FIRST SCHOOL, 1512.
There is only one other record of the School during the next thirty years but it is a very important one, for it shows that the School was not restricted to the village but encouraged boarders from distant villages and towns. About the year 1516 William Malhame writes to his brother John:
"Brother, I will Sir W. Martyndale to be Parish Priest at Marton, and to have like wages that Sir W. Hodgson had: and I will Sir W. Hodgson to have vj markes yearly during his life, to tarry at Marton and pray for mee and my father and mother's sawles. They both begin their service at Midsomer next coming. I am content that James Smith go to Sir James Carr to scoule at Michelmas next comyng, and also I am content ye paye for his bord, which shall be allowed ye ageane. From London ye second day of Aprill.
"By your Brother Wm. Malhame.
"To his Brother John Malhame."
In September 1518, the Craven with Ripon Act Book describes James Carr as one who "nuper decessit" and his will was proved. No trace of it has been found but we know from the Chantry Commissioners' Report in 1546 that he had endowed the Chantry School with a rental of £vi xijd.
The Commission had been appointed to ascertain the chantry property which might be vested in the King. There were two excellent reasons for the change. Many avaricious men had already on various pretexts "expulsed" the priests or incumbents and taken the emoluments for themselves. Such private spoliation could not be allowed. And in the second place Henry VIII had involved himself in "great and inestimable charges" in the maintenance of his wars in France and Scotland. He needed money and he saw an easy way to getting it. The Chantry Commissioners made their report, but before many chantries were taken by the King, he died. At once the Chantries Act, which was only for Henry's life, is dissolved naturally.
Edward VI, "monstrificus puellus," was a precocious child of nine years old when he succeeded to the throne. The first "Injunctions" issued in his name gave distinct promise for educational bodies, as they comprised an order, compelling all chantry priests to teach the children reading and writing. Thus at one stroke of the pen he converted a body of men, who had insufficient work to do, into National Schoolmasters. Such a measure would tend to improve the quality of the chantry priests, who would no longer run "unto London, unto St. Poules" seeking for a chantry of souls, seeing that the toil of a Schoolmaster would be their lot.
But within a year a fresh Chantries Act was passed and a new Commission appointed by the Protector and his Council. The Act contained a prefatory statement which maintained that "a great part of superstition and errors in Christian religion has been brought into the minds and estimations of men" and this "doctrine and vain opinion by nothing is more maintained and upholden than by the abuse of trentals, chantries, and other provisions made for the continuance of the said blindness and ignorance." They therefore determined to dissolve the chantries and at the same time continue Grammar Schools, where they existed. The results belied the early promise. The clauses relating to the endowment of Grammar Schools have gained Edward VI a widespread fame as a founder of most of the schools in England. But that fame has been wholly fictitious.
Henry VIII had wrought great damage to elementary education, although he had professed "I love not learning so ill, that I will impaire the revenues of anie one house by a penie, whereby it may be upholden." But it has been calculated that in 1546 there was probably one school for every eight thousand people, whereas three hundred years later, the proportion was thrice as small. Yet Edward VI did not found one school in Yorkshire, and many, which had previously existed, he deprived of all revenue. So diminished were the means of education in 1562 that Thomas Williams, on his election as Speaker of the House of Commons, took occasion to call Queen Elizabeth's notice to the great dearth of schools "that at least one hundred were wanting, which before this time had been." In other words in a period of less than thirty years the number had decreased by a third. And this was in spite of a six years' reign of Edward VI., the supposed progenitor of schools.