A FAMOUS SCHOOL

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 88, 8 January 1935, Page 3

A FAMOUS SCHOOL

Influence of Ely

WHERE KING ALFRED WAS EDUCATED

Few English grammar schools have had such historically interesting beginnings as that of Ely. Although, as a properly founded grammar school, it may claim to date only from 1448; actually there had been in existence a system of scholarly instruction since the very beginning of the monastery itself. Thus, in A.D. 673, Ethelreda, the first abbess, had brought to her the children of noble families to be educated and devoted to the religious observance of the abbey. There is a tradition that King Alfred was educated at Ely, but though this may be entirely mythical there is no doubt tjjat the young son of King Ethelred and Queen Emma, who later in life became known as Edward the Confessor, did receive part of his education in the abbey. Nor did he forget the scene of his early schooling when he mounted the throne, for in the beginning of the eleventh century he granted an important charter to Ely. The Birth of Canibride. With the Norman Conquest, the Isle of Ely, under Hereward the Wake, “last of the Saxons,” held out against the Conqueror for a period of five years. Thereafter, under Norman abbots, the wealth and power of Ely was restored, and in 1109 an abbot became the first bishop. The educational influence of Ely is noted in the centuries which followed. The bishops exercised a strong influence on the creation of Cambridge as a university centre. In 1284, Bishop Hugh de Balsham founded two hostels for “The Scholars of the Bishops of Ely,” near St. Peter’s Church, outside Trumipingtpn Gate. This was the first endowed college in Cambridge, known to-day as Peterhouse. When, in 1448, the appointment of a mastership was made, the cathedral school may be said to have come definitely into being as a separate educational institution. Scholars continued to be nominated to Peterhouse and other Cambridge colleges under the patronage of successive bishops. At the Dissolution, nearly a hundred years later, the school was reconstructed by a Royal Charter of Henry VIII dated 1543. and the refoundation entitled it to the distinction of a “King’s School.”