Page:The History of CRGS.djvu/11

 from the other known early references to a school, it almost appears possible to identify the exact position which that medieval building must have occupied.

First let us examine once more the fine itself. Church Street North is the successor of "St. Mary's Lane," and although the older lane seems to have run somewhat straighter than the modern street, both make for the postern in the Roman wall, and the northern boundary is thus established. As for the eastern and western limits, these survive today in Head Street and the Town Wall. Only concerning the southern boundary does any real doubt exist. Even so, the " Lane by Headgate " may reasonably be accepted as a continuation of the long walk inside the South Wall now known as Short Wyre Street, Eld Lane and Sir Isaac's Walk; and its east end may accordingly be placed where Church Street South now joins Head Street, and from that point we may reasonably consider it to have run straight on to the south-west corner of the Walls. It is true that today [1947] Church Street South extends for less than half this distance, and then it is continued as a footpath diagonally across the churchyard, but this arrangement dates probably only from 1714, when the church was rebuilt and the paths laid out (Morant). It is interesting to note that this area conforms almost exactly to the insula which occupied the south-western corner of the Roman town.

That in 1206 the School stood somewhere within this area seems certain : the very fact that it was under the Bishop's jurisdiction implies as much, for there is no reason to suppose that his authority extended beyond the boundaries that have been described. The School is one of four appurtenances (pertinentia)—a chief dwelling, a church, a chapel, and a school. The Church of St. Mary, the only survivor of the four, stands as we know within these boundaries, while the "Capital Messuage," a term applied to the Lord's own dwelling, must assuredly have lain within his holding. There is no mention elsewhere, to my knowledge, of a Chapel of St. Andrew, and it may perhaps have been a free-standing building situated in the, churchyard; it cannot have been the church of St. Andrew in the remote suburb of Greenstead, which, moreover, in 1086 belonged to Count Eustace and not to the Bishop of London ; and, later, to St. John's Abbey (Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum). And if the other appurtenances were within the soke, would not one suppose the same of the school ? Or, if contrary to every probability it had indeed lain outside the boundaries, would not some specific mention have been made of the fact ? The inference to be drawn then, from the 1206 fine would seem to be that the ancient school stood somewhere within the sake, ln the south-west corner of the town. More than that the document does not vouchsafe, but from the well-known dependence of medieval education on the Church one might reasonably assume that the Bishop's "town school" would Rh