Page:The histories of Launceston and Dunheved, in the county of Cornwall.djvu/378

 342 THE GRAMMAR SCHOOL. It will be remembered that, in the year 1461-2 (page 143) the borough had some legal contention with "Mr. Simon Scholemayester." We do not know what the dispute was, but we assume that it concerned a gentleman in charge of a school at Dunheved. Again, in 1478 (page 303), the mayor and commonalty declare, in answer to a royal en- quiry, not only what they were then doing, but what "of old time''' had been done. They say that they hired and paid out of their revenues "singingmen, sometimes priests, sometimes laymen, sometimes both, for the furnishing of their choir; and, of old time, sometimes one and sometimes two priests, besides the schoolmaster, were hired to wait upon the mayor, to keep his accounts, to maintain the choir, and sometimes to say mass before the mayor and burgesses." Although the schoolmaster is here named as distinct from the priests, he is directly associated with them in duty, and his office is recognized. There would have been no schoolmaster if there had been no school. We shall presently see that, in the year 1548, the Dun- heved school was a well-defined establishment, and that its young neighbour, the school of Dame Percival at Week St. Mary was already decaying, and was soon afterwards merged in the Launceston school. In the Public Record Office, London, is a certificate (No. 9, Nos. 6 and 7) of "William Godolfyn, Knyght, John Graynfeld, and Henry Chyverton esquyers," in answer to a commission directed to them 14th February 2 Edw : VI. (1548-9), containing the following : The Borowght of Launceston wherein ar of houselyng people cccc [four hundred persons capable of receiving the sacrament]. A stipendiarye in the Church of Mary Magdalen there in the said Borowght. Certeyn lands named Bodman als Bodyman geven by Johnne Corrdy & Rychard Coverthorne and other [in this manner inaccurately alluding to the grant cited page 115] to the mayre of