Preview: A 475th anniversary, +Abbot John Reeve, and the Fenn Brothers

On Monday, July 28, with the excuse of the 475th anniversary of the founding of one of King Edward VI's Grammar Schools, we'll discuss the dissolution of the monastery of the Abbey of Bury St. Edmunds, the sad death of its last Abbot, John Reeve, and two recusant Catholic brothers, one an exile, the other a martyr! All that (at least some of it!) on the Son Rise Morning Show at my usual approximate time, 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central. Please listen live here or catch the podcast later here.

Last month, the King Edward VI School, Bury St Edmunds celebrated the 475th anniversary of its founding. As the name indicates, it was founded during the reign of King Edward VI, the third Tudor Monarch (1547-1553). 

According to the school's website:

It is believed there was a school in Bury St Edmunds from the 10th century. In 903 the body of King Edmund was laid in the priests’ college, of which the school was a part. King Canute established a Benedictine Monastery in Bury, and paid from the royal purse for boys of promise, even freed sons of slaves, to attend school. In 1550 lands were given to provide funds for a “scole ther to be founded by the kinges Maiestie in the like manner as the school at Sherbourne”.         

King Edward VI School is, therefore, the second King Edward VI School in the country, and in 2000 it had been founded for 450 years. . . . The charter with Edward’s seal is in the Public Records Office together with documents and books from the early years of the school’s existence. One of these is the list of rules for the masters and boys.

Here are a few of the rules for the boys who attended classes that first year:

Those who cannot read and write shall be excluded. They must learn elsewhere the arts of reading and writing. No boy shall come to school with unkempt hair, unwashed hands or dirty shoes or boots, torn or untidy clothes. Any boy misbehaving himself either in Church or any other public place shall be flogged. They shall speak Latin in school. Truants, idlers and dullards shall be expelled by the High Master after a year’s trial. Every boy shall have at hand, ink, paper, knife (used to sharpen a quill pen), pens and books. When they have need to write the boys shall use their knees as a table.

Sounds tough, doesn't it? The staff didn't have it much easier. According to those 1550 rules: "They shall abstain from dicing, gaming and tippling. They must not keep their family on the premises. Women like deadly plagues shall be kept at a distance."
Both of these Edward VI schools--at Sherborne and at Bury St. Edmund's--were founded on the sites of former monasteries. Bury St. Edmund's Abbey was the site of St. Edmund the Martyr's shrine and a great site of pilgrimage from the Twelfth Century until its dissolution in 1539, as the British History Online website explains:

Early in 1538, the agents for [de]spoiling the greater monasteries (in this case Williams, Pollard, Parys, and Smyth) visited St. Edmunds. Writing to Cromwell, from Bury, they tell the Lord Privy Seal that they found a rich shrine which was very cumbrous to deface; that they had stripped the monastery of over 5,000 marks in gold and silver, besides a rich cross bestudded with emeralds and other stones of great value; but that they had left the church and convent well furnished with silver plate. (fn. 80)

On 4 November, 1539, this famous abbey was surrendered. The surrender is signed by Abbot John Reeve, Prior Thomas Ringstede (alias Dennis), and by forty-two other monks. (fn. 81) . . .

On 11 November, the abnormally large pension of £333 6s. 8d. was allotted to the abbot. (fn. 84) He lived, however, only a few months after the dissolution of his house. Weighed down, as it is said, with sorrow and disappointment at the complete degradation of his order, he died on 31 March, 1540, in a small private house at the top of Crown Street, Bury St. Edmunds, never having drawn a penny of his pension. He was buried in the chancel of St. Mary's Church, with a pathetic Latin epitaph on the brass over his remains. The brasses were torn from his grave in 1643, and in 1717 the slab was broken up and the remains removed to make way for the burial of a ship's purser named Sutton. (fn. 85)

So we also commemorate the 485th anniversary of the death of Abbot John Reeve this year. More about him here in a list of ten Abbots of Bury St. Edmunds. Here's a picture of his epitaph in the church, in which Henry VIII's sister and former Queen of France, Mary, is also buried (transferred after the dissolution of the abbey). 

