In 1384 on October 20th Lady Katharine Berkeley, the second wife of Thomas III the Eighth Lord of Berkeley formally endowed the school and chantry at Wotton-under-Edge. She died in 1385, outliving her husband by twenty-four years, her body was laid to rest alongside his under the altar tomb in Berkeley Church.
We the said Kitherina (Katherine), attentively considering that the purposes of man desiring to be informed in grammar which is the foundation of all liberal arts, is daily defeated and frustrated by poverty and want of means; therefore for the maintenance and exaltation of Holy Mother Church, and the increase of divine worship, and other liberal arts and sciences, out of the goods bestowed on us by God have procured the said Walter and Williams to acquire certain lands and tenements in fee, that they may build (re-build?) a school-house in Wotton for the habitation and likewise dispose of them for the maintenance of a master and 2 poor scholars of the art of grammar; which master and his successors shall govern and inform all scholars coming to the same house or school coming for instruction in this art without taking anything for his trouble from them or any of them.