Winchester, should, even though he was King Stephen’s brother, thus
interfere in the affairs of another diocese. The explanation is that he
was in fact acting as Bishop of London at that time, holding the See
during its vacancy _in commendam_, or in charge. This fact enables us to
fix the date. It must lie between 1138, when, according to the
chronicler, Ralph de Diceto,[46] who was Dean of St. Paul’s, “the Pope
with the King’s consent, committed the care of the church of London to
Henry, Bishop of Winchester,” and 1140, when “the Empress (Matilda) was
received by the Londoners for their lady, and she made Robert of the
Seal, bishop of London.” Rival schoolmasters had no doubt taken
advantage of the relaxation of discipline during the prolonged vacancy
of the See, consequent on the Pope’s setting aside the election of the
Abbot of St. Edmund’s Bury to it, to set up “adulterine” or unlicensed
schools. When the See was placed under a strong guardian, the arm of the
church was stretched out to defend the monopoly of its children.
But the injunction against rival schools was not, as has been
represented by Dugdale,[47] any special favour to Henry the schoolmaster
of St. Paul’s. It was merely in accordance with the common law of the
church. We find precisely the same kind of proceeding going on at
Winchester itself[48] at about the same time, and again as late as 1629;
while copious instances of its use are to be found at Canterbury in the
fourteenth, and at York and Beverley[49] in the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries.
Master Henry had been appointed schoolmaster by Richard Belmeis, Bishop
of London, and his appointment is still extant among the archives of St.
Paul’s, not only in a chartulary copy but in the actual original itself.
As it is probably the oldest instrument of its kind in England, it is
given in full.
COLLATION OF THE SCHOOL[50]
Richard, by the Grace of God, Bishop of London, to William, Dean,
and the whole assembly of his brethren, and to William of Oschendon
his steward, and all his men, Greeting and blessing in Christ.
I make known to you, my beloved, that I have granted to Henry, my
canon, the pupil of Master Hugh, the school of St. Paul’s, as
honourably as the church in best and most honourable wise ever held
it, and the land of the court (_atrio_) which the aforesaid Hugh
enclosed there to house himself in; and the meadow which I had
granted to the same Hugh in Fulham, 4 acres; namely, the whole land
from the ditch to the Thames (he paying) 12d. a year by way of
acknowledgment at Michaelmas; and, in alms, the tithes of Ealing and
the tithes of Madeley.
Witnesses, William of Winchester, William of Occhenden, steward, and
Hugh de Cancerisio.
On the strength of this and a previous document, Bishop Stubbs
speaks[51] of Bishop Richard de Belmeis, de Bello Manso (or Fairhouse),
as having “founded” the “schools” (_sic_) “of St. Paul’s.” The previous
document is only preserved in a copy in the early chartulary called
Liber A. It is addressed to W. Dean and the whole assembly of canons
(_fratrum conventui_) and informs the bishop’s “best beloved sons” that
he has “confirmed (_stabilisse_) to Hugh the Schoolmaster, _ex officio_
as Master, and to his successors in that dignity, the place of Mr.
Durand in the corner of the Tower, where Dean William placed him by my
orders between Robert de Auco and Odo.” The Bishop then proceeds, “I
grant to him and to the privilege of the school the custody of all the
books of my church,” and orders the dean to have a list of the books
made out in an indenture, one part of which is to be placed in the
treasury, the other to be kept by the schoolmaster, who is to be given
seisin of the books; while any books that have been lent out, whether
theological (_divinorum_) or of secular learning, are to be returned, on
pain of excommunication. Hugh was also “to have the keys of the
cupboards” (_armariorum_, aumbreys as they are now somewhat affectedly
called) “which I ordered to be made for the purpose.”
As no witnesses are recorded, the date of this cannot be fixed, except
as being between 1111, when William became Dean, and 1127, when Bishop
Richard died. It must, of course, be before the document appointing
Henry as schoolmaster in succession to this same Hugh.
Neither of the two documents supports Bishop Stubbs’ statement that
Bishop Richard “founded” the “schools” of St. Paul’s. It is odd that the
Bishop should have fallen into this mistake, as Dugdale[52] described
the documents quite accurately, as grants to the Schoolmaster of St.
Paul’s. Both of the grants imply that the schoolmaster’s office or
“dignity” was in existence before. The later document is, of course, as
it is called, merely a collation; an appointment of a new master, Henry,
who had himself been a scholar in the school, to succeed a deceased
master, Hugh. The earlier one merely confirms, not grants, to an
existing officer or dignitary of the cathedral the residence he already
enjoyed, at the same time annexing that particular residence to the
office, while giving him the apparently[53] new duty of taking care of
the books belonging to the church. The title of Master applied to Durand
suggests that he too had been schoolmaster before Hugh, and lived in the
same house as Hugh did, but that the house, then only an ordinary
prebendal house, was now definitely made the schoolmaster’s official
residence.
It is particularly unfortunate that Bishop Stubbs should also have been
misled by the plural form used in the original for a school into
misunderstanding the mention of the school of St. Paul’s for a reference
to schools, meaning more than one. There has been no more prolific
source of misrepresentation as to the whole status and history of
mediæval schools than this misunderstanding. Yet it is beyond doubt that
until the middle of the fifteenth century the word school was habitually
not _scola_ but _scolæ_.[54] The official title of a grammar
schoolmaster was not _Magister Scole Gramatices_ or _Gramaticalis_ but
_Magister Scolarum Gramaticalium_. He was schoolsmaster not
schoolmaster. This was the style almost universally used in official and
formal documents up to the reign of Edward VI. In less formal documents,
such as Account Rolls and the like, the singular form began to oust the
plural as nearly as possible in the year 1450. Before that time, though
there are occasional uses of the word in the singular, the normal use
was in the plural. A few references to original documents will be enough
to show the identity of meaning of the singular and plural forms. Thus,
in an inquiry as to St. Cross Hospital near Winchester in 1373,[55] when
evidence was given that among the 100 poor fed every day in the
Hundredmen’s Hall, there were 13 poor scholars sent from the Grammar
School of Winchester; some witnesses call them “poorer scholars of the
grammar school (_scole gramaticalis_) of the city of Winchester,” and
others, “poor scholars from the grammar school (_scolis gramaticalibus_)
there,” the school being called indifferently the grammar school and the
high school of the city of Winchester. Again in the Winchester College
Account Roll for 1394, the head-master of the college grammar school,
which was not the same as the City grammar school, is called both
_Magister Scolis_ and _Magister Scole_. This evidence is the more
clinching as it is rare at that date to find the word school in the
singular at all. Indeed, except at Winchester and London, as will be
seen presently, where there seems to have been a higher standard of
classical accuracy, I do not know of another instance of the word school
in the singular in the fourteenth century.
