Thomas of Rotherham, Chancellor of England

By Grace Shaw
BBC Sheffield & South Yorkshire

A local woman, Joyce Williams, discovered crucial parts of a historical story which saw a man from Rotherham become the Chancellor of England.

Thomas took the name of his home town rather than his family name

Thomas of Rotherham (1423-1500) became Chancellor of England and Archbishop of York in the late 1400s.

The town of Rotherham did not originally have a school but an educational institution was set up by a a grammar master when Thomas was young.

Many English grammar schools were founded in the 16th century, or earlier in Rotherham's case, for the teaching of Latin.

Thomas was taught Latin and went on to become an important political and religious figure in the 15th century.

He returned to Rotherham in 1482 to establish a magnificent red brick grammar school, which he donated to the town in memory of his grammar master.

But despite the inspirational grammar master's publicised existence his identity was unknown by historians for hundreds of years.

Local historian Joyce Williams in Rotherham Minster

Local historian Joyce Williams came across the story and decided to find out more.

She found a paper in Sheffield Archives written by a Sheffield lawyer on the same search in the 1930s. He claimed to have discovered the grammar master's identity - but his paper had remained unseen in the Archives for 75 years.

The lawyer made his discovery while examining one of the earliest dictionaries ever written in English. Previous dictionaries were written in Latin. This one dates from 1475 and although it was a national dictionary, many of the words were local and written phonetically, for example 'coyle' (a dialect word for 'coal') and many Sheffield cutlery terms too.

This led the lawyer to believe that the words must have been collated by a local person; someone with a knowledge of grammar.

Eventually the lawyer found the will of an Ecclesfield vicar, Thomas Swift, who died in 1478. In his will he "bequeaths 40 shillings for the making of a book for children which has been begun but which is not finished."

The 'book for children' refers to an instructive grammar book, or dictionary, rather than a fictional story, says Joyce: "They didn't have fairy stories in those days - they wrote grammar books."

Manuscript of the second oldest dictionary in English (1483)

The 1475 dictionary was indeed unfinished. A second copy, this time finished, is dated 1483.

Joyce says it is pretty certain that Thomas Swift, a relative of a rich Rotherham family, had written the dictionary at around the same time - and that the same man was the grammar master who taught Thomas Rotherham.

"It all links together. Thomas Rotherham had land in Ecclesfield; he founded the college for boys in Rotherham and Ecclesfield; he started to build the college soon after the death of the old man whose will mentioned the grammar book; and the college was built in 1482 in memory of his grammar master. It was super evidence."

The evidence was so super that Joyce presented it to the British Library, who accepted it. They now say that Thomas Rotherham's grammar master and the man who wrote the important dictionary in English was Thomas Swift.

Thomas Rotherham died in 1500. His remains are interred in a marble tomb in York Minster.

Thomas Rotherham's original grammar school was on the site of All Saints Square in Rotherham town centre. In 1890 the school moved to the building which now houses Thomas Rotherham College on Moorgate Road. This building had originally been built in 1876 as a training college for ministers of the Independent church.