Friars School is a school in Bangor, Gwynedd, and the second oldest extant school in Wales. History 1557 Establishment The school was founded by Geoffrey Glyn who had been brought up in Anglesey and had followed a career in law in London. A friary had been established in Bangor by the Dominican Order, or Black Friars, in the 13th century. At the dissolution of the monasteries, the friary was wound up in 1538. Geoffrey Glyn bought the site with a view to establishing a grammar school. In his will dated 8 July 1557, he left the property and endowments towards establishing the school. Geoffrey's will left the property to his brother William Glyn, Bishop of Bangor and Maurice Griffith, Bishop of Rochester, for them to execute his wishes. However, both of these died in the following year, but they further transferred the will to Sir William Petre, a former Secretary of State, Sir William Garrard, a former Lord Mayor of London and Simon Lowe, a London merchant tailor, who were able to fulfill Geoffrey Glyn's intentions. Although a school had been meeting in the city before this date, the new school was only formally established when it received letters patent from Elizabeth I in 1561. The school was to be known as The free grammar school of Geoffrey Glyn, Doctor of Laws, but because of the connection with the Black Friars, later became known as "Friars School". The letters patent established the dean and chapter of Bangor Cathedral as the corporation to govern the school. In 1568, statutes were adopted to regulate the schools, based closely on the statutes of Bury St. Edmunds School in Suffolk, founded a few years earlier. The school has been established to provide a free grammar school education for the boys of the poor. This comprised a classical education, in Latin and Greek only. The children who benefited were not the most poor, but the middle class preparing for a career in the ministry or the law like Geoffrey Glyn himself. The school was maintained from income on the endowments left by Geoffrey Glyn and later benefactors, mainly rents on land in Southwark and a rent charge on land in Oswestry purchased using money left by Glyn. The school continued in the old friary, close to the banks of the River Adda for over two centuries (at ). The second building, 1789 Under the patronage