In 1686, Richard Frankland set up a dissenting academy at Attercliffe Hall. Three years later, it was taken over by the nonconformist minister Timothy Jollie, who educated students including John Bowes, Nicholas Saunderson and Thomas Secker. Secker, later Archbishop of Canterbury, was frustrated by Jollie's poor teaching, famously remarking that he lost his knowledge of languages and that 'only the old Philosophy of the Schools was taught there: and that neither ably nor diligently. The morals also of many of the young Men were bad. I spent my time there idly & ill'.