s still Curate of Giggleswick and Vicar of
Helpston, Peterborough--or due to a real increase in the numbers and
requirements of the School is not stated. Several indications point to
an increase in the efficiency of the School. In 1783, an advertisement
was drafted and published for the appointment of an Usher, whereas
before this time they had been content as a rule to take the most
promising of those who had recently left the School. Advertising now
gave them a wider field of choice. A Lexicon and a Dictionary were
bought in the following year for L1 8_s._ 6_d._, as well they might be,
for the last occasion on which books are recorded to have been bought
was in 1626, when the Governors had expended L3 7_s._

The Exhibition fund, which came from the rents of the land given by
Josias Shute together with the Burton rents and a rent-charge of 3_s._
6_d._ on Thos. Paley's house in Langcliffe, had been gradually
accumulating. Few Exhibitions were given and the surplus was put into
the capital account. In 1780 the general fund borrowed L160 from the
Exhibition money in order to enclose some new allotments in Walling Fen,
in accordance with an Act of Parliament. The result was startling. The
first year gave them a new rent-roll of L40, the second year saw this
sum doubled.

For a hundred and seventy-five years James Carr's "low, small and
irregular" building had sufficed for the needs of the School. "Deep in
the shady sadness of a vale" it had witnessed the gradual change of the
Reformation, it had inspired one of the leaders of Puritan
Nonconformity, it had seen the child growth of a great theologian and,
more than all, it had roused the imagination and fostered the mental
growth of hundreds of the yeomen and cottagers of the North of England.
But now its work was accomplished. Flushed with new-found wealth, full
of a vague aspiration after progress, conscious perhaps of real
deficiencies in the old building, these late eighteenth century
Governors spoiled the "many glories of immortal stamp." Carelessly they
destroyed the ancient building, without a line to record its glory or
its age. It was left to a nameless "Investigator C," in the pages of the
_Gentleman's Magazine_ to tell the world what it was losing. Future
dreams oversoared past deeds.

[Illustration: SECOND SCHOOL, 1790.]

No minutes survive, but the accounts of the year 1787 describe the
expenditure on a new building. Three years later the last item was paid