CHAPTER 5.

THE DECLINE OF THE SCHOOL IN THE EIGHTEENTH
CENTURY.

The Rev. William John Dand, the last of the schoolmasters
to sign the 1647 Constitutions, came to Kibworth in 1706. His
period of nearly twenty years as master was greatly troubled by
lawsuits in which the School was involved. During the eighteenth
century, Kibworth Grammar School, like most other educational
establishments in this country, suffered a decline. In the days of
the Commonwealth and the later Stuarts, the trustees were interes-
ted in the running of the local Grammar School; they were prepared
to come along to examine the scholars. In the eighteenth century,
however, a change came over their composition. At Kibworth the
trustees began to be taken more from the ranks of the nobility
than previously. The local farmer was no longer asked to serve
as a school governor; his place was taken by a richer person, but
one who had considerably less interest in the locality.  In the
feoffment charter of 1645, for example, the trustees consisted of
three gentlemen and twelve yeomen; but over a century later, in
1754, they consisted of four titled people, four gentlemen, two
rectors, but only two yeomen. The lack of interest taken by the
governing body in the School is to be accounted for by the decrease
in the number of local farmers serving as trustees.

During the opening years of the eighteenth century the affairs
of the Kibworth School must have provided much profit for the
lawyers, for the School was engaged in a lengthy lawsuit, which
lasted on and off from 1708 to 1724. The cause of all this strife
was one which may have been the root cause of the Abbott conflict
—the rivalry between the Church of England and the Noncon-
formists. At Kibworth the dissenters were always strong, as is
proved by the fact that they started an academy of their own in
Kibworth Harcourt in 1715—an academy which was attended
by such eminent divines as Jennings and Doddridge, the celebrated
hymn-writer. The dissenters, certainly before 1715, seem to have
been anxious to continue their association with the Grammar
School, but this was strongly resisted by the Church party.

In 1675, a new feoffment charter had been drawn up, but by
1708 only four of the original feoffees survived, so, according to
the terms of the school constitution, they had to draw up another
charter, appointing fifteen new feoffees. Three of the four sur-
vivors were dissenters, and naturally these three—William Smith,
Richard Iliffe and Thomas Parsons—arranged that the new charter
should contain a large number of dissenters. They failed, however,
to maintain their strong position, for in 1710 the Charity Com-
missioners came to Kibworth and turned savagely on them. The
year 1710 witnessed the victory of the Church of England in
national politics, and likewise the Church of England emerged
triumphant in the same year at Kibworth.   The commissioners
declared that the feoff ment of 170,8 was illegal and that, in future,
only orthodox Church of England clergymen could be appointed
as Headmasters.   Moreover, they appointed a new body of
trustees, including Sir Richard Halford of Wistow.   A possible
outcome of the bitterness existing between Dand and some of the
dissenters is the fact that the three trustees mentioned above were
known to have £21 in their keeping, which they had acquired from
the collection of rents, but which they had not turned over to the.
master. The Commissioners ordered them to pay this money over
to him at once.

The decree of the commissioners, however, did not settle
matters at Kibworth, for the dispute between the two factions
continued. Finally, to cut down legal expenses, the two parties
agreed to have recourse to arbitration. They chose two arbitrators,
Francis Edwards and Richard Buckby, and the leading men on each
side entered into a bond of £100 each to agree to abide by the
arbitrators' verdict. Their award was made on December 24th,
1718, and was as follows. The previous feoffment of 1710 was
withdrawn in favour of a new feoffment, which included one or
two dissenters such as Thomas Parsons. The new feoffment also
included people who did not reside in the parish of Kibworth, such
as Sir Eustace Pelsant of Cadeby, Joseph Hill of Rothwell,
Northamptonshire, and John Hall of Arnesby, the father of the
well-known Nonconformist preacher, Robert Hall. Although the
arbitrators had included dissenters in the new feoffment, they
stated that in future, no dissenter was to be made a trustee. They
declared, moreover, that in future the master must be orthodox
Church of England. The award also stated that the feoffees were
to meet twice a year to inspect the repairs of the school house and
to examine the proficiency of the scholars. The arbitrators varied
the procedure, adopted in the revised rules of 1657, for appointing
the feoffees. The seven survivors, instead of appointing fifteen
new ones, were to co-opt eight others, and the fifteen thus formed
were to be the new body of feoffees.

The award clearly favoured the Church of England party, and
the dissenters therefore bided their time before making another
attempt to gain influence in the Grammar School. The opportunity
to do this came with the death of Dand in March 1724. The dis-
senting feoffees such as Thomas Parsons met the next month in
secret and proceeded to elect the Rev. John Cranor as school-
master. They took the precaution, however, of accepting the sum
of £100 from Cranor in case his election, which was bound to be
disputed, should involve them in further legal expenses. The dis-
senting faction did not inform the other feoffees of their action,
and so on May 1.2th, 1724, a general meeting of the feoffees elected
the Rev. William Cox to be master of the School. Parsons and
his friends were present at this meeting, but they made no attempt
to prevent Cox's election; and Cox in due course received the
Bishop's licence to teach.

