The foundation of the school followed a petition in 1542 to Henry VIII from the townspeople of Shrewsbury for a free grammar school, requesting that some portion of the estates of the town's two then recently dissolved Collegiate Churches of St Mary (established by King Edgar in the 10th century) and St Chad (established in the 1200s) in the town might be devoted to its support. These two collegiate churches would have had an educational role in the medieval town prior to their dissolution, and there is mention of a grammar school at Shrewsbury in a court case of 1439.