ite uncertain. The
accommodation was slight and the teaching staff limited to the Master
and Usher, but the boys were probably packed very close. During the nine
years of his mastership, boys were steadily sent to Cambridge. Christ's
alone admitted twenty-five and in one single year (1652) three others
entered S. John's. These boys were sons of really poor men. John Cockett
in 1651 was the first recorded receiver of the Shute Exhibition of L5,
and in the next year it was given to Josias Dockray, son of the late
Master, "whom we conceive to be a poore scoller of our parish." Both
these boys became ordained and in time were appointed to one or more
livings. For a century and a half Giggleswick fed Christ's with a steady
stream of boys who almost without exception entered the service of the
Church.

Seventeenth century Giggleswick took no heed of the progress of the
School and records do not abound. It was a disturbed period in English
history and political and religious troubles occupied men's minds to the
exclusion of lesser matters. Giggleswick was nevertheless well-known,
for in 1697 Abraham de la Prynne records in his diary an anecdote of a
Mr. Hollins who thirty years before had lived at Giggleswick "as I
remember in Yorkshire where the great school is." Apparently Anthony
Lister, who was then Vicar had roused the resentment of a particular
Quaker, who found himself anxious to go to the Parish Church to rebuke
Lister publicly, when he began to preach. On his way thither he met a
friend and told him of his intention. The man tried to dissuade him but
finding argument of no avail, he asked him what induced him to choose
this particular Sunday. Whereupon the Quaker replied that "the Spirit"
had sent him. The rejoinder came quickly "why did the Spirit not also
tell thee that one Roger and not the Vicar is preaching to-day?" There
was at this period one particularly distinguished son of Giggleswick,
Richard Frankland born at "Rothmelae" (Rathmell) in 1631 who came to the
School when he was nine and at the age of seventeen went as a Burton
Exhibitioner to Christ's College, Cambridge. The Shute Minute-Book of
1651 has the following entry:

xxj_st_ January, 1651.

Received the day and yeare abovesaid from Robt. Claphamson the
some of eight pounds which he received of James Smith, of
Burton, for one year's rent, the which is disbursed by us as
follows (to witt) to Jane ffrankland for her son, viz. xl_s.