He also employed one Godfrey Kinton, a carpenter, to set up “stoopes and rayles (post and rails) from the Chancell nooke to the nooke of the nether School House chinney below the door,” but alas! boys were boys even then, for we read when “he set up one stoope, and went for more, before he returned, the stoope was pulled up, and earth thrown into the hole by the schollers!” Gilbert also tried in a more offensive way to make the occupants of the Schoole House “weary of being there.” Down the School yard “uppon a sudden rush of raine there was usually a water-course through the Courtyard into Mr. Thacker’s inner court ... and soe under the dogg kennell to the river.” This course he stopped “with stones and clodds, and caused the water to run into the School House! twenty-seven or eight pales-full of water had been ladled out.” When Mr. Ullock (the Headmaster) complained, and requested that the stones and clods might be taken away, he was bidden “to take them away himself if he durst, this the schollers did more than once.” Mrs. Ullock came in for a share of the “smites and blows.” For, we read, “one day Gilbert Thacker furiously assaulted Mrs. Ullock as she stood at her own door, and flung her into the house, followed her and strucke her.” His wife joined in the fray, “she strucke Mrs. Ullock, and tore her own gorgett upon a neale.”... “Ann Heyne, being by, interceded for her mistress, whereupon Gilbert strucke her and felled her to the grounde, and gave her a foule pinch by the arm, and again strucke Mrs. Ullacke,” then Mrs. Thacker and her son “ran up to Mr. Ullock’s studdy and told him that his wife had abused _her_ husband!” So we are not surprised to hear that the School brought an action against the Thackers. The High Court of Chancery appointed four gentlemen, as Commissioners, to try the case. William Bullock (O.R.), Daniel Watson, Esquires, Thomas Charnells, and Robert Bennett, gentlemen. They met “at the house of Alderman Hugh Newton, at Derby, there being at the signe of the George.” There they summoned witnesses to attend; fifty did so, twenty-five a side. Their depositions, in answer to interrogatories, were taken on April 15th, 1663, and fill sixty pages of folio. As before mentioned, they consist of two folios, one for the School and one for Thacker. The chief questions administered to the witnesses for the School, referred to their knowledge of the School buildings, Schoolmasters and boys, Thacker’s ancestors, rights of way, award of Sir Francis Burdett, and Sir Samuel Sleigh, former suits at law, the Thackers’ conduct, the value of the land, as grass land, and the use of the yard for recreation by the boys, &c. For Thacker, the questions asked referred to their knowledge of prohibitions by his ancestors and himself, and complaints made to the Schoolmasters, &c. The depositions are most interesting, as the knowledge of witnesses extended back to within forty years of the founding of the School.