A local history study which is the first of two volumes examining schools from 1400 in one West Country market town.

Bruton Free Grammar School (now King's School), formally founded in 1519, was in the forefront of pre-Reformation education. A small number of local boys were taught principally Latin for no fees. For them, conditions were at best austere and at worst, as under one nineteenth century Headmaster, harsh with frequent floggings. Its history was at times a struggle between Master and Governors: several of the former intransigent and the latter displayed incompetence, mismanagement and factionalism. By 1914 the School had changed significantly: a broader curriculum, no longer free and principally for boarders. It was, however, still there.