Before the Reformation, the education (such as it was) of the children and youth of this country was committed chiefly to the monks and friars; and carried on in the convents and religious houses,—of which description were even the very universities themselves, if indeed they are not so still. Lynn had then many of those convents and religious houses; and it seems probable that each of them had in it a school, of some sort or other. But they were all schools for _boys_; and yet but few, compared with the whole number of the Lynn boys of those times, can be supposed to have been so fortunate as to get there admitted. As to the _girls_, there was then no such provision made for their education: and they seem to have been, in that point of view, as little regarded as if our ancestors thought, like the Mahometans, that women had no souls. Among the inconveniences occasioned by the general dissolution of the monasteries, one of them must have been that of being deprived of those conventual schools. How long the town continued without any substitutes for them, we are not able to say. Something probably might be done in the reign of _Edward_, though we have not been able to discover any clear proof of it: only the fact may be supposed, as it is well known that many schools were established in that reign, and endowed with some small fragments of the abbey-revenues. Indeed there is some reason to conclude that there was a school, on a very small scale, established here by the corporation, almost immediately after the dissolution, as appears from the following passage in an old memorandum book, extracted chiefly, as it would seem, from the Hall-records—“1538, Sept; 29. Thomas Person, prest, late ffryer, was chosen to be Charnell Prest: He to have for his selary viii_l._ iiii_s._ and licence to preche iiii tymes every Quarter, _and frely to teche vi Child.[ren.]_”—The last expression necessarily implies the establishment of a _school_ for the education of _six children_: and as the teacher was the charnel priest, it may reasonably be concluded that the school was kept at, or over the charnel house. That also being the place where our Grammar School was kept till the erection of the present building, it seems not improbable that this little school for the education of half a dozen boys may have been the origin of that seminary. How long our means of education were confined to one solitary establishment for six boys, we are not able now to say; but we could discover no appearance of the existence of any thing further till _above forty years_ after the dissolution of the convents, when a respectable seminary, on an extensive scale, began to give additional dignity to the character of the town.—We will now proceed to give a cursory view of our principal schools, and present state of education.