Part 5 (1/2)

His family had lived at Langcliffe for some considerable time and from 1670 to 1720 the name is never absent from the School Minute-Book.

”Altogether a schoolmaster both by long habit and inclination, irritable and a disciplinarian. Cheerful and jocose, a great wit, rather coa.r.s.e in his language,” Such is his grandson's description of him. ”And when at the age of eighty-three or eighty-four he was obliged to have a.s.sistance (which was long before he wanted it in his own opinion) he used to be wheeled in a chair to his School: and even in the delirium of his last sickness insisted on giving his daughters a Greek author, over which they would mumble and mutter to persuade him that he was still hearing his boys Greek.”

”He was found sitting in the hayfield among his workpeople, or sitting in his elbow-chair nibbling his stick, or with the tail of his damask gown rolled into his pocket busying himself in his garden even at the age of eighty.”

In 1742 he married Elizabeth Clapham, of Stackhouse, who was also a member of an old Giggleswick family. She is said to have ridden on horseback behind her husband from Stackhouse to Peterborough. She was the most affectionate and careful of parents, a little, shrewd-looking, keen-eyed woman of remarkable strength of mind and spirits, one of those positive characters that decide promptly and execute at once, of a sanguine and irritable temper that led her to be always on the alert in thinking and acting. She also had a fortune of 400, which in this neighbourhood was almost sufficient to confer the t.i.tle of an heiress (_Some Craven Worthies_).

[Ill.u.s.tration: ARCHDEACON PALEY.]

Their son was William Paley, Archdeacon of Carlisle and author of ”Evidences of Christianity.” Born in 1744 he went to Christ's College at the age of fifteen, with a Burton Exhibition and received a Carr Scholars.h.i.+p, when he entered. As a boy he had been a fair scholar with eccentric habits. His great delight was in c.o.c.k-fighting and he must have looked forward to each Potation Day, March 12, with considerable joy. There are many anecdotes about him. He is supposed, whilst in company with his father riding on his way to Cambridge to have fallen off his horse seven times, whereupon his father would merely call out ”take care of thy money, lad.” His mind was always original, indeed he was never regarded as a ”safe” man and in consequence he did not attain that high position in the Church that his intellectual achievements ent.i.tled him to expect. When about to take his B.A. degree he proposed to write a thesis on ”Aeternitas poenarum contradicit divinis attributis,” but the Master of Christ's was so distressed that Paley was induced to appease him by the insertion of a ”non.” In 1765 he gained the Member's Prize as Senior Bachelor with a Latin essay which had long English notes. One of the examiners condemned it, because ”he supposed the author had been a.s.sisted by his father, some country clergyman, who having forgotten his Latin had written the notes in English.” Powell, the Master of S. John's, a learned doctor and the oracle of Cambridge on every question concerning subscription to the faith, spoke warmly in its favour ”it contained more matter than was to be found in all the others ... it would be unfair to reject such a dissertation on mere suspicion, since the notes were applicable to the subject and shewed the author to be a young man of the most promising abilities and extensive reading.”

This opinion turned the balance in Paley's favour (_Baker's History of S. John's_). It also justified the father's opinion of his son. For when the younger Paley went to Cambridge, his father exclaimed that he would be ”a great man, a very great man: for he has by far the cleverest head I ever met with in my life.” He became Senior Wrangler.

The highest position he attained in the Church was the Archdeaconry of Carlisle, though he could have become Master of S. John's College, Cambridge, if an University life had attracted him, but it never did. He had left it, while quite young, to become Rector of Musgrave, c.u.mberland, at 80 a year. In 1805 he died, Giggleswick's most distinguished son.

William Paley was soon to discover the nature of the Governing Body.

Charles Nowell, one of the kin of the second founder, was confined in Lancaster Gaol for some offence which is not recorded and there results a neat little comedy:

April 25, 1745.

Willm. Banks, of Feizer, elected in the room of Charles Nowell, of Capleside (now being and having been long confined in Lancaster Gaol) having in the presence of us taken the accustomed oath.

ANTHO. LISTER.

May 20, 1745.

