The Founding of Exeter School - A History of the Struggle for Freedom of Education Within the City of Exeter #266699

The valuable collection of archives belonging to the Exeter Corporation has yielded in the famous Shillingford Letters a series of documents which throw a valuable flood of light upon the social conditions and the methods of local government that prevailed in this country during the middle of the 15th century. They treat of a legal dispute between the Municipal and Ecclesiastical Authorities as to the extent of their respective jurisdictions within the city. Neither the merits of the conflicting claims of the two parties to the action nor the legal points in dispute have, however, at the present time, more than an academic interest, as the object for which the parties strove has long ago lost its significance, and we can now view the result with indifference. The main interest lies in the personal confidences and the intimate details set forth in the private letters of that worthy and doughty Mayor, John Shillingford, which enable us to acquire a familiar acquaintance with the daily life of the individual actors and steep ourselves in the social atmosphere of the period in which they lived.