John Carr.
It cannot be explained why these regulations were made, but probably the real point of friction had lain in the collection of rents, or perhaps in the choice of the Writing Master. It is clear from the second clause that the original custom has not changed much. The Ancient Statutes of 1592 had given the Master power to appoint a three weeks vacation, when he wished, in order that the "scollers" might "be exercysed in wrytinge under a scriviner" and it is the same in 1712. It proves that, although the School was a free school and was the place of education for the whole township of Giggleswick and the surrounding neighbourhood, it was not a place for elementary education and never had been.
The fifth paragraph bears reference to the agreement made with John Armitstead in 1705, by which the Masters ceased to provide the entertainment at the Governors' Meetings. Henceforward the amount to be expended is limited to one pound per annum.
In 1720 Richard Thornton was allowed to act as Clerk to Charles Harris, Esq., for six months. It does not transpire who Charles Harris was, but the case is somewhat paralleled seventy years later, when in 1793 Robert Kidd is "to take the trouble of keeping accounts, etc., for the Governors and be allowed an additional sum of two guineas per annum."
In 1726 Richard Thornton resigned and George Carr took his place. Nothing worthy of note is recorded until John Carr's death in 1744, save that in 1728 the said John Carr received £1 11s. 8d., "to be laid out in building a little house for ye use of ye schoole," but what it was, is not known. The number of boys going up to the Universities in Carr's time fell off unaccountably, though they included John Cookson whose entry "probe edoctus" in the Christ's College Admission Book testifies to the teaching in the School.
Carr died in 1743 and was succeeded by William Paley. Born at Langcliffe, educated at the School and admitted into Christ's as a Sizar with a Burton Exhibition in 1729-30, William Paley gained a Scholarship there two years later. He became ordained and was made Vicar of Helpston, Peterborough, where his eldest son was born. He remained Vicar for sixty-four years till his death and combined the living with the Headmastership of Giggleswick and for twenty years with a Curacy at the Parish Church.
His family had lived at Langcliffe for some considerable time and from 1670 to 1720 the name is never absent from the School Minute-Book. "Altogether a schoolmaster both by long habit and inclination, irritable and a disciplinarian. Cheerful and jocose, a great wit, rather coarse in his language," Such is his grandson's description of him. "And when at the age of eighty-three or eighty-four he was obliged to have assistance (which was long before he wanted it in his own opinion) he used to be wheeled in a chair to his School: and even in the delirium of his last sickness insisted on giving his daughters a Greek author, over which they would mumble and mutter to persuade him that he was still hearing his boys Greek."
"He was found sitting in the hayfield among his workpeople, or sitting in his elbow-chair nibbling his stick, or with the tail of his damask gown rolled into his pocket busying himself in his garden even at the age of eighty."
In 1742 he married Elizabeth Clapham, of Stackhouse, who was also a member of an old Giggleswick family. She is said to have ridden on horseback behind her husband from Stackhouse to Peterborough. She was the most affectionate and careful of parents, a little, shrewd-looking, keen-eyed woman of remarkable strength of mind and spirits, one of those positive characters that decide promptly and execute at once, of a sanguine and irritable temper that led her to be always on the alert in thinking and acting. She also had a fortune of £400, which in this neighbourhood was almost sufficient to confer the title of an heiress (Some Craven Worthies).