Be it remembered that the said William Banks on the said twenty-fifth day of April, having some doubt within himself whether he was legally elected, the above-named Charles Nowell not having resigned, he did not take the oath required by the Statutes of the ffree School of Giggleswick but on this day, being satisfied that his election was legal, he took the said oath before us (the Vicar and other Governors withdrawing themselves).

W. DAWSON.

WM. CARR.

May 23, 1745.

Be it remembered that I was absent when Mr. Wm. Banks was sworn but I hereby agree that he was legally elected a Governor at a prior meeting. I also hereby declare the sd Wm. Banks to be a legall Governor.

ROBT. TATHAM.

Twenty years pa.s.sed and another question arose to engender bitter feelings in the hearts of the Governors and Masters. In 1755 George Carr ceased to be Usher and John Moore took his place. As far as can be known, Moore had not been educated at the School, certainly he had not gone up to Christ's with a Burton Exhibition. For some years Master and Usher worked together for stipends respectively of 90 and 45, according to the regular method by which the Master received double the pay of the Usher. They had been accustomed to make an acknowledgment of ”all ye wages now due to us as masters.” But the Statutes of 1592 had declared the Master's wage to be 13 6_s._ 8_d._ and accordingly the Governors in 1768 proposed to emphasize the additional sum, as being given of grace. They brought forward a draft receipt acknowledging the payment of 13 6_s._ 8_d._ ”being a year's salary as Headmaster; and likewise from the said Governors 83 6_s._ 8_d._ as a gratuity and encouragement for my diligence.” This they required Paley to sign, and a similar one was drafted for Moore. Both Masters refused. The Governors then decided that they ”cannot consistently with their trust pay the Master and Usher any more money than is fixed for their stipend by the Statutes.” Three months later a meeting was called to take into consideration a letter from the Archbishop of York in answer to an appeal from both parties, and the following minute records their decision:

”It is resolved by us, whose names are subscribed, punctually to comply with and put into execution to the utmost of our power the very judicious and friendly opinions and advice given by the Archbishop in his letter.”

The minute is signed by six Governors and the two Masters and on the next page the receipts are given as they always had been before, though the few pounds extra that each was to have received are not paid. The very ”judicious” letter of Archbishop Drummond not only fixed the salary of the Master and the Usher but gives some additional information. The rents had increased to above 140 a year and of this the Master and Usher were to be given 135 and as the rents increased so should the salaries, always leaving a sufficient surplus for the Repairs Fund.

The School, he added, had a small number of scholars, which ”may be accounted for by various causes” and was not due to the teaching to which he paid a graceful compliment. He further suggested that the Usher should take it upon himself to teach Writing, Arithmetic, and Merchants' Accounts, the first elements of Mathematics, and the parts that lead to Mensuration and Navigation.

With regard to the Governors, he counselled them to meet annually on May 2, quite apart from their ordinary meetings and make up their accounts and submit a review of the same and of the past year's work to the Archbishop. Secondly they should draw up fresh Statutes. He was antic.i.p.ating the Governors' action of thirty years later. The Scholars, he noted, had no pew in the Church. Some should be procured and the Scholars should ”goe there regularly under the eye of the Master or Usher or some Upper Boy, who should note the absentees.” Altogether the word ”judicious,” applied to the letter by the Governors, was justified.

Largely by the work of Arthur Young, the old system of cultivation by open fields had been changing, and by the beginning of the reign of George III it was chiefly the North of England that still continued after the older fas.h.i.+on. People were content to make a living, they did not concentrate their thoughts on wealth. But in 1764 the tide of reform had reached the Governors' East Riding Estates in North Cave and Rise, and a private Act was pa.s.sed through Parliament, ordering that the separate possessions should be marked off and enclosed. This Act involved a very considerable expense and the Governors, being unable to meet it out of their income, on August 26, 1766, mortgaged their East Riding Estates to Henry Tennant, of Gargrave. The acreage was three hundred and ninety-five acres one rood and the mortgage was concluded for 1,120 for one thousand years. The whole of the money was at once expended; and nearly 500 was appropriated by what Arthur Young called ”the knavery of Commissioners and Attorneys.”