six triblers (thuribularii, or incense bearers), and one organplayer. His pay was £2, which, like the £5 10s. received by the deacons between them, was "paid yearly forth of the common of the said church," i.e. the common fund, belonging to the chapter as a whole, distinct from the individual prebends belonging to the separate canons. This was the amount which was paid also at the fourth of the York Minsters, Southwell (Visitations and Memorials of Southwell Minster, Camden Society, 1891, pp. xlii., lxvi.). There it had been the practice for at least half a century (loc. cit. p. 177, 52, 77) to supplement this payment, which in process of time had become inadequate, by conferring one of the chantries in the church on the Schoolmaster. There is every reason to believe that the same practice had prevailed at Ripon, as among the chantry priests (p. 164) holding the chantry of the Holy Trinity" above the Quer (choir)," founded in 1345, was "Edmunde Browne, clerke," and he was, as will be seen, at this time Schoolmaster. In 1544, described as Mr. Edmund Brown, he was proctor or proxy at a chapter for Arthur Low, prebendary of Nunwick (Ripon Chapter Acts, p. 348)

Why, in the face of the facts above recited, Mr. H. M. Bower, in his Introduction to the Foundation Charter of 1555 (Ripon, William Harrison, 1897), questioned my statement made in English Schools at the Reformation, p. 111-12, that Ripon Collegiate Church kept a public grammar school before the dissolution, it is hard to conceive.

He says "it seems likely enough that at Ripon the teaching of grammar, said to have been one amongst several duties of the precentor in the thirteenth century, was somewhat later divided from the teaching of music and allotted to a special grammar schoolmaster, as the latter was a sub-chanter," and refers to Dr. Fowler's Memorials of Ripon, III., XV., with the remark that "the authority of Mr. Fowler, who in that work exhibited a very special study of the Ripon church's history, should be accepted on a point of this sort, until further discovery, or else general considerations of great force, shows his opinion wrong." It must be remembered that the subject of grammar schools was not specially present to Dr. Fowler. There is no difficulty both from general considerations and on the particular case in showing him to have been wrong. The passage referred to is: "The precentor, namely the prebendary of Stanwick, was rector chori by Archbishop Gray's appointment in 1230 (II., 2). His duty was to organize, arrange, and conduct the music, keep order in choir, and instruct the boys in music and grammar. In later times he

had under him a sub-chanter, and a master of the grammarschool." So far as the words italicized are concerned there is not a vestige of evidence to support them. The document referred to, an ordination of the prebend of Stanwick, 13 November, 1230, merely says that "who ever shall be canon of that prebend shall be rector chori and perpetually resident there." Not a word is said as to the precentor's duties, which Dr. Fowler has derived from other sources, perfectly correctly as far as regards his duties to the choir and the music; but not as regards the grammar teaching and master. Enough has been said about the chancellor and precentor at York and Beverley to show that the precentor, while having everything to do with music and musical instruction, had nothing to do with grammar. Dr. Fowler fell into error, when he said (p. x. of the volume already cited), "Southwell had its chancellor and treasurer but no precentor; Beverley its provost, chancellor, and precentor, but no treasurer." The error has been conclusively shown by the Camden Society book on Southwell Minster, and the Surtees Society book on Beverley Minster, in which the precentor of the one and the treasurer of the other plainly appear. I am not at all sure that he is right when he says there was no chancellor at Ripon. The fact cited by him that payments were made for advocates and proctors is not the smallest proof that there was no chancellor. Similar payments were made by the chapter and by the town council of Beverley, though the one had not only its chancellor but its chapter clerk and legal assessor and the other its town clerk. The payments were retaining fees for standing legal advisers in the court of York. Just as the prebendary of Stanwick was ex-officio precentor, and the prebendary of Monkton ex-officio treasurer, so I strongly suspect that the prebendary of Nunwick was ex-officio chancellor.

However that may be, it is not "a difficult question" how far the Grammar School was then separated or differentiated from the Song School. They were absolutely separate.

In 1391-2, in the third of the extant Fabric Rolls, we first meet with the Song School. Rents are accounted for (p. 144) amounting to 13s. 6d. for certain chambers in the wood house (astelaria); which subsequent accounts, e.g. that for 1396-7 (p. 147), show to have been six in number. Among the "falls of rent” is returned "2s. for fall of rent of a chamber in the tenure of John Segerstane, because he holds it by loan of the canons for his school (scolis suis)." The two next years the fall of rent is put at Is. 6d.; and in the latter year it is said to be "lent him for his school at the will of the

canons." Another of the chambers was also let for nothing to" the grith-priest," the priest whose duty it was apparently to look after the "grith men" or sanctury-men who had taken refuge in the sanctuary of Ripon. These chambers appear as let at various amounts in subsequent Fabric Rolls. In 1503 we find the entry of "10s. 4d. rent for divers parcels," which include " 2 messuages in Asterlare now restored (reditis) into 2 song chambers;" while in 1512-3 these are called “2 messuages in Ayserleyn now in two chambers over the Song School, one in the tenure of William Watson, and the other of John Watson" at 2s. a year each. Now John Watson appears in the Chamberlain's Roll of the year before as receiving payment of 3s. 4d. for playing upon the organs (i.e. organ, as an organ was spoken of as "a pair of organs"), and also of " IOS. for the Lady Mass with singing in the chapel of the church and keeping the organs." In the Chantry Certificate (p. 159) these two payments are lumped together, and the pay of the organist is put at 13s. 4d.; a sum which was the customary sum payable very generally to an organist, e.g. Southwell and Beverley. Here then is the Song School specifically mentioned, and in an entirely different place from the Grammar School. They could not therefore be the same. In point of fact in a considerable place like Ripon, and in a large establishment such as was Ripon Collegiate Church, they could never have been the same. In every collegiate church that I have ever come across, from York Minster and Winchester College to Howden and Thornton, the two schools and masters were entirely distinct. I do not mean to say that the scholars of the Grammar School would never resort to the Song School to learn music, or the choristers of the Song School to the Grammar School to learn grammar. On the contrary, it is clear that they would and did. But the schools were absolutely differentiated in historical times, performing distinct functions under separate masters, and subject to the control of different officers.

