Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Pate, Richard (1516-1588)
PATE, RICHARD (1516–1588), founder of the Cheltenham grammar school, commonly described as of Minsterworth, Gloucestershire, was born on 24 Sept. 1516. At the age of sixteen he was admitted ‘disciple’ (= scholar) on the Gloucestershire foundation of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, but never became fellow. He was a commissioner to Henry VIII and Edward VI for taking a survey of all the suppressed religious foundations in Gloucester, Bristol, and neighbouring places, and himself purchased of Edward VI several of the lands belonging to these monasteries in Gloucestershire and elsewhere. He was also for many years recorder of Gloucester. In 1586 he founded the grammar school and almshouses (‘hospital’) at Cheltenham which still bear his name, and by an indenture dated 6 Oct. of that year he covenants with Corpus Christi College that, in return for undertaking the charge of his property and administering the benefaction, they shall, as stipulated in the statutes of the founder, receive one-fourth part of the gross revenue. This property, which was situated in Cheltenham and Gloucester, brought in at that time a gross sum of about 54l. a year. It now, in some years, produces a net income of over 2,000l. Pate died on 28 Oct. 1588, in his seventy-third year, and was buried in the south transept of Gloucester Cathedral, where his monument was renewed by Corpus Christi College in 1688. He is dressed in the habit of a lawyer, and is represented together with his wife and children. There is also a fine portrait of him, apparently contemporary, though by an unknown artist, in the Corpus common room. This Richard Pate must not be confounded with Richard Pate or Pates [q. v.], bishop of Worcester.
[Fowler's History of Corpus Christi College, pp. 34–5; Rudder's Hist. of Gloucestershire, p. 118; Griffith's Hist. of Cheltenham, pp. 53–4.]