William Pell, who had been a fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge, and a tutor at Durham, declined to start an academic institution, holding himself precluded by his graduation oath from resuming collegiate lectures outside the ancient universities.
[1] His first student was George, youngest son of Sir Thomas Liddell, bart., of Ravensworth Castle, Durham, head of a family distinguished for its loyalty, though marked by puritan leanings.
It was not till the Royal Declaration of Indulgence of 1672, from which Edward Stillingfleet dates the presbyterian separation, that divinity students connected with that body were sent to Rathmell, and the earliest nonconformist ‘academy’ (as distinct from a mere school) became an important institution and the model of others.
He transferred his academy to Calton Hall, the seat of the Lamberts, in the parish of Kirkby Malham, West Yorkshire, and in 1684 to Dawson Fold in Westmoreland, just outside the five-miles radius from Kendal.
His pupil Timothy Jollie, independent minister at Sheffield, began another academy at Attercliffe on a more restricted principle than Frankland's, excluding mathematics ‘as tending to scepticism.’[2] Frankland carried his academy with him back to Rathmell, and during the remaining nine years of his life he admitted nearly as many students as in the whole previous period of over nineteen years.
Tillotson evidently did not like the business, and suggested to Sharp (14 June 1692), as ‘the fairest and softest way of ridding’ his ‘hands of’ it, that he should see Frankland and explain that the objection to licensing his academy was not based upon his nonconformity.
His school was not required in the district, and it was contrary to the bishop's oath to license public instruction in ‘university learning.’ Edmund Calamy states that his troubles continued till the year of his death, but no further particulars are available.