The Song School ceased with the abolition of the collegiate church and the pensioning off of the prebendary of Stanwick, the precentor. This took place, not, as Mr. Bower supposes, by "a confiscation of 1546" under Henry VIII., but in 1548 under Edward VI. Mr. Bower was no doubt misled by the Chantry Certificate, printed by Dr. Fowler (Memorials of Ripon, III., 8 seq.), and by Mr. W. H. Page (Yorkshire Chantry Surveys, II., 345 seq.). That certificate was taken under the Chantries Act of Henry VIII., passed in 154; the commission for taking it issuing 14 Feb., 1548

(English Schools at the Reformation, p. 63). But Ripon College was not confiscated under that Act. The Act was permissive only, and Henry VIII. did not take advantage of the permission. The Chantries Act of Edward VI., passed in his first year, 1547, was not permissive but peremptory. It abolished all colleges except cathedrals and University colleges, and gave their revenues to the Crown from Easter, 1548. Accordingly the accounts of the ministers of the Crown (Memorials of Ripon, III., 33 seq.) account for the possessions of the minster to the Crown for a year and a half ending Michaelmas, 1549. Ripon having become a manor of the Duchy of Lancaster, the collegiate church became in accordance with the Act a part of the Duchy, and not of the general revenues of the Crown. Hence the letters patent refounding the school are sealed with the Duchy seal, not with the great seal of England, and further light must be sought first and foremost among the Duchy records at the Record Office. There are plenty of documents relating to the transition period, and a tangled and troubled story they record, the true inwardness of which it is not easy to arrive at. Petitions and litigation about the school went on continually to 1585. From them we gather the following story.

Edmund Browne, whom we have seen to be a chantry priest with an income of £3 14s. 7d. (p. 220), was also Schoolmaster of the Grammar School, and as such received not merely the £2 above mentioned paid out of the common fund of the church to the Grammar Schoolmaster, but also the revenues of certain lands called School or Rood lands (p. 200), with some £8 7s. 2d. a year net. Altogether, therefore, he had an income of over £13 a year from endowment; no bad pay considering that the head-masters of Winchester and of Eton only received £10 a year. The school was a free school, that is the master could not make any charge to the scholars for teaching them. The school lands were called the Rood Lands because they were given by or vested in the Rood or Holy Cross Gild of Ripon. There is considerable mystery as to the origin of this Gild, its precise relations to the school, and what happened about it at the time of the Chantries Act, which applied to gilds as well as to colleges and chantries. According to the story told in a suit in the Duchy Court by the defendant "there was a gild or fraternity in Ripon "-I modernise the spelling-" commonly named the Rood Gild, founded by the inhabitants of Ripon by licence to them granted in anno nono Henrici IV. or thereabouts, and by the same they were licensed to give for the maintenance

These

thereof sixteen messuages and eleven acres of land." lands, being gild lands, ought to have fallen to the Crown under the Chantries Act, but William Scott, Anthony Frankish, and others "did practice and procure one Richard Tyrrie, then one of the priests of the said gild," to conceal the said lands from the commissioners under the Act in consideration of £6 13s. 4d. Thereon the said Scott and company "gave an untrue information to the commissioners that the same were school lands, asking the commissioners to appoint the same to continue to a school for ever, which they would not, but said they would certify the same lands according to their information." Afterwards, in 1550, Anthony Frankish and others seeking to displace Edmund Browne "teaching a school there," Browne went to the Chancellor of the Duchy, and told him the truth, and obtained from him a lease of the lands. He then demised them to other persons; but Scott and Frankish paid him £10 down and 40s. a year for the lease; which 40s. was paid for a few years, until Browne was induced to release the payment. They then got a commission issued in the Duchy Court to the same commissioners as acted in the Chantry Certificate, and on their finding got a decree confirming the lands to the Free School for ever; and pocketed the proceeds. The same people then purchased a grant from Philip and Mary of four dissolved chantries in Ripon, and their property amounting to £30 a year, for a Free School, but this grant did not include the Rood lands. They paid the Schoolmaster £12 a year and pocketed the rest, together with the rent of the Rood lands. Then in 1577 information was given to the Crown that these lands were really gild lands, and a commission issued, which found that they were gild lands, whereon Queen Elizabeth granted them by patent to Peter Grey and Edward Grey. From them the defendant Ninian Medelton, or Middleton, bought them; and so claimed them against the governors, represented by Sir William Mallory and others, who were plaintiffs in the Chancery suit against him.

The plaintiffs by their bill had told practically the same story, except the scandalous statements about pocketing the money. They said that the lands in question were "given and assured for the common finding and maintenance of one Free School," but said nothing about a gild, except incidentally, that the property included "one house in Anesgate aforesaid called the Rood-house or School-house."

The odd thing is that there is no licence in mortmain for either school or gild eo nomine on the Patent Rolls.

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