The clearing up of this point is important, as the plural use has made
people[56] search for two or more schools, and in consequence has led
them to confound two entirely different schools, the Grammar School for
the world at large, and the Song School chiefly, if not exclusively, for
the choristers; and, in consequence, to maintain that the mediæval
grammar schools were poor starved things, where a dozen choristers at
most stumbled through their declensions and their psalter.
The documents of Richard de Belmeis then are not the foundation of St.
Paul’s School. On the contrary, they point to it as previously existing,
and to the schoolmaster as already one of the dignitaries or principal
persons of the chapter. The true date of foundation and the real founder
of St. Paul’s School must be sought in the foundation and founder of St.
Paul’s Cathedral Church itself. The first foundation was in 604,
when[57]
Augustine, Archbishop of the Britains, ordained two Bishops,
Mellitus and Justus: Mellitus to preach to the province of Essex,
separated from Kent by the river Thames, and close to the Eastern
sea, whose metropolis is London city placed on the banks of the said
river, an emporium for many nations, coming by land and sea; whose
king then was Saberet (or Sebert) nephew of Ethelbert by his sister
Ricula, though placed under the power of Ethelbert, who then ruled
all the English race up to the Humber. When the province received
the word of truth on the preaching of Mellitus, King Ethelbert made
in the city of London the church of St. Paul the Apostle, in which
he and his successors had their bishop’s See.
After Ethelbert and Sebert died in 616[58] there was a reaction to the
old religion, and Mellitus fled abroad. When he tried to return, after
the conversion of Ethelbert’s successor in Kent, London would not have
him. It remained heathen till Oswi, King of the Northumbrians, converted
Sigebert, a refugee prince, who, on returning home, made Cedd bishop of
the East Saxons. But no mention is made of London as his See, and
Tilbury[59] rather appears to have been his principal church. He died of
the plague in 664. Wine,[60] expelled from Winchester, bought the See of
London from Wulfhere, King of the Mercians, somewhere about 666.
Thenceforward the history of the See and church is unbroken. It is only
therefore from this last date that we can reckon the continuous history
of St. Paul’s Cathedral or its school. There is no direct reference to
the school in Bede, as there is to that of Canterbury, when the King of
the East Angles got schoolmasters thence in 631. But the place[61] where
lived the learned Nothelm, Bede’s principal informant as to the history
of southern England, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, and Erkenwald
or Earconwald, bishop from 675 to 692, whose name and fame in later
ages, as the local saint of London, completely eclipsed that of St. Paul
himself, much as St. Swithin did that of St. Peter at Winchester, can
hardly have failed to maintain a school, any more than Canterbury or
York or Winchester.
The original statutes of St. Paul’s Cathedral have not survived. The
earliest statute affecting the school appears in a collection made
during the deanery of Henry of Cornhill,[62] 1243 to 1254, who had been
Chancellor of St. Paul’s from 1217 till he became Dean. It is a statute
relating to the duties of the Chancellor. When present, it is said,
the Chancellor makes out the table (_tabulam_) of lessons, masses,
Epistles, Gospels, acolytes, and performers of the service in course
for a week (_ebdomadariis_) and hears the lessons [_i.e._ the reader
has to read them over to him beforehand to see that he reads them
correctly]. On feast days he hears the Bishop read, hands him the
book to be read from at the beginning of mattins; and, clothed in a
silk cope, holds the book for the Bishop to read at the last of the
[nine] lessons. [The Chancellor himself, a later statute informs us,
read the 6th lesson.] He introduces the clerks of lower grade to be
ordained, and after examining them in school presents them to the
Bishop for ordination, and administers justice to every one who
makes any complaint as to their conduct. All scholars living in the
city are under him, except those of a school of the Arches, and a
school in the Basilica of St. Martin’s the Great, who claim that
they are privileged in these and other matters. The Chancellor also
keeps the chest with the school books in it.
The reference to a school (_unam scolam_) in St. Mary-le-Bow and St.
Martin’s respectively, may be compared with the plural for the same
schools in the writ of Bishop Henry of Blois.
In the digest of the statutes of St. Paul’s made during the deanery of
Ralph of Baldock, 1294-1304, the words as to the Chancellor’s supremacy
over the schools are repeated almost verbatim; but the plural form
_scolarum_ is used instead of the singular for the single schools at St.
Martin’s and St. Mary-le-Bow respectively. This is pretty conclusive
testimony of the identity in meaning of plural and singular for a single
school. In this latter digest we find further details about the
chancellor and a special statute, headed, “of the appointment of an M.A.
to the Grammar School (_scolæ grammaticæ_).” The body of the statute is
part of the statute as to the chancellor. It says:
The Chancellor appoints a master of arts to the Grammar School
(_scolis_) and is bound to keep the school itself (_scolas ipsas_)
in repair. He composes the letters and deeds of the Chapter. He
reads whatever has to be read in Chapter. He is the chief keeper of
the seal, and receives a pound of pepper for every deed that is
sealed or renewed, the Chapter receiving 3s.
