In the year 1896 I found an account of this case in the school muniment chest. It consists of two rolled-up folios, lawyers’ briefs, with interrogations, depositions, etc., which were taken on April 15th, 1663, and fill sixty pages of folio. The interrogations for the school administered to the witnesses—of whom there were fifty, twenty-five on each side—referred to their knowledge of the school buildings, schoolmasters and boys, Thacker’s ancestors, rights of way, the award of Sir Francis Burdett and Sir Samuel Sleigh, the Thackers’ conduct, the value of the land, former suits at law, and the use of the yard for recreation by the boys, etc. For Thacker the questions referred to the knowledge of prohibitions by his ancestors and himself, and complaints made to the schoolmasters, etc. The depositions are most interesting, as the knowledge of some of the witnesses extended back to within forty years of the founding of the school. I wish I could quote them at length. Again “the differences between the parties” were settled out of court; “they were referred to the Right Honorable Philipp, Earl of Chesterfield, to be finally determined if he could,” which proved a difficult task, for Thacker would not come to terms; so another writ was issued on January 11th, in the eighteenth year of the reign of Charles the Second, calling upon Thacker, “his Counsel, Attorneys, &c., &c., to fulfil each and every thing contained and specified in the aforesaid order, and in no wise neglect this at your imminent peril.” Thacker pleaded ignorance of the order, “as it was written in short Lattin, some of the words written very short, he did not well understand it, nor could say if it was a true coppy.” His plea was allowed, and a settlement was arrived at; a wall was built, part of it still _in situ_, “by both parties, from the Chancel N.E. corner to the north side of the door of the Nether School House,” below which the boys were not allowed to pass. A receipt for £14 19s. for half the cost of the building of the wall, signed by Wm. Jordan, proves that it was built before or during the year 1670. For over two hundred years the school consisted of the Priory, and a room called the “writing school,” now destroyed, which stood on the east side of the “causey,” a paved passage between the walls, with steps leading into the old “big school,” now the school library. The “schoolmaster’s lodgings” were at the north end; the usher’s at its south. The other “ushers” had their “lodgings” in a building, also destroyed, in what is now known as the “Trent gardens.”