GRAMMAR SCHOOL 1515-1915 A REGIONAL STUDY OF THE 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON FOURTH AVENUE & 30TH STREET, NEW YORK BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS 1919 All rights reserved PREFACE In his famous treatise on The Advancement of Learning,' Francis Bacon was principally concerned with the organised body of knowledge as it existed in the time of James I. He described the dignity, the power, and the utility of the various departments of learning and the causes which impeded or fostered its growth. He praised the existing foundations and endowments; but he showed little interest in the aims and aspirations of the founders, and regarded learning as the peculiar possession of the leisured and professional classes. He was opposed rather than favourable to the multiplication of grammar schools for the people. Now that democracy has displaced absolutism as the form of national government, the position of learning in the Commonwealth has undergone a change. Since all citizens have to take their part in a complex system of government, and the majority have to earn their living in an ever-changing civilisation, the need for a wider intellectual and moral training has steadily grown. Some elementary education has always been provided, but, as the need of the democracy to classify its members according to their natural abilities rather than their material possessions became manifest, a constantly increasing extension of educational opportunity has been found necessary to permit those who have more intelligence and character than their fellows to find proper means for their development. Advanced as well as elementary education has thus become a national matter. A regional study of the influences which have built up a body of educational tradition, and have led many in the community to seek higher intellectual and moral growth, though necessarily bearing reference primarily to one district only, may shed valuable light upon the larger and national problem. In the following pages I have attempted to consider the way in which a collegiated ecclesiastical body established in the time of the Plantagenets; a Grammar School founded 'for godliness and good learning' in the time of the early Tudors; a town library established and well endowed during the Commonwealth; and a succession of Nonconformist academies, ultimately giving place to a provincial University in the latter half of the nineteenth century, have acted and reacted on each other, and have succeeded in arousing a zeal for truth, justice, and beauty, which has moderated the absorption in the purely self-regarding instincts so readily fostered in a large commercial town. The early history of the collegiate church was fully written by Dr. S. Hibbert (later Hibbert Ware), and much information concerning the early history of the grammar school and the Chetham Hospital and Library has been given by W. R. Whatton in 'The History of the Foundations in Manchester,' published in 1834. Scattered details of the early Nonconformist academies appeared in the 'Transactions of the Congregational Historical Society,' while 'The History of the Foundation and Growth of the Owens College' was written by Joseph Thompson in 1886, and a later description, giving details of the various departments, was published by Dr. P. Hartog in 1900. For sixty years the annual publications of the Chetham Society have enriched our local knowledge. There is thus a mass of valuable information available. For more than four hundred years there has proceeded from the Manchester Grammar School a stream of able, eager, and enterprising boys. This stream has persistently grown in volume, for the School now contains nearly twelve hundred boys, some sixty of whom it has been accustomed to send annually to various universities and centres of higher education, and more than twice that number into occupations demanding more than average intelligence and grit. I began to study the earlier phases of the development of the School, not because I possessed historical knowledge or had leisure to devote to historical research, but because certain problems were being forced upon my attention when examining and supervising the health of these privileged boys. By presenting themselves for higher training at the |