Documentation of the early years of Manchester Grammar School is rather patchy. We have a number of legal documents that give us an insight into the general running of the School, but we don’t have much information on the make up of the pupil population or of some of the early High Masters. In lieu of primary sources, we do have a useful booklet written in 1886 by John Eglington Bailey – “Former Masters of the Manchester Grammar School“. It gives us valuable information on the early High Masters, and in turn, an insight into the running of the School during its early years. Bailey writes:
“Dr. Johnson, in his Life of Addison, advanced an incentive to preserve the memory of able schoolmasters when he said that not to name the school, or the masters, of men illustrious for literature, was a kind of historic fraud by which honest fame was injuriously diminished. The influence of this sentiment has led to the publication of the Registers of the Manchester Grammar School, beginning in the eighteenth century; but it is to be regretted that the earlier history has not been given with the same detail, Whatton’s History being very defective. Under the circumstances it will be interesting to pass under reviews the masters for about a century, from Cogan to Wickyns.”
The final High Master that Bailey covers is John Wickyns (sometimes spelt Wickins or Wickens):
“We next come to a master who is the most noticeable on the list, John Wickyns, who gave a great repute to the school. His father was sent out of Berkshire by his countryman, Archbishop Laud, to occupy the mastership of Rochdale Grammar School. The son is always said to have been of Corpus Christi College, the information being taken from Whatton’s history of the school, where one line alone is devoted to this master which is scandalously inaccurate. He is there called Wickes, but the degrees added to his name are those of a real person called Wickes, who, about a year and a half after Wickyn’s death, was, 13th July, 1677, nearly murdered by John Bradshaw and another scholar while sleeping in his bed at Corpus Christi College. Henry Brooke gave his name as John Wiggins. He was probably of King’s College, Cambridge. Whatton gives 1652 as the date of his appointment to the school; but the date was much earlier than this, for Edward Kenyon, one of his distinguished pupils, who became rector of Prestwick, was at nineteen years of age, in 1649, entered a pensioner into St. John’s College, Cambridge, and is distinctly said to have been bred under Wickyns. Jonathan and Jabez Brideoake were also his scholars. They were admitted into St. John’s in 1651 and 1653. Wickyns first appears in the parish registers in 1652, when a child was baptized, described as Alice, daughter of John Wickyns, “head schoolmaster.” Numerous other entries present a pretty complete account of his family. Wickyns was an able Didaskalos, and a long list of his pupils might be collected. The Rev. Henry Newcombe, who first made his acquaintance in 1656, placed his sons under him. Henry, who became rector of Tattenhall, Cheshire, and of Middleton, Lancashire, and was a frequent visitor to the Chetham Library, entered the school on 10th January 1662. Numerous other pupils are mentioned in Newcombe’s diary, who in one passage says that Wickyns bred many able scholars.
The intercourse between Newcombe and Wickyns was very intimate. Wickyns taught Newcome the elements of Hebrew. The master’s skill in the languages was of service in the examination of the young men who flocked to Manchester to receive ordination at the hands of the Presbyterians, although there were many scholars in the town as able as he. Once, when regarding one of the assemblies of ministers of Manchester, Newcombe made the striking remark – “Manchester was a university then, when many Masters of Arts, Fellows of Colleges, could be found to keep a night for such a purpose.” It was not until seven years after the establishment of Presbyterianism in Manchester that Wickyns became a ruling member of that body, representing the Manchester church; and as such he was one who ordained Francis Mosley at Manchester, 10th January, 1654-5. He attended closely to his duties in connection with this body, and was frequently delegated to attend the provincial meetings at Preston. Wickyns was one of the first to invite Henry Newcombe to Manchester; and on 17th August 1662, he signed the petition to Charles II, in favour of Newcombe’s claim to a place in the collegiate establishment.
Not very long afterwards (July, 1663), there was a probability of Wickyns quitting his charge at Manchester to accept an invitation to Newport School, in Salop; and Newcombe describing the severance of the connection as “so great a loss to the town and to my boy, who comes on so notably under him,” promoted meetings of the burghers, the feoffees, and the justices, with the view of inducing Mr. Wickyns to stay. The feoffees of Chetham’s College, to the boys in which Wickyns had some relation, were also interested in the matter. A town’s meeting held at the Booths, on 15th August, attended by warden Heyricke and other prominent gentlemen, lasted from four o’clock til seven; and a satisfactory settlement was made, in which Mr. Birch, one of the ushers, and Mr. Dutton, the schoolmaster at the hospital, were parties. It was one of Newcombe’s duties in this business to write a letter concerning Mr. Wickyns to the Haberdashers’ Company of London, who were the governors of Newport School.
In 1664, the year of the Conventicle Act, Adam Martindale, of Rostherne, at the instance of Sir Peter Brooke, of Mere, placed his son Timothy at Manchester School, under Mr. Wickyns, “a most excellent teacher”. Adam speaks of having to buy his son many costly books, and “aparill suitable to ordinary men’s sons in that proud towne.” On the passing of the Oxford Act, at the end of 1665, he came to teach mathematics in Manchester. In this course of life he says he was encouraged by Mr. Wickens, master of the free school, who sent him “a good number of his most ingenious boys and admired their great proficiencie.”
The references in the parish register to deaths in the Wickyn’s family show that the master continued to discharge the duties of his office. On 24th December, 1667, he buried his son John, the entry describing the father as “John Wickyns, Mr. of Arts, head school Mr. of Manchester.” Two months later there is a record o the death of his wife. Martindale refers to the decline in the health of Wickyns, who was buried 8th December 1676, described as “John Wickyns Mr. of Arts and head school-Mr. of the free school in Manchester.” If the date of his successor’s appointment in Whatton’s history (1675, William Barrow) be correct, Wickyns resigned his post in the year preceding that of his death. The Worthington correspondence, 1670, contains a letter from Wickyns to Worthington thanking the latter for helping Wickyns’s son to a college fellowship. One of the noteworthy signs of Wickyns’s admirable rule is indicated in an order passed by the feoffees of Chetham’s Hospital on 4th October, 1669: “It is ordered and agreed that the school boys and all other boys and young youths be not henceforth permitted to make use of the books in the Library, except such scholars as the high master and library keeper shall think fit to admit.” This incident shows that the school contained boys who had found encouragement and stimulus in the motto of the school – Sapere aude. The advice is taken from the passage in one of Horace’s epistles where a countryman is described as coming up to the banks of a stream, where he sat down until it should run dry, – a passage that has been well rendered by the poet Cowley: –
Begin, be bold, and venture to be wise;
He who defers this work from day to day
Does on a rivers’ bankd expecting stay
Till the whole stream, which stopt him, should be gone
That runs, and, as it runs, for ever will run on.“
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