“If the Dean has to be ordained”—we may remember that William of Wykeham
was Dean of St. Martin’s-le-Grand when still only an acolyte, and
Reginald Pole, though a cardinal and an ex-dean, was not a priest till
the day before he became Archbishop of Canterbury—“the Chancellor calls
him by the title of St. Paul’s.”
The chancellor is
the chief keeper of the school books in the chest, and ought to show
them once a year to the Dean and others appointed for the purpose,
and a copy of the list of them is to be kept by the Dean, the
Chancellor and a third brother [_i.e._ canon] appointed for the
purpose.
It is possible, of course, though not perhaps very probable, that there
were no written statutes of St. Paul’s affecting the school earlier than
those quoted. Whether there were written statutes or not, the writs of
Bishop Richard prove the schoolmaster’s office to have been in existence
at least 150 years before this earliest written statute. But we might
have positively asserted that there was such an officer if those writs
had not existed, because the maintenance of a schoolmaster was part of
the customary constitution of cathedral churches. Alcuin’s
description[63] of the duties of himself and his predecessor, Ethelbert
or Albert, afterwards archbishop, as schoolmaster at York in the eighth
century, shows a schoolmaster fulfilling precisely the same mixture of
legal, clerkly, and educational duties which appear in the famous
Institution of St. Osmund at Salisbury in the eleventh and the statutes
of St. Paul’s in the thirteenth century. As early as 832 a definite
conciliar decree embodied in the written canon law the obligation,
already crystallised into custom, that every cathedral church should
maintain a school.
When Earl Harold[64] founded, or rather augmented, in 1060 the
collegiate church of secular canons of the Holy Cross of Waltham with a
dean and twelve canons, the principal person next to the provost or
dean, as he is indifferently called, was the schoolmaster. The history
of the foundation was written for us by one who was made a canon before
1144, having been “from tender years brought up in the church and taught
Latin in its bosom.”[65] He was one of those who were turned out in
1177, when, with vicarious liberality, Henry II. converted the college
into a priory of regular or Augustinian canons, in satisfaction of his
vow to found a monastery in expiation of Becket’s death. This canon
tells us[66] how Harold having heard that the Dutch was the best model,
imported Master Athelard, a native of Liege, who had been educated at
Utrecht, to assist Wulfwin the Dean in settling the constitution of the
church. Our author himself, who does not give his name, says that his
master[67] was “Master Peter, son of Master Athelard.” For the secular
canons were, like their modern successors, allowed to marry, and this
was the real reason why the favourers of monkery charged them with evil
living. He tells us how
a copious stream of learning flowed from this Peter after the
fashion of the Dutch (_Teutonicorum_) and yet the lessons and
classics and verse composition in no way lessened the practice of
singing in the churches. So far from boyish habits were they, that
they walked in procession, stood, read and sang, with as much
gravity as if they had been monks; and chanted and sang by heart
solos or in duets or trios, without book whatever had to be sung at
the steps of the choir or in the choir itself.... As they came in
procession, like canons getting up to mid-night matins, from school
to choir, so when leaving choir they go to school.
Here, then, we see that a school, a grammar school, was regarded as an
integral and necessary, and a most important part of the foundation of a
collegiate church before the Conquest.
Similar evidence comes from another collegiate church of pre-Conquest
foundation, that of St. Mary, Warwick. This church, situate in the
middle of the town, is recorded in Domesday Book as possessing a hide of
land. There was also a collegiate church of All Saints, a kind of
garrison chapel, in the castle, the stronghold founded by Ethelfled, the
Lady of the Mercians, against the Danes in 916, but which after the date
of Domesday Book passed into the hands of one of the Norman invaders.
Forty years after Domesday Book, in 1123, disputes having arisen between
the two churches, the second Norman lord, Roger de Beaumont, confirmed
to these two churches all their respective property as they held it in
his father’s time. Then by a separate deed he confirmed “in alms,”
_i.e._ in perpetuity free from feudal service, “to the church of St.
Mary of Warwick the school (_scolas_) of the said church, that the
service of God in the same may be improved by the attendance of
scholars.” By a similar deed he must have confirmed All Saints in its
school, as a writ of King Henry I. addressed to this Earl Roger and the
ecclesiastical lords, the Bishops of Worcester and Chester, directs
“that the Church of All Saints, Warwick, shall have all its customs and
judgments of iron and water (_i.e._ the right of administering the
ordeal) as they did in the time of Edward, and in like manner shall have
its school (_scolas_).” A few years later the two collegiate churches
were consolidated, the canons of All Saints being transferred from the
castle, their residence there “being inconvenient,” and the property of
the united church of St. Mary and All Saints was confirmed to it first
by the Earl, then by the Bishop, including “the school of Warwick and
trial of iron, water and duel.” So here again the school, and the right
to keep it, is regarded as one of the most important attributes of a
pre-Conquest collegiate church.
The statutes made on the new foundation of Salisbury Cathedral within
twenty-five years of the Norman Conquest are preserved. They are not
indeed in a contemporary document, but written in a thirteenth-century
hand in a new version of these statutes made on the removal of the
cathedral from Old Sarum to the present Salisbury in 1220. There seems
no reason to doubt their authenticity.
These are the dignities and customs of the church of Salisbury which
I, Osmund, bishop of the same church, in the name of the Holy
Trinity, in the year 1091, have instituted and granted to the
persons and canons of the same, with the advice of the Archbishop
and the assent of King William.
The Dean and Chanter (Precentor), Chancellor and Treasurer shall be
always resident in the church of Salisbury, without any kind of
excuse....
The chanter ought to teach the choir as to singing and can raise or
lower the chant.
The Treasurer is chief in the custody of the treasures and ornaments
and the giving out of lights.
In like manner the Chancellor (_cancellarius_) (is chief) in
teaching school and correcting the books.
Dean and Chapter, Treasurer and Chancellor have double commons, the
rest of the Canons single commons.
The Sub-Dean holds under the Dean the archdeaconry of the city and
suburbs, the Succentor under the Precentor that which belongs to the
choir (_cantariam_).
