Editing Grammar school (section)

===Grammar schools in the 18th and 19th centuries===
{{Further|List of English and Welsh endowed schools (19th century)}}
In 1755 [[Samuel Johnson]]'s ''Dictionary'' defined a grammar school as ''a school in which the learned languages are grammatically taught'';<ref>{{cite book
| title      = A Dictionary of the English Language
| author     = Samuel Johnson | year = 1755
| author-link = Samuel Johnson
| title-link     = A Dictionary of the English Language }}</ref>
However, by this time demand for these languages had fallen greatly. A new commercial class required modern languages and commercial subjects.<ref name="Walford"/> Most grammar schools founded in the 18th century also taught arithmetic and English.<ref name="Sutherland">{{cite book
| chapter = Education | pages = 119–169
| author  = Gillian Sutherland
| title   = Social Agencies and Institutions
| editor  = F. M. L. Thompson
| editor-link  = F. M. L. Thompson
| series  = The Cambridge Social History of Britain 1750–1950
| volume  = 3
| year    = 1990
}}</ref> In Scotland, the burgh councils updated the curricula of their schools so that Scotland no longer has grammar schools in any of the senses discussed here, though some, such as [[Aberdeen Grammar School]], retain the name.<ref>{{cite book
| author    = Robert Anderson
| chapter   = The History of Scottish Education, pre-1980
| title     = Scottish Education: Post-Devolution
| editor    = T. G. K. Bryce |editor2=Walter M. Humes
| publisher = Edinburgh University Press | year = 2003
| pages     = 219–228
| isbn      = 978-0-7486-0980-2
}}</ref>

In England, urban middle-class pressure for a commercial curriculum was often supported by the school's trustees (who would charge the new students fees), but resisted by the schoolmaster, supported by the terms of the original endowment. Very few schools were able to obtain special acts of Parliament to change their statutes; examples are the [[the King's School, Macclesfield|Macclesfield Grammar School]] Act 1774 and the [[Bolton School|Bolton Grammar School]] Act 1788.<ref name="Walford"/> Such a dispute between the trustees and master of [[Leeds Grammar School]] led to a celebrated case in the [[Court of Chancery]]. After 10 years, [[John Scott, 1st Earl of Eldon|Lord Eldon]], then [[Lord Chancellor]], ruled in 1805, "There is no authority for thus changing the nature of the Charity, and filling a School intended for the purpose of teaching Greek and Latin with Scholars learning the German and French languages, mathematics, and anything except Greek and Latin."<ref name="Matthews">{{cite book
| title     = The Register of Leeds Grammar School 1820–1896
| author    = J.H.D. Matthews |author2=Vincent Thompson Jr
| publisher = Laycock and Sons | location = Leeds | year = 1897
| chapter-url       = https://archive.org/details/registerleedsgr00englgoog
| chapter   = A Short Account of the Free Grammar School at Leeds
| page      = xvi
}}</ref> Although he offered a compromise by which some subjects might be added to a classical core, the ruling set a restrictive precedent for grammar schools across England; they seemed to be in terminal decline.<ref name="Spens Report"/><ref name="Sutherland"/> However it should be borne in mind that the decline of the grammar schools in England and Wales was not uniform and that until the foundation of [[St Bees Theological College|St Bees Clerical College]], in 1817, and [[University of Wales, Lampeter|St David's College Lampeter]], in 1828, specialist grammar schools in the north-west of England and South Wales were in effect providing tertiary education to men in their late teens and early twenties, which enabled them to be ordained as Anglican clergymen without going to university.<ref>{{Cite book|title=The Education of the Anglican Clergy, 1780–1839|last=Slinn|first=Sara|publisher=Boydell and Brewer|year=2017|isbn=978-1-78327-175-7|location=Woodbridge|pages=129–169}}</ref>