‘More like a tavern than a school house’: Family strife, religious change, and the founding of Oundle Grammar School, 1556–1578

The convoluted and contested foundation of the Grammar School at Oundle, Northamptonshire, in 1573 illustrated the complexities involved in giving concrete shape to pious wishes in 16th-century post-mortem bequests. Although the founder was Sir William Laxton (d. 1556), the key figure was his widow, the assertive matriarch Dame Joan Kirkeby-Luddington-Laxton, the richest woman of early Elizabethan London. This paper analyses the politics, religious context, and family strife of this dispute, and in so doing illuminates the contours of early Elizabethan London.