referred.   Robert Raye, in giving
evidence about the origins of the School, stated: —

    He has heard Thomas Parker, one of the ancient
    feoffees of the School, say that the Earl of Northumber-
    land, then lord of the manor of Kibworth Beauchamp,
    made claim to certain lands in Kibworth and being
    informed they was employed to so good a use as the
    maintenance of a school said God forbid I should have
    them.

Thus, Northumberland came to the succour of Kibworth
Grammar School and it was allowed to retain its endowed lands.
Even if Warwick the King-Maker did nothing for the School,
there was certainly one Earl of Warwick who came to the rescue
of the School in its hour of need.

Further proof that the School continued its career uninter-
rupted during the stormy years of the Reformation comes from
another witness in the seventeenth-century lawsuit. Marie Taylor,
who came from Wood Newton in Northamptonshire to give
evidence, stated:--

    She has heard there has been some money formerly
    paid by the freeholders to superstitious uses [i.e for the
    upkeep of a chantry] but by whom she knows not .....
    and that she has also heard that the said money so given
    was afterwards employed for the maintenance of a school
    in Kibworth.

There is a hint in a document contained in the school chest
that the School actually received an increase of property at this
time. This document is an abstract of the wills of three nuns who
belonged to a convent in Stamford. The first of these nuns, Mary
Harcourt, died in 1406 and left all her lands in the fields of
Kibworth Beauchamp for prayers for her soul to be said in the
Church of St. Mary in Arden, near Market Harborough.  The
other two nuns, Margaret Harcourt and Maud Pole, who died
later in the century, also gave land in Kibworth Beauchamp for
support of a chantry priest in the Church of St. Mary in Arden,
near Market Harborough.  When the Reformation came, this
chantry was abolished; and since the document is to be found in
the school chest, there is a possibility that the lands, formerly used
for the upkeep of the chantry priest at Arden, were transferred to
Kibworth Grammar School.

The history of the School in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I
is almost a complete blank. The schoolmaster at her accession
was William Burughe, who wrote out the feoffment charter of
1559. His claim to fame is that he was the first master at Kibworth
to be definitely called the " Schoolmaster".   Apart from that,
however, we know nothing else about him.   Presumably, he
accepted the Elizabethan Settlement in regard to religion and did
not cause any trouble to the authorities, as some Grammar School
masters of this period did, by remaining Roman Catholic.
Whether he was still schoolmaster in the stirring days of the
Spanish Armada is unknown, but the schoolmaster at the end of
the reign was the Rev. John Orpin. We know of him through a
most interesting letter that he wrote in 1656, which is still extant
in the school chest and which is exceptionally well written,
considering his age:--

    I, John Orpin, clerk, was schoolmaster of Kibworth ..
    fifty five years since wherein I continued for the space of
    ten years. One Kilpeck and others paid to me rent,
    without any question for School lands, which he and they
    held .... These premises I would have testified on oath.
    but being 81 years old and full of infirmities I am utterly
    unable to travel.

This letter was written in answer to a request from the
Commissioners for him to attend the Crown at Great Glen to give
evidence in the lawsuit which was being contested between the
School Governors and their tenants over the question of School
lands.

The Governors of the School during Elizabeth's reign are also
known to us through the feoffment charters of 1559 and 1595.
The sole surviving feoffee of the 1559 charter was Thomas Fox,
and in 1595 he had a new charter drawn up, handing over control
of the School to eighteen new trustees.   They consisted of two
knights, four gentlemen, nine yeomen and three husbandmen.
The two knights belonged to the Hastings family. Sir Henry
Hastings of the Abbey of Leicester, and another Sir Henry
Hastings of Kirby.  Most members of this family had strong
Puritan leanings and took a real interest in education. It was
through the effort of one of their family. Sir Henry, the. third Earl
of Huntingdon (1535-1595) that Grammar School education in
Leicester was revived after the Reformation. The four gentlemen
were George Gage of Rushton, Robert Raye of Kibworth Harcourt,
William Worship? of Billesdon and Edward Hawes of Stoke
Albany, all of whom would belong to the ranks of the smaller
squirearchy. The yeomen were William Parker of Barrow-on-Soar,
Robert Carter of Islington, Thomas Fox and Richard Pole of
Kibworth Harcourt, John Iliffe of Kibworth Beauchamp, Zachary
Chapman, Arthur Cloudesley, Richard Bryan and James Wright
of Smeeton Westerby. They would be fairly well-to-do men, who
farmed their lands.   Last of all came the three farm-labourers,
William Frisby and William Smeeton of Kibworth Beauchamp and
William Goode of Smeeton Westerby. Two important conclusions
can be drawn from this list of feoffees: (1) Men from all ranks of
society were interested in education and were anxious for their
children to receive a good education. The presence of knights and
farm-labourers on the same body of trustees was a reminder that,
at this time, English education had not yet developed that class
distinction which has marked it ever since the eighteenth century.
Sons of squires and sons of farm-labourers attended the same
school, while their fathers acted as members of the same trust;
(2) The School was becoming well known, since men of rank from
outside the immediate neighbourhood were prepared to serve as
trustees.  All the strands of evidence, indeed, lead to the con-
clusion that the School was making steady progress at this time
and that the ground was being prepared for that solid development
which the School achieved in the next century, when, at one time,
Kibworth Grammar School was considered one of the outstanding
schools in the county.

The everyday life of the School differed very little at this
time from that of the period before the Reformation. Its scholars
still had their lessons in the Church, they still carried on their daily
grind at Latin Grammar, and the schoolmaster was still in Holy
Orders. He had, moreover, to secure a licence to teach from the
Bishop of the diocese, as his mediaeval predecessors had done.
There were, however, one or two slight changes from the previous
period.   Works of Renaissance scholars such as Erasmus were
now introduced into the schools, and children studied them as well
as the works of classical authors, such as Cicero and Livy. More-
over, the Grammar text-books of the previous period were now
supplanted by Lily's Latin Grammar.  Henry VIII by royal
proclamation, directed that all schoolboys were to learn their
Latin Grammar from this book. Thus, all Grammar Schools had
to possess a copy of this work, first published in 1515.  Latin was,
therefore, still the main subject in the Kibworth timetable, and it
was to be many years before modern languages or history gained
a footing in it.

The influence of Kibworth Grammar School was thus growing
during the Elizabethan period. Any attempt to assess its influence
on the community around it is bound to be, more or less, conjectual.
It may be, however, that voices were now being raised in Kibworth
in protest against the Church of England, protests which were to
become much louder in the next century, when Kibworth
developed into one of the strongest centres of Nonconformity in
the district. The Hastings family were strong Puritans, and one
has the feeling that that Puritan outlook was seeping from the
School into the village.