The Story of King Edward VI School, Bury St. Edmunds

The Foundation Governors of the School, Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk, 1963. First Edition. Hardcover (Original Cloth). Near Fine Condition/Near Fine. A history of the foundation of King Edward VI in Bury St. Edmund's must take into account three items relating to the years before 1550 - the mediaeval school in SchoolhaIl Street, the dissolution of the Benedictine monastery, and the confiscation of chantry lands in the town and neighbourhood. A College of Secular Priests had existed in Bury from the time of Athelstan in the tenth century. It was to that college that the body of Edmund was brought in or about the year 903. It is usually considered certain that wherever there was such a college there was a school associated with it, not a school for supplying the needs of the Church alone, but a school which opened the doors of knowledge to its scholars by giving them an intimate knowledge of the language in which all man's knowledge was expressed in Western Europe, namely Latin. Such a school was known as a Grammar School, and its one aim was to teach Latin to such a standard that it became the means of ready conversation and of easy reading, so that in fact it would be as feasible to attend Leyden University as Cambridge. In the early eleventh century King Canute came to Bury, turned out the secular priests and replaced them by twenty monks from St. Bennett's at Hulme in Norfolk and from Ely. The College thus became a Benedictine Monastery, one of the five largest in the country in course of time, and a monastery of great wealth and renown because of its connection with St. Edmund. It had within its control the whole of the Liberty of St. Edmund, an area roughly identical with the administrative area of West Suffolk today. The townspeople bitterly resented the rights and privileges of the Abbot, so well demonstrated by the Palace he occupied, a resentment that showed itself in open rebellion at times, and the destruction of monastic property. Size: 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. 183 pages. Binding is tight, covers and spine fully intact. in archive acetate film protection. Green titles spine & front with gilt school crest front. blue cloth; illustrated by b/w. photo's.. Quantity Available: 1. Shipped Weight: Under 500 grams. Category: Education; Schools; Suffolk; East Anglia; England; Genealogy & Local History. Inventory No: 4834. .