tery, in the reign of Henry the Eighth, are as far as can be at present ascertained, as follow. JOHN PYRKES. He is returned in 1535, by the commissioners who then visited the monastery, as chaplain and curate of All-saints for the term of life, under an indenture from the abbot and convent.409 ROBERT WYLLYS.-He was appointed in March, 1545, as we are informed by a manuscript of Bp. Thomas, in the possession of the Antiquarian Society, and was also vicar of Cropthorne. This incumbent is buried in the church of All-saints; and from the Romish solicitation inscribed upon his tomb,410 we may infer that his religious sentiments were moulded by the then vacillating religion of the state; which-affected one day by Henry's faith as a catholic, and influenced on the next by his hatred to the papal rule-must have left one certain class of its ministers in doubt as to the exact measure of protestantism which they were expected to assume. ANTHONY MARSHALL. He signs the terrier, in 1585; and died, as appears from the parochial register, in 1600. LEWIS BAYLIE-appointed on the death of the above, was a native of Wales, and fellow of Jesus College, Oxford. In the year 1611, we find him minister of Evesham, chaplain to prince Henry, -son of James the First-and minister of St. Matthew's, Fridaystreet, London.411 On account of his fame as a preacher, he was soon after appointed chaplain to the king; and in 1616 was consecrated bishop of Bangor. JOHN SAMON. His signature first appears on the parish register in 1611, and continues till 1639. Two-thirds of Land at Hampton, purchased with a bequest from Alderman £30 Tenement and Land at Birlingham; purchased by Queen Anne's Bounty for the minister of St. Lawrence £6 Payment out of the Furze Close, Hampton; bequeathed by Anne Roberts to the minister of St. Lawrence £3 Other purchases by Queen Anne's Bounty £28 £10 Exchequer payment, in the proportion of £5 to each living Vicarage house, with two gardens communicating-one of them long enclosed from the church-yard, but still used as a place of sepulture-together with a stable-yard near St. Lawrence church. In addition to these, Easter offerings and voluntary payments from the parishioners, are made. 409 Valor Ecclesiasticus temp. Henry VIII. tom. iii. P. 255. GEORGE HOPKINS, M. A. signs the register from April 1642, to September 1662. He was of New Inn, Oxford, where he took his first degree in 1641. After this he left the university, siding with the presbyterians, and took the covenant. When the garrison at Oxford had been surrendered to the parliament, he returned thither, submitted to the parliamentary visitors, and took his degree of Master. Soon after this he became minister of All-saints. In 1654 he was appointed by the parliament an assistant to the commissioners of Worcestershire, for the ejection of scandalous, ignorant, and inefficient ministers. Shortly after this he published "Salvation from Sin by Jesus Christ," a work dedicated to the borough of Evesham and levelled against the antinomian heresy. In 1662 he was ejected from his living, in common with many of the most conscientious and excellent characters of the age, for refusing to accede to the terms of conformity imposed under that most irreligious of princes, King Charles the Second. After his ejection, he retired to Dumbleton, near Evesham, where he died in 1666, and is interred in the chancel there. Wood says, that "besides his knowledge of divinity, he was a very good mathematician, and an example of great candour and moderation." 412 The following were incumbents of All-saints with St. Lawrence annexed : JOHN JEPHCOTT, D. D.—was instituted in August, 1663. He was also prebendary of Worcester; but, on being presented to the living of Northfield he resigned his stall in that cathedral together with his preferment at Evesham, in 1706. He died 26th of March 1713, aged 77, and is buried near the south wall of the chancel in Northfield church. JOHN MITCHELL, LL.B.-His signature first occurs in 1707, and continues till his death in 1724. In 1722 he was also minister of Bengeworth, as appears from the register there. NATHANIEL NICHOLS, B. D.-instituted in November, 1724, was also minister of Bengeworth, chaplain to Elizabeth countess 410 Pray for the souls of Robert Wyllys and Agnes his wife: upon whose souls may God have mercy."-Gravestone near the Chancel. 411 Wood's Athenæ Oxoniensis, vol. i. folio 567. 412 Athenæ Oxoniensis, i. 370. Also Palmer's Nonconformist's Memorial, iii, 392. dowager of Northampton, and perpetual curate of Offenham; as appears from the register of his burial, A.D. 1734, in the parish of All-saints. A sermon preached by this divine before the corporation, published in 1728, proves him to have been a man of enlarged and liberal views upon the question of civil government.413 WILLIAM BURKINSHAW, M. A.- -was on the 4th July, 1735, instituted to the chapel and chapelry of All-saints in Evesham, void by the death of Nathaniel Nichols, clerk. EDWARD THORNES, clerk-appears in the consistorial register as instituted to the chapel of All-saints aforesaid, on the 15th March, 1736, void by the death of William Burkinshaw, clerk. EVAN JONES, appointed 24th September, 1750, on the resignation of Mr. Thornes, was also vicar of Cleeve Prior and master of Evesham School. The remembrance of his ability in the latter capacity is still gratefully preserved by his very few surviving pupils. EDWARD COOPER, B.A.