If the Dean fails, the Sub-Dean fills his place, so the Succentor
has the Precentor’s.
The Schoolmaster (_archischola_) ought to hear the lessons and
determine on them, carry the seal of the church, compose letters and
deeds, and mark readers on the list, and the Precentor in like
manner the singers.
Here, then, we find four principal persons, of whom one, the chancellor,
is also called schoolmaster. He is the legal and educational, while the
chanter or precentor is the musical officer of the chapter. In the
fourteenth century copy of the statutes of York Minster it is said of
the chancellor that he “was anciently called Schoolmaster”; and the
twelfth-century historian of the Minster, a contemporary of Bishop
Richard of Belmeis, describes how Thomas of Bayeux, the first Norman
archbishop there, had just established or (as we may infer)
re-established a provost and schoolmaster; but afterwards, about 1090,
established that which afterwards became the regular cathedral
“foursquare” constitution of dean (instead of provost), precentor,
treasurer, and chancellor.
In the oft-quoted Liber A at St. Paul’s, written in the thirteenth
century, the copies of the writs of Bishop Richard of Belmeis and Henry
of Blois, with some later documents, are headed “Of the Schoolmaster
(_De Magistro Scolarum_) and Chancellor, seven letters”: and a marginal
note to a later document of Bishop Richard Fitz Neal (1189-99),
increasing the endowment of the schoolmaster, runs, “Note—the tithes
given to the Schoolmaster of St. Paul’s, now the Chancellor.”
The analogy, therefore, of other cathedral and collegiate churches,
corroborated as they are by the records of St. Paul’s itself, the
knowledge that we have of the existence of schools, not only at great
capitals like Canterbury, Winchester, and York, but even at small places
like Warwick and Waltham, amply justify us in asserting confidently that
the schoolmaster and school of St. Paul’s existed not merely before the
days of Bishop Richard de Belmeis, but before the Conquest, and in all
reasonable probability from the days of Bishops Wine and Earconwald.
What were these London schools? What did they teach? Lord Lyttelton[68]
in his History of Henry II. spoke of them as “schools or rather
colleges,” meaning university colleges, and Sir George Buck in 1631
described them as the _Third Universitie of England_.[69] This was
because of the mention of logic, and the statement that, not indeed as
Lyttelton says, “many” but other “schools” were occasionally opened “by
persons of note in philosophy,” by special favour.
But to infer from this a University of London in the twelfth century is
to transfer to it the ideas of the eighteenth century. The _Trivium_,
the “trivial task” of the twelfth century school-boy, included rhetoric
and dialectic as well as grammar. Grammar meant not only grammar
strictly speaking, but the general study of classical literature.
Rhetoric included not only the art of persuasion, the rules of oratory,
but generally Latin composition, prose, and verse,[70] and declamation
or recitation. Rhetoric was naturally incomplete without dialectic or
logic, the art of argument. So powerful during the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries did dialectic become, that not only did theology
become almost a branch of logic but grammar itself was taught and
practised “dialectically.” The “rostrum,” on which dialectic and
rhetoric were practised, was to be found in the school of Winchester
College as late as 1650.
The distinction drawn by Fitzstephen between the boys who capped verses
and the other scholars who held debates in rhetoric and logic was not
coincident with that between a grammar school and a university college.
The word “boy” was used strictly, as it still was as late as the
Elizabethan statutes of grammar schools, for those under fourteen years
of age, who were carefully distinguished on the one hand from children
or infants under seven, and from youths (_juvenes_) of fourteen to
twenty-one. Then, as now, youths of eighteen and upwards were found in
the grammar schools, and William of Wykeham, and the advisers of Henry
VI. in the foundation of Eton, all Wykehamists, were no innovators
raising the age of schoolboys when they prescribed nineteen as the
leaving age for the scholars of Winchester and Eton.
There is therefore no necessary ground for the inference that the
schools of London in the first half of the twelfth century bore any
different character from that which they had in the fifteenth or
sixteenth centuries, when the same schools are described simply as
grammar schools.
On the other hand, the period of which Fitzstephen wrote was that of the
origin of universities. It saw the birth of Bologna, of Paris, and of
Oxford. At Paris, the university grew out of the extension and the
rivalry of the schools, the grammar schools, of the cathedral church of
Notre Dame and the collegiate church, as it then was, of St. Geneviéve.
At Oxford there is every reason to believe that the university developed
in like manner from the schools of the collegiate churches, as they then
were, of St. Frideswide and St. George in the Castle.[71] The
“University” side of the schools finally emancipated itself, at an
earlier period even than at Paris, from ordinary ecclesiastical control,
through the conversion of these two collegiate churches into houses of
regulars, and the extinction therewith of their control of secular
scholars, while the Chancellor of Lincoln was too remote to exercise any
effective government such as was exercised by the Chancellor of Paris.
It was quite within the bounds of probability then that London also
would develop a university out of the three ancient schools, and the
permitted rivalry, by special favour, of the schools of other “doctors
of philosophy.” But it was not to be. London even then was too great a
commercial emporium, the prizes of successful trade were too attractive,
business was too absorbing, the hum of markets and wharves was too loud
for the voice of learning to make itself heard, or for schools, whether
of theology or arts, to attract the pick of the intellect of the City.
Paris, though the political capital, was not also the commercial capital
of France, where Rouen, the independent capital of a rival power,
occupied, to it, the position which the Port of London bore to London.
The King’s Court and the King’s Chancery were the main avenues to
success for clerks, and even so late as the reign of Henry III. the
Castle of Winchester and Beaumont House at Oxford, or the Manor of
Windsor, rather than the Tower of London, or even Westminster Hall, were
the favourite resorts of the King’s Court, and the residence of the
royal treasury and the royal chancery. Hence London never developed an
Abelard and a mainly theological university like Paris. The settlement
at Westminster of the royal courts, and the superior importance in
England of the common law to the civil law for somewhat similar reasons,
prevented London from producing an Irnerius or a Gratian and giving rise
to a legal university such as that of Bologna. Indeed the greater fame
of Paris and Bologna universities themselves was in the cosmopolitan
spirit which, under the centralising influence of the Roman Church, made
learned Europe almost a single nation, a potent obstacle to the
development of a university of London.
