§ MR. JESSE COLLINGSasked the Vice President of the Committee of Council, Whether he is aware that the school of Sir Andrew Judd at Tonbridge was founded, and has been carried on for three centuries, as a free school for the benefit of all classes; whether, by the Scheme of 1880, the school was constituted a high or grammar school, from which, through the high scale of fees adopted, the sons of the trading and working classes are practically excluded; whether the Charity Commissioners, in their first draft Scheme, proposed, out of the surplus income of the endowment, to establish a middle or lower school in or near the town of Tonbridge; whether it is true that, on the faith of this proposal, the Skinners' Company, who were the original governors of Judd's free school, did pay to the Charity Commissioners a sum of £20,000, to assist in the establishment of such lower class school in Tonbridge; whether the Commissioners now insist on the establishment of this school at Tunbridge Wells, a town five miles distant from Tonbridge; whether the Skinners' Company, in a Letter dated 22nd June 1883, protested against this change of destination of the endowment, and declared that the school ought to be established, as intended, at Tonbridge; and, whether the Government will take steps to 992 restore to the poorer and middle classes of Tonbridge the advantages and rights of which the Scheme of the Charity Commissioners deprives them?
§ MR. MUNDELLAThe history of Sir Andrew Judd's school at Tonbridge is related in the published Reports of the Charity Commissioners appointed by the late Lord Brougham, and in that of the Schools Inquiry Commissioners. The school is now regulated by a scheme which was passed by the Charity Commissioners in 1880, and which was laid on the Table of both Houses of Parliament, and is now a Statute of the Realm. The various Questions of the hon. Member relate to a subject which some years ago gave rise to much controversy, and the complete answer to them would require an elaborate statement altogether exceeding the usual limits of answers to Questions in this House. If the hon. Member desires the production of any correspondence between the Charity Commissioners and the Skinners' Company subsequent to the time when the scheme became law, it shall be produced. The Government has no power to take any steps to vary a scheme which Parliament has sanctioned, and which is now law.
§ MR. JESSE COLLINGSasked whether, in the original scheme of 1875, the Charity Commissioners did not propose to establish a school in or near the town of Tonbridge; whether they did not afterwards propose to establish it in an adjacent parish; and, whether two years after the scheme was sanctioned by Parliament they did not disclose their intention of removing it to Tunbridge Wells?
§ MR. MUNDELLAIt is impossible to give a categorical answer to these Questions. I have received from the Charity Commissioners several folios upon the subject, which I shall be very glad to submit to the hon. Member.
§ MR. CAUSTONasked whether it was not the fact that the Skinners' Company protested against the secondary school being placed at Tunbridge Wells, and that it was only with the greatest reluctance that they had given up fighting the Charity Commissioners upon the subject?
§ MR. MUNDELLAThat is very possible; but the hon. Gentleman who represents the Skinners' Company did not challenge the schemes in the House; 993 and it is impossible to go into the matter three or four years afterwards.
§ MR. JESSE COLLINGSI beg to give Notice that I shall call attention to the matter in Committee to-night.