—was instituted in April, 1769. HENRY PORTMORE Cooper, B.A.-instituted in February, 1808, was also perpetual curate of Hampton, and retained the mastership of Evesham School, which about this time had dwindled through neglect into a sinecure. The Rev. JOHN MARSHALL, M.A.—the present incumbent, "was instituted to the vicarage of All-saints in Evesham, with the united vicarage of St. Lawrence,”- as entered on the consistorial register on the 18th of August, 1827. In concluding our notice of this church, we with pleasure remark -that the chancel, which had long been in a dangerous state, has recently been secured and repaired, under the direction of Mr. William Smith, one of the parishioners: and that the cost, which amounted to £60 2s. 6d., was defrayed by voluntary contributions among the townspeople. At the same time it is worthy of notice, that the organ which has long been used here, is an instrument of considerable power, it having been built for the Rotunda in Ranelagh Gardens; whence it was purchased for the parishioners, upon the breaking up of that famed place of public amusement, in the year 1796. 413 "Civil Government, how far of Divine and how far of Human Institution :" preached at the Parish Church of All-saints, in Evesham, 8vo. Cambridge, 1728. CHAPTER X. GRAMMAR-SCHOOL-HALLS-AND MEETING-HOUSES. DURING the middle ages education in this country was only to be found associated with the church, and in immediate connection with our monasteries. Then, indeed, the latter may be said to have been our only schools, and their inmates our only students. It was natural, and to be anticipated, that the members of these institutions would select from their locality such youths as evinced indications of peculiar talent; and in placing them under a course of training for the cloister, would indulge the hope that in after times their fame would shed a lustre upon the foundation with which they were thus associated. The abbey of Evesham, among others, seems to have been early distinguished by its mode of educational initiation. Shortly after the Conquest we find Wulstan, afterward bishop of the diocese and ultimately canonized by the church, sent from Itchington in Warwickshire by his parents, that he might be taught reading in this monastery; they having destined him for the church.41 414 At a later period an increased provision was made by the convent for educational uses; lands in the hamlet of Eyford, in the parish of Upper Slaughter, Gloucestershire, being in 1472 appropriated to the convent "for a stipend to teach youth." "415 From a memorandum, appended to Sir Philip Hoby's schedule of the abbey site and demesnes, given by Stevens in his Additions to the Monasticon—the yearly value of these lands appears to have been 414 Life of S. Wulstan by William of Malmesbury, Wharton's Anglia Sacra, ii. 244. 415 Atkyns's Gloucestershire, second edition, page 345. £28 10s. 2d. at that time.416 Were the estate still appropriated to scholastic purposes, it would doubtless now furnish a stipend equivalent to at least £400 a year. In the reign of Henry the Eighth, it became requisite to provide a building expressly for scholastic use, with a distinct endowment for a master. This school-house was erected by abbot Lichfield, and the additional endowment was also made by him.417 It stood near to the monastery, and was built upon the open Green belonging to the town and though it shared the general wreck of other buildings connected with religious uses, in the same king's reign, some portions of the original fabric still remain. The advantages of this foundation appear to have extended into the Vale, as well as to the town; for provision was even made for boarding certain of the scholars within the abbey. This information we derive from one who had himself participated in these privileges,—a witness in an Exchequer case during the reign of Elizabeth, who had been a pupil in the school, and at the same time a boarder in the almonry.418 The endowment of this foundation may be regarded as absorbed in the appropriation of the abbey revenues by Henry VIII. So that not only was the hope destroyed, which—as previously noticed was once cherished by the inmates here—that their monastery might be one that should be preserved by the king "for the education and bringing up of youth,"419-but even the humble free-school attached to that establishment was at the same time swept away : so that Leland's melancholy observation, penned here soon after the Dissolution, once more falls dull upon the ear" in the town is no hospital or other famous foundation but the late abbey." Deprived of its free-school-an advantage of peculiar import at a period when other schools in such a situation were of necessity unknown-the 66 416 The ferme of certeine pastures called Eifoed, in the county of Glocester, parcell of the demeanes of the late monastery of Evesham, by the yeare cleare, xxviij. xs. ijd."-Stevens, vol. i. page 463. 417"He builded a free-school for education for children, assigning rents for maintenance of a schoolmaster."-Abbey MS. A.D. 1536, copied by Abingdon. 418He was a scholar in the said town, and did board in the said amery of the said monastery, before the dissolution thereof; in the time of one Clement Lichfield, being then abbot."-Deposition of John Wilkes, in Hoby v. Kighley. 419 Letter to Cromwell, printed in Appendix No. III. and cited upon page 140. |