Robert, c. 1155; Nicholas, c. 1175; Albred, c. 1200; Richard, c. 1208; Nicholas, c. 1215; John, c. 1220; Reginald, c. 1230; Peter, c. 1252; Robert, c. 1289; Ralph, 1316–36; John de Lichfield, 1336–46; Simon de Sutton, 1346–56; Ralph de Derby, 1356–99; William of Tutbury, 1399; William Maynesin, c. 1411; Wystan Porter, died 1436; John Overton, 1436; John Wylne, 1438–71; Thomas Sutton, 1471–86; Henry Prest, 1486–1503; William Derby, 1503–8; John Young, 1508.
The fourth section of these outline memorials of Repton belongs to the school, which has this year (1907) celebrated its seventh jubilee. The founder of Repton School was descended from Henry Porte, a merchant of Westchester (i.e., Chester, west of Manchester). He had a son, also Henry, a mercer, of the same city. His son John was a Justice of the King’s Bench in the reign of Henry VIII., who conferred upon him, after the dissolution of the monasteries, the manor, together with the rectory and advowson of the vicarage of Etwall; these passed to his son, Sir John Porte (created a Knight of the Bath at the coronation of Edward VI.), the founder of Repton School. He was educated at Brasenose College, Oxford, in which his father is said to have provided “stipends for two sufficient and able persons to read and teach openly in the hall—the one philosophy, the other humanity,” one of which “stipends” or lectureships was conferred on his son. Like his father, he was married twice. His first wife was Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Thomas Giffard, by whom he had two sons, who predeceased him, and three daughters, Elizabeth, who married Sir Thomas Gerrard, knight of Bryn, co. Manchester; Dorothy, who married George Hastings, Earl of Huntingdon; and Margaret, who married Sir Thomas Stanhope, knight, of Shelford, co. Nottingham. From these three daughters the present hereditary governors of Repton School, Lord Gerard, Earl Loudoun, and Earl Carnarvon, trace their descent. By his second wife, Dorothy, daughter of Sir Anthony Fitzherbert, of Norbury, he had no children.
In the year 1553 Sir John was one of the “knights of the shire” for the County of Derby, and served the office of High Sheriff for the same county in 1554. In 1556 he sat with Ralph Baine, Bishop of Lichfield, and the rest of the Commissioners, at Uttoxeter, in Staffordshire, “to search out heresies and punish them.”—Strype, Memorials, vol. iii., part 2, p. 15.
On the 6th of June, 1557, he died, and was buried in Etwall church. Built against the south wall in the chancel is “a comely and handsome tomb of pure marble,” under which lie the bodies of Sir John and his two wives. “Set and fixed, graven in brass,” are portrait figures of Sir John, his wives, and children.
By will, dated the 9th of March, 1556, Sir John gave and devised to his executors, Sir Thomas Giffard, knight; Richard Harpur, Esquire; Thomas Brewster, Vicar of Etwall, and others, certain estates in the counties of Derby and Lancaster for the foundation and maintenance of an almshouse at Etwall, and a grammar school at Etwall or Repton.
As we read in the report made to the Charity Commissioners in 1867—
“Sir John had no property at Repton. His executors were probably induced to establish the school there, rather than at Etwall, by finding the refectory of the building of the dissolved priory well adapted to the purpose. By indenture, dated 12th June, I Eliz. 1558, Gilbert Thacker, the grantee of the site of the priory, in consideration of £37 10. ‘bargained and sold to Richard Harpur, serjeant-at-law, John Harker, and Simon Starkey, three of the executors of Sir John Port ... one large great and high house near the kitchen of the same Gilbert Thacker, in Repton, commonly called the Feringre (Fermery or Infirmary of the priory) ... upon which the schoolmaster’s lodgings were then newly erected, together with all the rooms, both above and beneath, of the same long house, ... also one large void room or parcel of ground upon the east part ... lately called the Cloyster, and one other room thereto adjoining, lately called the Tratrye (Fratry), as the same was then inclosed with a new wall, to the intent that the same should be a schoolhouse, and so used from time to time thereafter.’”—(See page 43 of the Report.)
The erection of “schoolmaster’s lodgings, with rooms above and below,” on the ruins of the Priory, referred to above, makes it very difficult to identify the present Priory with the original building. As Mr. St. John Hope writes in the 1884 volume of the Journal of the Derbyshire Archæological Society:
“The western side of the claustral buildings consisted of the block under the charge of the cellarer, called the cellarium. It is here complete to the roof as far as the structure is concerned, but the original round-headed windows (with the exception of one) have been superseded by larger ones, and sundry partitions and insertions have quite destroyed its ancient arrangements. The cellarium appears to be the only remaining part of the original Norman monastery, built when the canons migrated from Calke, in the middle of the twelfth century.”
The ground floor consisted of a large room, divided by a row of six massive Norman circular columns, with scalloped or plain capitals; four of these remain. At the southern end of the west side is a slype or entrance to the cloister; at the northern end are three rooms, probably the kitchen larder; and from the appearance of the third—with its groined roof, the ribs of which were intended to be ornamented with the dog-tooth moulding, which was begun and never finished—it was used by the cellarer as a “plate house,” etc.