assured to her during her life." Two days after another letter betrays his unbearable anxiety on this subject. If the mayor and corporation are not able to perform the undertaking with regard to the jointure, "I shall even," he says desperately, "cast my colledge for ever ... so am I utterly shamed in this world and the world to come."[589] Happily for the cause of "true religion and sound learning," the college was not abandoned, and we will hope the Coventry folk fulfilled their contract. Long before the Reformation and Mr Wheatley's gift the sons of the Coventry burghers attended school, for it is an error to suppose that the education of the laity began with the grammar schools founded by Edward VI. Indeed these foundations were but the "fresh and very inadequate supply of that which had been so suddenly and disastrously extinguished"[590] at the Reformation. Nor was the occupation of teaching confined to the monasteries. The trading-class in or before the fifteenth century threw themselves heartily into the work of providing schools for the coming generations. In most cases the support of these institutions was committed to the leading local guild. In London alone nine grammar schools were set up in the reign of Henry VI.,[591] and in many other places the bounty of some well-to-do bishop or merchant enriched country towns with the endowment of a grammar school. At Coventry there was, it is true, a school at the priory for the "children of the aumbry,"[592] but it appears that there were other "teachers of grammar" in the city, whose well-being was a source of anxiety to the leet, and to these, perhaps, the citizens preferred to send their children to be instructed in the Latin tongue. In 1426 it was enacted by leet that "John Barton shall come to the city of Coventry, if he will, to keep a grammar school there."[593] Barton, however, if he came at all, probably soon made way for a successor, for in 1429 we find an order of leet to the effect that "Mayster John Pynshard, skolemayster of grammer, shall have the place that he dwellethe inne for xls. (40s.) be yere, whyles that he dwellethe in hit, and holdyth gramer skole hym self ther inne."[594] The prior appears to have looked upon these teachers as the rivals of the conventual schoolmasters, but the corporation did their best to soothe his jealousy, and in 1439 the mayor and six of the council, at the request of the leet, went to the prior to "commune" with him concerning this matter, "wylling hym to occupye a skole of gramer, yffe he lyke to teche hys brederen and childerun off the aumbry, and that he wolnot gruche ne move the contrari, but that every man of this cite be at hys fre chosse (choice) to sette his chylde to skole at what techer of gramer that he likyth, as reson askyth."[595] No doubt the town school continued to prosper, for we find at the time of the suppression of the chantries of 1543 that the Trinity guild paid £6, 13s. 4d. as a yearly salary to the schoolmaster.