1553-1592.
GIGGLESWICK Church had been given to the Priory of Finchale by Henry de Puteaco about 1200, and Finchale was a cell of the Prior and Convent of Durham. So from that date till the Dissolution of the Monasteries the Priors continued to appoint the Vicar. When however in 1548 the church became vacant the rights of the convent were vested in Edward VI and he appointed to the office one of his chaplains John Nowell.
Nothing is known of him. He may have been the brother of Alexander Nowell, a prominent divine both under Mary and her successor, and for a time Head Master of Westminster, Principal of Brasenose College, Oxford, and for over forty years Dean of S. Paul's. This Alexander was a leader of education; he wrote a Catechism that became a school text-book and he assisted to re-found a free school at Middleton. It is not a wholly unsound conjecture, if we suppose that the John Nowell, who assisted to re-found Giggleswick was, if not a brother, at least a member of the same family as Alexander whose home was at Whalley.
We know at least that he was Vicar of Giggleswick till 1558. During his first five years Richard Carr, assisted for a time by Thomas Iveson, was continuing to teach in the small and irregular building of James, his uncle; and as a stipend he was receiving annually £5 6s. 8d.
This money ceased to be paid after 1553, in which year on May 26 Edward VI "of happy memory" was pleased to grant a Charter to the School and to endow it with property. This he did at the humble petition of John Nowell, vicar, Henry Tennant, gentleman, and other inhabitants of the town and parish of Giggleswick in Craven.
Quite forgetful of the School's previous existence for over half a century, he ordains that "from henceforth there may and shall be one Grammar School ... which shall be called the Free Grammar School of King Edward the Sixth of Giggleswick, and the same School for ever to continue of one Schoolmaster or Headmaster and of one Under Master or Usher."
This limitation of the teaching staff to one Headmaster and one Usher led to serious qualms of conscience among the Governors in the last decade of the eighteenth century, when the revenues and numbers of the School had been very greatly increased. They then added to the number of the staff and discovered that they had contravened the Charter of Edward VI, and this difficulty was one of those that led to the application in 1795 for new Statutes.
It was to be a "free" school, not in any restricted, unusual sense of the word, not free from ecclesiastical interference, that did not come till the nineteenth century, not free from temporal interference, that has never come, but free from fees, giving gratuitous teaching. The Charter was an English document translated into Latin. Hence it is not a question whether the word "libera" can ever be understood in the sense of gratuitous. The Latin word is used as being not the exact, but the nearest equivalent of the English. The Free Grammar School undoubtedly meant exemption from fees and all other meanings are heresies of the nineteenth century, fostered only too willingly by those guardians of Grammar Schools, who were not eager to fill their class-rooms with boys from the locality free of charge and so to exclude the sons of "strangers" who were ready to pay for the privilege. The Charter then named eight men of the more discreet and honest inhabitants of the Town and Parish of Giggleswick to be Governors of the said School. They were:
John Nowell, Vicar.
William Catterall, of Newhall.
Henry Tennant, Gentleman.
Thomas Procter, of Cletehop.
Hugh Newhouse, of Giggleswick.
William Browne, of Settle.
Roger Armisted, of Knight Stayneforde.
William Bank of Fesar.
The Vicar, for the time being, must always be a Governor and with one other he had the sole power of summoning the rest to a meeting. Collectively they could appoint the Headmaster and Usher, make elections to their own body, when any other than the Vicar died or left the neighbourhood, and make statutes and ordinances for the government of the School with the advice of the Bishop of the Diocese. If the Vicar should infringe the said statutes they could for the time being elect another of the inhabitants into his place. They were a corporate body and could have a common seal.