to reward his loyal supporter Robert Maxwell. The proviso was added Maxwell and his successors paid £16 per year, which reinstated the lapsed stipend for a Wye schoolmaster. Years later the sum would be diminished by inflation and several holders of the position faced short tenure and great financial hardship. With salary back in place, the following year a grammar school for boys opened in part of the college though the southern range continued to be used as a private house in ownership of the Winchilsea Finch family from Eastwell. Restoration poet Ann Finch and her husband Heneage lived quietly at Wye College from 1690 to 1708 to avoid persecution at Court for their Jacobite sympathies. Several of her works refer directly or indirectly to the college and their time there, including reaction to a chimney fire in 1702. Wye College's grammar school did not achieve the prominence of rival Eton College though its alumni included notables such as journalist Alaric Alexander Watts and Robert Plot, first keeper of Oxford's Ashmolean Museum. In 1762 there were 40 boarders and 100 day pupils but during other periods considerably less, if any at all. Sometimes the position was treated as little more than a sinecure. In 1868 the grammar school's position was bleak. Although teaching of classics was free, locals were concerned about increasing costs for tuition in other subjects. The school had only four boarders despite a capacity for 40. An alternative curriculum was considered and unless changes were made, an inspector concluded it would be hard to "keep a good master for £16 and half a house". Lady Joanna Thornhill School Cardinal Kempe's nephew Thomas Kempe sold Olantigh to Sir Timothy Thornhill in 1607. The 1708 will of Lady Joanna Thornhill, the daughter of Sir Bevil Grenville, second wife of descendent Richard Thornhill, and Woman of the Bedchamber to Queen Catherine of Braganza provided funds to care for and educate the children of Wye. Her trust purchased parts of the college buildings and other property for that purpose. Sir George Wheler, who some sources claim was Lady Joanna Thornhill's nephew, acquired the private mansion - the southern range, garden, outbuildings and Latin School in 1713. He had been a pupil at Wye Grammar School but "learnt little" there. That transaction left the college part owned by Lady Thornhill's trust and, on Wheler's death in 1724, part by his. A grammar