No exact definition of a university has yet been given, nor is capable
of being given, and it may be doubted whether there is any university
now in existence which really corresponds to the mediæval university.
But one salient mark of a university, a number of teachers and a number
of adult students in the higher faculties, in theology and law, or
philosophy, certainly existed at Paris in the days of Abelard, and to
some extent in Oxford, but did not seemingly exist in London, or if it
did exist was quenched by Henry of Blois’ mandate.
If the London schools formed a university in 1138, _a fortiori_ did the
School of York form one in 735. In Alcuin’s description of the School of
York as it flourished under Archbishops Egbert and Albert, an even
greater multiplicity of subjects was taught than in the three schools of
London in Fitzstephen’s day. Albert, its master,[72] “moistened thirsty
hearts with diverse streams of teaching and varied dews of learning,
giving to some the science of the art of grammar, pouring on others the
rivers of the tongues of orators; these he polished on the whetstone of
law, those he taught to sing together in Æolian chant, making others
play on the flute of Castaly, and run with the feet of lyric poets over
the hills of Parnassus.” Here we get the Grammar, Song, and Rhetoric of
later days. Song had in London in 1130 already been relegated to a
separate school. At York there was taught also arithmetic and geometry,
and the method of calculating the ecclesiastical calendar, the music of
the spheres, astronomy, physiography, “the rising and falling of the
wind, the movements of the sea, the earth’s quake,” and natural history,
“the nature of men, cattle, birds, and beasts.” Above all, Albert taught
theology. This curriculum is considerably more extensive than that of
the London schools, embracing many of what we should now regard as
university subjects. York afterwards branched off into three schools—the
Chancellor’s Theological School; the Grammar School under the
Chancellor’s deputy, who became the Schoolmaster par excellence; and the
Song School under the precentor. Yet as we should not call York School
under Albert or Alcuin a university merely because many subjects were
taught in it, neither can we dub the London schools of the twelfth
century a university.
We must therefore negative the claims of London to the possession of a
university in the first half of the twelfth century. But we can at least
claim that St. Paul’s School occupied the same position then as now, as
the chief day-school for the sons of middle-class citizens. Becket’s
biographer tells us what his education was: “Thomas spent the years of
infancy, boyhood, and youth quietly in his father’s house, and in
passing through the City school (_scolis urbis_); but when he became a
young man he went to study at Paris (_Parisius studuit_). As soon as he
came back, he was taken into public life in London, being made a clerk
and accountant in the Sheriff’s office.” The true translation of _scolis
urbis_ is the city school; and the city school meant the school of the
cathedral church of the City, the School of London. To this school
Becket, whose father had at one time been sheriff of London, was sent.
After leaving school, Becket went, in modern parlance, to Paris
University before entering on professional life. He was born in 1118,
so, as he may be presumed to have gone to Paris at about eighteen or
nineteen years of age, he must have gone there about 1137, the time when
John of Salisbury, the greatest writer of the age, was also there,
sitting at the feet of Abelard, then lecturing in the College of St.
Geneviéve. Mr. Rashdall, laying down a somewhat arbitrary definition,
maintains that Paris was not then, strictly speaking, a university,
though he admits it was such probably by the middle of the century.
However that may be, it is clear that in Becket’s case, as in John of
Salisbury’s, the schools of Paris, not the schools of London, were
regarded as giving “university” training. Fifty years later Becket would
have gone to Oxford and the “martyrdom” would never have occurred. As it
was, after his English and Pauline training, he was, with disastrous
results, inoculated with the “fool fury of the Seine.” Still, St. Paul’s
School may claim in him one of the earliest and most famous known
Paulines, Henry the schoolmaster being the earliest.
It has to be confessed that from Becket’s time onwards to Colet’s we
know scarcely anything of St. Paul’s School beyond the bare fact
evidenced by the statutes already quoted of 1243-54 and 1294-1304, and
certain fourteenth- and fifteenth-century documents to be presently
quoted, that it was pursuing the even tenor of its way. While there are
documents at Canterbury containing very full evidence of the great
position occupied by the Grammar School of the Archbishop and the
Grammar schoolmaster there in the first half of the fourteenth century,
while an unbroken series of the Acts of the Chapters of York and Lincoln
preserve continual notices of the grammar schools of York and Lincoln,
there is an absolute dearth of such records at St. Paul’s. One solitary
Chapter Act Book of the Canons of St. Paul’s remains, and that is one of
the last quarter of the fifteenth century. It is singularly
uninteresting, being almost entirely concerned with continual renewals
of leave of absence granted to the canons who were called Residentiary
because, unlike the other canons, they were supposed to be always
resident; with renewals of leases and the division of the spoil among
the residentiary canons, and the “correction” of vicars—choral and minor
canons—for devotion to the forbidden sex. All we know is that the
Grammar School went on and that it was not the Song School or a
choristers’ school, because we have conclusive evidence that this Song
School was a different institution. Two statutes[73] in terms
corresponding to those about the chancellor and the Grammar schoolmaster
deal with the precentor (_cantor_) and the Song schoolmaster. “It is the
Precentor’s duty to rule [or teach, _regere_] the choir in the raising
and lowering of the chant, and in singing the psalms. It is his duty
through the Song Schoolmaster to place the singers’ names on the table,
to stir up the lazy to sing, and gently rebuke those who run about the
choir in a disorderly fashion. On the greater feasts, if he is in choir
and instructed as a singer, he begins the antiphons after the Benedictus
and Magnificat and the processional chants and sequences. He examines
the boys to be brought into the choir and given a title as choristers.”