May he rest in the peace of Christ--his earthly remains were not accorded any peace.

Back to the founding of the Edward VI Grammar school: According to the school's website, the first High Master was John King (1550-2). Since the school was organized during the reign of Edward VI, I would presume he was a Calvinist in doctrine. But since Edward VI died in 1553, and his elder, resolutely Catholic half-sister Mary succeeded him on the throne, the next High Master was a Catholic.

His name was John Fenn, and he was the brother of a Catholic martyr, Blessed James Fenn. According to the old Dictionary of National Biography John

was a native of Montacute, near Wells, Somersetshire. After being educated in the rudiments of grammar and music as a chorister of Wells Cathedral, he was sent to Winchester School in 1547 (Kirby, Winchester Scholars, p. 127; Addit. MS. 22136, f. 21). He was elected probationer of New College, Oxford, in 1550, and two years later, after being made perpetual fellow, he was appointed to study the civil law. It does not appear whether he took a degree in that faculty. In Queen Mary's reign he became schoolmaster at Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk, but upon the alteration of religion soon after Elizabeth's accession ‘he was forced thence by the giddy zeal of two Scots, that were then settled in those parts’ (Wood, Athenæ Oxon., ed. Bliss, ii. 111). Subsequently he went to the Low Countries, and afterwards studied for four years in Italy, and was ordained priest. Dodd's statement that he was admitted into the English College at Rome is not confirmed by the ‘Diary’ of the college. After his return to Flanders he became confessor to the English Augustinian nuns at Louvain. There and in the neighbouring cities he spent about forty years ‘as an exiled person, doing extraordinary benefit in the way he professed’ (ib. p. 113). He died at Louvain on 27 Dec. 1615.

As easily anticipated by all of you reading this, the next High Master was an Anglican, having taken the requisite oaths. The school is "a Voluntary Controlled Church of England school" to this day and "worship reflects the Anglican tradition" per this source. Alumni of the school are called "Old Burians".

Father John Fenn's brother, the martyr, also had a late vocation to the priesthood, having been married and then a widower (according to the same source):

catholic priest, born at Montacute, near Wells, Somersetshire, became a chorister of New College, Oxford, and afterwards was elected a scholar of Corpus Christi College 31 July 1554, and a fellow of that society 26 Nov. 1558. He was admitted B.A. 22 Nov. 1559, but was ‘put aside’ from that degree and from his place in the college on account of his refusal to take the oath of supremacy (Boase, Register of the Univ. of Oxford, p. 240). Then he settled in Gloucester Hall, where he had several pupils. On being forced to leave Oxford he acted as tutor to the sons of a gentleman in his native county, where he married and had two children. After the death of his wife he became steward to Sir Nicholas Pointz, a catholic gentleman. He arrived at the English College at Rheims on 5 June 1579, was ordained priest at Châlons-sur-Marne on 1 April 1580, and was sent back to labour on the mission in Somersetshire. He was soon apprehended, and although not yet known to be a priest he was loaded with irons. The council ordered him to be brought to London, and after being examined by Secretary Walsingham he was committed to the Marshalsea, where he remained in captivity for two years. His sacerdotal character having been at last discovered, he was brought to trial, and condemned to death on account of his priesthood. He was executed at Tyburn on 12 Feb. 1583–4, together with four other priests. [George Haydock, Thomas Hemerford, John Nutter, and John Mundyn]

Saint Edmund the Martyr, pray for us!

Saint Benedict, pray for us!

Blessed James Fenn, pray for us!

Image source (Public Domain): Portrait of Edward VI of England, seated, wearing a gown lined in fur (ermine or lynx) over a crimson doublet with the collar of the Order of the Garter and holding a Bible.