It is fairly clear that the methods by which Cranor and his
party hoped to secure their goal were dishonest. They did not
come out into the open and oppose Cox's election; instead they
trumped up some allegation against Cox in the hope that his
licence would be revoked. Their plan worked, for the Bishop
of Lincoln actually issued a mandate revoking Cox's licence.
Edwards was out of the district when this was happening, but, on
his return, he used his influence to have the mandate withdrawn.
This was finally achieved, and Cox was left in possession of his
licence to teach.

The strife which upset the School in the first quarter of the
eighteenth century was certainly the outcome of the rivalry existing
between the Church and Nonconformist parties in the village. The
dissenters were so strong that they wished to share the local
Grammar School with the Church of England; but the attempt
failed, and the administration of the School in the eighteenth
century was placed in the hands of the orthodox Church of England
clergy. No clergyman with Puritan tendencies would be tolerated.

We have seen how the division of the village into Church and
Nonconformist caused strife, with the result that many people no
longer took an interest in the Grammar School. Previously, the
School was the place to which ambitious parents sent their sons
to be educated; now many such parents were reluctant to do this,
because the School was now orthodox Church of England. The
Nonconformists had their own academy in Kibworth which lasted
for a number of years, and which provided a more suitable and
attractive education for the children of the district. The Grammar
School still provided, in the main, a classical education, but in the
Nonconformist academy such subjects as Mathematics, English
and History were taught.

The gentry of the villages around Kibworth had till the
eighteenth century been content to have their children educated in
the Grammar School there; but now class distinction became
accentuated, and the squires no longer wished their sons to sit
alongside those of the butcher and baker. They preferred to' send
them to boarding schools to be educated with sons of members of
their own class; and in the latter half of the century improvements
in transport enabled them to carry out their wishes. The general
lethargy of the period strife between Church of England and Non-
conformist, class distinction, all contributed towards the decline
of the School at this time. We must not, however, paint too black
a picture. The trustees in the earlier part of the century did not
foresee the decline, for in 1725 they erected a new school house
in place of the old one, which was badly in need of repair. This
new building was some fifty yards away from the site of the
previous one and it still stands, being the oldest part of the School
in use. It is a typical eighteenth-century structure, substantial in
appearance, and its six long sash windows evenly proportioned.
The folding doors are still there through which boys entered into
the building by means of a flight of stone stairs. At the same time
the trustees built a house for the schoolmaster at the south end of
the building. The school house and the master's house were both
dignified buildings that gave no sign of the decline which was
already setting in for the School. The gracious dwelling-house is
still used by the Headmaster, although since 1956 Sixth Form
groups have made use of three of the rooms on the upper floors.
It is interesting to note that the man mainly responsible for the
building programme was one of the arbitrators, Francis Edwards.

Having regained the Bishop's licence, the Rev. William Cox
remained schoolmaster of Kibworth till his death in 1758. Though
appointed to the Headship of Kibworth School, he still remained
Vicar of Foxton. In this he violated one of the rules of the school
Constitutions of 1647, which stated that the schoolmaster had to
give the whole of his time to the School; he could not have a cure
of souls nor any other ecclesiastical employment.   In allowing
Cox to remain Vicar of Foxton, the trustees were neglecting their
duty; and this neglect was an important factor in the deterioration
of the School. Obviously, Cox could not devote the whole of his
attention to the School, even though he did reside in the new house
and not in Foxton. Much of the teaching in the School was, done
by the usher, whose wages in 1758 were fixed at a salary of £20
a year. The usher would, no doubt, be unable to teach Latin,
and so one effect of the absentee schoolmaster was that the School
gradually declined till it was little better than an ordinary village
school. This unfortunate fact was readily accepted by the trustees.
On Cox's death, they appointed the Rev. Joseph Wilson of Arnesby
to the post of Headmaster, but at the same time they agreed to
appoint an usher to teach the children " to read English, writing
and Arithmetic ". In 1647, the trustees had been anxious that the
scholars should have a properly qualified master, who could give
them a sound education based on a study of Latin; by 1758 the
trustees were content for the boys to learn the three R's. Such
was the measure of the School's decline in the eighteenth century.
Another sign of this decline is that only two boys are recorded
as having gone to the Universities from Kibworth after Band's
time. They were Thomas Willey from Willoughby Waterless, who
was admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge, as a Pensioner in
1727; and Thomas Hutchinson, who went to Christ's College,
Cambridge, in 1756.

The Headmaster of the School during the nadir of its fortunes
was the Rev. Joseph Wilson, but the actual teaching was done by
the usher. Towards the end of the eighteenth century, the usher
was William Buzzard, who received £50 a year for teaching the
three R's. So little interest did the feoffees take in the running of
the School that they did not trouble to draw up a new deed of
conveyance when only seven of the fifteen trustees remained alive.
In 1780, a deed appointing the fifteen new feoffees had been drawn
up, but by 1803 only five of these remained alive; yet they took
no steps to draw up a fresh deed. In fact, no new deed was made
till 1822.