A statute as to those choristers made during the deanery of Ralph de
Diceto, the historian, between 1180 and 1200,[74] shows that they were
already then boarded in the Almonry. “As the boys of the Almonry ought
to live on Alms” (or, as we might say, “as charity boys ought to live as
such”) “they are to sit on the ground in the canons’ houses, not with
the vicars at table, lest they become uppish and drunken and perhaps too
pampered, and so unfit for the service of the church. Besides they
sometimes go too early without saying goodbye to their host; and
sometimes when they return to the Almonry from the feast, they despise
the living there and spread evil reports of their Master.” The statute
refers to the custom under which the residentiary canons had to give
three meals daily to two minor canons, two chaplains, four vicars
choral, two Almonry boys; the vergers and bell-ringers. The Master
referred to was not the Grammar schoolmaster, as has been rashly assumed
by some, but the Almoner, the master of the almshouse. To the early
cathedral churches a hospital or almshouse was as essential an appendage
as a choir and a Grammar School. Some of them still survive. The Dean of
Hereford is still _ex officio_ Master of St. Ethelbert’s Hospital,
attached to St. Ethelbert’s Cathedral. York had its St. Peter’s
Hospital, the ruins of the chapel of which, afterwards called St.
Leonard’s Hospital, may still be seen. St. Paul’s, therefore, had its
almonry, a Norman-French word for almshouse, and its almoner. In
statutes made in 1263 the almoner is enjoined to distribute alms
according to the method ordained by those who gave endowments for the
purpose; poor people and beggars who die in or near the churchyard he is
to bury gratis without delay. “He is to have, moreover, daily with him 8
boys fit for the service of the church, whom he is to have instructed
either by himself or by another master in matters pertaining to the
service of the church and in literature [_i.e._ grammar] and good
behaviour; taking no payment for the same.”
An Almoner’s Register begun in 1345 is fortunately extant,[75] which
records the statutes, charters, and customs of the office. In it, the
almoner records against himself that “if the Almoner does not keep a
cleric to teach the choristers grammar, the schoolmaster of St. Paul’s
claims 5s. a year for teaching them, though he ought to demand nothing
for them because he keeps the school for them, as the Treasurer of St.
Paul’s once alleged before the Dean and Chapter is to be found in
ancient deeds.” The allegation that the Grammar School was kept for the
choristers is historically untrue, though it is probably true that the
choristers ought to have been admitted free to it. At least, the
question was solemnly raised at Beverley in 1312,[76] when the Grammar
schoolmaster wished to make all choristers beyond the original number
attending the Grammar School pay fees; but the succentor, the Song
schoolmaster, contended that he was bound to teach all the choristers
free, and after inquiry by the Chapter into the “ancient customs” of the
church it was decided that he was so bound, only the succentor was not
to defraud him by admitting boys to the choir merely for the sake of
getting free education in the Grammar School. Whatever may have been the
choristers’ rights in the matter, the fact that the Grammar schoolmaster
claimed and received payment for them shows with absolute conclusiveness
that the Grammar School was not a choir school or a choir-boys’ school.
Yet Mr. Lupton, late Surmaster of St. Paul’s School, in his _Life of
Colet_ actually cites[77] the will of one of the almoners, William of
Tolleshunt, made in 1329, as proof that the Cathedral school, which he
confuses with the Almonry school, “not only existed and flourished, but
contained within itself the germs of a University.” Yet what are the
facts? The Almoner says:[78] “I bequeath a shilling to each senior and
6d. to each junior of the boys of the church whom I educated in the
Almonry. Also I give them my best Hugocio and the big and little
Priscian, bound in one volume, Isidore’s Etymology, and all my grammar
books, except those which my clerk Ralph has, and all the volumes of
sermons which the Boy-Bishops used to preach in my time, to remain in
the Almonry for ever for the use of the boys living in it, and never to
be lent outside, or given away or sold.” The will goes on, “I bequeath
also my books of the art of Dialectic (of which John of Stoneground has
the old and new Logic), with the books of Natural History and other
books of that art, in order that these books may be lent to boys apt for
learning (_ad scolatizandum_) when they leave the Almonry; due security
being taken for their return, to prevent their being alienated. The
books of physic also, of which I have several about medicines; and also
the books of the civil law, viz. the Institutes, Code, Digest, and
Authentics, and these legal works I give to the use of the boys in the
manner above written.”
[Illustration:
ST. PAUL’S SCHOOL (BEFORE ITS REMOVAL TO HAMMERSMITH)
]
Says Mr. Lupton: “There were works on Logic, on Physic, on Medicine, on
Civil Law ... all were expressly bequeathed to the use of the boys.”
Yes, but while the grammar books were for the use of the boys in the
Almonry, these other books were, by the express terms of the will, to be
lent to boys who had left the Almonry, when they went on to university
studies, so that the very words cited to show that this school was
something more than a grammar school prove the exact opposite; and this
very case cited to show that the school in question was the St. Paul’s
Cathedral Grammar School shows that it was a district foundation and
intended only for the eight boys in the Almonry. That these eight boys,
afterwards increased to ten, were the choir-boys, is shown by the will
of Bishop Richard of Newport,[79] in 1315, giving to this very William
of Tolleshunt, Almoner, one of his executors, and to the Almoner for the
time being a house near St. Paul’s the rents of which, after paying £1
to the maintenance of the Lady Chapel, were to be applied “to the
support of one or two of the Almonry boys for two years after they have
changed their voices.” Again, among the earlier statutes of the Almonry
it is ordered that “the boys after entering the choir are not to leave
it except when their duty requires it.” William of Tolleshunt himself,
too, bequeaths by his will a trust estate bequeathed to him some six
years before “for the Almonry boys serving the choir, for their shoes.”
In 1348 Sir John Pulteney,[80] knight, gave 20s. a year to the almoner
to provide the choristers with summer clothes.[81] In return for the
shoes the boys had to sing _De Profundis_, with the usual Pater Noster,
Ave Maria and collects, every morning on getting up and every evening on
going to bed; and for the summer clothes to sing an anthem after complin
with prayers for the dead in the Pulteney Chapel. In 1358 William of
Ravenstone,[82] Almoner, gave a tenement called the Stonehouse in
Paternoster Row “for the support of an additional chorister or two.”
That the choristers when clever were meant to go on to the universities
is clear from a payment out of the chantry of Bishop Ralph (Baldock) who
died in 1313. He gave 3s. “to poor students being sometyme choristers of
the said cathedral church towards ther exhibicion yearly,” while a later
benefactor Thomas Ever, in the reign of Henry IV., gave a like sum
specifically “to the poore choristers of Paules towards their exhibicion
in the University.”
There is no question, therefore, that, while there was a grammar school
maintained for the benefit of the choristers, it was quite distinct from
the choir school for teaching them singing, and from the Cathedral
Grammar School open to all boys. Or perhaps it would be more correct to
say that the choir-boys, being lodged and boarded in the Almonry, had a
tutor provided for them to see that they learnt grammar. For one can
hardly call the teaching of eight or ten choristers a school.
There would not have been any need to insist on this school so much at
length if the whole matter had not been thrown into confusion through
the labours of a certain Miss Hackett who devoted herself in the first
quarter of the 19th century to the interests of the choir-boys of St.
Paul’s, who were then left without any proper schooling or care. She,
with great energy, routed out all she could find in the records of St.
Paul’s or elsewhere, relating to the choir-boys, and published it in a
pamphlet misnamed _Correspondence and Evidences respecting the Ancient
Collegiate School attached to St. Paul’s Cathedral_.[83] She succeeded
in establishing in Chancery the claim of the choir-boys on the revenues
of the Almonry. But her zeal outran her discretion, as whenever she saw
in any of the records of St. Paul’s anything about a school or
school-boys, she at once attributed it to the choir school and
choirboys, and attacked the Chancellor, as well as the Almoner, on the
ground that the St. Paul’s Grammar School was for the choir-boys. In
this she failed. But she did a great deal of harm to the Cathedral
Grammar Schools in general by imbuing people with the notion that they
were mere choir-schools. Mr. Lupton makes the Grammar School to have
been in Sharmoveres (now Sermon) Lane. Sharmoveres is a name of naught.
It is simply a misreading of “Sarmoners,” _i.e._ Sermoners’ Lane, from a
house which is said in a document of Edward I.’s reign to have belonged
to “Adam le sermoner.” Sermon Lane is the modern shortening. This was
not the Grammar School nor even the Almonry school, but a house
bequeathed to the Almonry. Sermon Lane is at the west end of St. Paul’s,
some little way from the church. The Grammar School was at the opposite
or east end, in the churchyard, and quite close to the church.
Having thus cleared away the confusion between the Grammar School and
the choristers’ boarding-house we must leave the history of the Almonry
without following it further, and for a little while turn from the
history of St. Paul’s School to that of its two mediæval rivals.
ST. MARY-LE-BOW GRAMMAR SCHOOL
The history of the school of St. Mary-le-Bow is unfortunately soon
exhausted. The only references to it, apart from the various mentions of
it in connection with the two other privileged schools, which I have
been able to find, are in the Archbishop’s Register at Lambeth. The
first of these is an order from Archbishop Robert Winchelsea,[84]
September 25, 1309, settling a dispute as to the right of appointment of
the schoolmaster. It is addressed “To our official,” _i.e._ the Official
Principal or Judge of the Archbishop’s Consistory Court. The archbishop
says that he had received a petition from “Mr. John, rector of the
Grammar School (_scolarum gramaticalium_) of the Church of the Blessed
Mary le Bow (_de arcubus_) London,” showing that he had been appointed
master of the school by the Dean of the church (the Dean of the Arches,
as he is now called), to whom “by ancient and hitherto peacefully
observed custom the order and government and appointment of Master is
well known to belong.” But “after he had quietly taught (_rexerit_) the
school,” the Official, “wishing to change this custom,” had appointed
one Mr. Robert Cotoun and removed Mr. John. The Archbishop informed the
Official that, if the facts were as stated, he was to let Mr. John enjoy
the teaching of the said school freely.
The fact that the patronage of the school was vested in the Dean of
Arches explains why we do not find appointments of the master in the
Archbishop’s Registers as we do in the case of the Canterbury Grammar
School. On March 23, 1382/3, however, an entry in Archbishop Courtney’s
Register shows him committing to “his beloved son, William Poklyngton,
clerk, the teaching and governance of the Grammar School of the deanery
of our Church of Blessed Mary of the Arches now vacant and to our
disposition belonging,” and appointing him master of the same school.
The peculiar form of the appointment suggests that it was made by the
Archbishop either because the deanery was vacant, or because the
appointment had lapsed to him in default of the Dean. For some reason
unknown this entry is cancelled in the original MS.
On October 4, 1399, Archbishop Arundel[85] “at his manor of Lambeth”—it
is never called a palace in ancient documents; his “palace” was at
Canterbury—in like manner “committed the teaching and governance of the
Grammar School of the Arches of London with all its rights and
appurtenances in the Deanery of the Arches” to “Mr. Thomas Barym, master
in grammar.”
The school was clearly still in existence in 1446, when it is mentioned
among the five grammar schools authorised by the ordinance of the
ecclesiastical authorities, confirmed by Henry VI. Letters Patent of
that year to be discussed later. These Letters Patent were interpreted
by Stow[86] into a creation of the school of St. Mary-le-Bow. “In this
parish,” he says, “was a Grammar-School by commandment of Henry VI.,
which school was of old time kept in a house for that purpose prepared
in the churchyard, but that school being decayed, as others about the
city, the school house was let out for rent, in the reign of King Henry
the 8th for 4s. a year, a cellar for 2s. a year, and two vaults
underneath the church for 15s. both.” It is probable, however, from the
terms of the Letters Patent, that the school was held actually in the
church, since St. Paul’s School is expressly described as being in the
churchyard, while this school is, with equal exactness, described as
being in the church.
THE GRAMMAR SCHOOL OF ST. MARTIN’S-LE-GRAND
Of the third ancient school, that of St. Martin’s-le-Grand, there seems
to be no history recoverable. Presumably when Henry VII. annexed the
college to Westminster Abbey the documents were transferred too. But
only one small Register of St. Martin’s, written in the fifteenth
century, remains in the Westminster Chapter Muniments, and there is no
mention in it of the school. There is, however, one reference to the
schoolmaster in the City Letter Books.[87] “On Thursday before 24
August, 26 Edward I., 1298, John, the cap, hat, or hood-maker (cappeler)
of Fleet Street entered into a recognizance to Master Hugh of
Whittington (Wytington), schoolmaster (_Magistro scolarum_) of St.
Martin’s-le-Grand for payment of £8 at Michaelmas year. Afterwards
Master John of Whittington, brother and executor of the said Hugh, came
and acknowledged that he had been satisfied of such sum. Therefore it
was cancelled.” The entry is enough to show that the school was going on
and that the master was a man of substance, being able to lend the then
considerable sum of £8.
* * * * *
The latter half of the fourteenth century was signalised by considerable
activity in the foundation of new, or changes in old, grammar schools.
This was due to two conflicting forces. On the one hand, it was due, as
it was expressed in Wykeham’s foundation deed of New College, Oxford, to
“the general disease of the clerical army, which through the want of
clergy, caused by pestilence, wars, and other miseries of the world, we
have seen greviously wounded,” or, as it was more shortly put in
changing the appointment of a master of St. Peter’s School, York, in
1369, from a five-years’ appointment to a life tenure, to “the late
Death and the rarity of M.A.s.” The demand for clergy to fill the ranks
thinned by the Black Death of 1349 and its subsequent outbreaks, caused
a demand for grammar schools. On the other hand, the incipient revolt of
the townspeople against clerical domination which manifested itself in
the substitution of lay for clerical ministers in the field of politics,
and by the open propagation of Lollard opinions against image worship,
transubstantiation, confession, and the celibacy of the clergy, and so
forth, in the field of religion, created a demand for learning and for
schools. The conflict of the two opposing forces is shown in the
petition presented to Richard II. in 1394 (the very year, it may be
noted, of the transfer of Winchester College, founded in 1382, to its
present buildings) by the ecclesiastical authorities of London, who
claimed the monopoly of education in “the three ancient and privileged
schools.” “The King’s devout chaplains and orators, William,[88]
Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of London, the Dean of your frank
chapel of St. Martin’s-le-Grand and the Chancellor of the Church of St.
Paul in London,” set out how to them, “as well by the law spiritual as
by customary prescription in that behalf, the order, management, and
examination of the masters of certain schools of the faculty of grammar
in London and the suburbs, belonged, belong, or ought to belong, to
them, with the advice of the Bishop of London, from time immemorial.”
“Yet” they complained, “lately certain strangers, feigning themselves
Masters of grammar, having no sufficient learning in that faculty,
without the assent, or knowledge, and against the will of the
petitioners, wilfully usurped their jurisdiction, and kept General
Grammar Schools in the City in deceit and fraud of the children, to the
great prejudice of the King’s lieges, and the jurisdiction of Holy
Church. But when the three Masters of the schools of St. Paul’s, the
Arches, and St. Martin’s for the care and profit of the king’s subjects,
had gone to law against the foreign masters in Court Christian,
according to ecclesiastical law, their adversaries had sued them in the
secular courts to make them abandon their pleas.” The petitioners,
therefore, asked the King, both because of his interest in his free
chapel of St. Martin, and of the prejudice done to the petitioners, to
direct letters to issue under the Privy Seal to the mayor and aldermen
“to attempt nothing whereby the jurisdiction of Holy Church, or the
process between the parties in Court Christian might be disturbed.”
Whether the Privy Seal asked for was issued does not appear. Parliament
was then supporting the Lollards.[89] But next year Richard was fetched
back from his Irish War to put them down, and the leading Lollards had
to recant on pain of death. Certain it is that the three church schools
retained their monopoly for nearly half a century more. It was then
attacked and broken up by assailants from within the pale of the church
itself and by orthodox churchmen. The first breach of it, apparently for
purely educational reasons, was made by the establishment of a grammar
school in St. Anthony’s Hospital in Threadneedle Street.
ST. ANTHONY’S HOSPITAL AND SCHOOL
This hospital was so interesting an institution in itself, and the
erection and career of its school have been so much misrepresented, that
its history is worth telling at some length. Stow’s[90] account of this
hospital is rather long but not very correct. It “was sometime a cell to
St. Anthonies of Vienne. For I read that King Henry III. granted to the
brotherhood of St. Anthony of Vienne, a place among the Jews, which was
sometime their synagogue, and had been builded by them about the year
1231; but the Christians obtained of the King that it should be
dedicated to our blessed Lady, and since, an hospital being there
builded, was called St. Anthonies in London. It was founded in the
parish of St. Bennett Fynke ‘for a mayster, two priestes, one
scholemayster and 12 poore men.’” “Moreover, king Henry VI. in the
twentieth of his reign gave unto John Carpenter, D.D., master of St.
Anthonies Hospital and to his brethren and their successors for ever his
manor of Ponington, with the appurtenances” and other property “towards
the maintenance of 5 scholars in the University of Oxford to be brought
up in the faculty of arts, after the rate of 10d. a week for every
scholar, so that the said scholars before their going to Oxford, be
first instructed in the rudiments of grammar at the College of Eton,
founded by the same king. In the year 1474 Edward IV. granted to William
Say, B.D., master of the hospital of St. Anthony’s to have priests,
clerks, scholars, poor men, and brethren of the same, clerks or lay men,
quoristers, proctors, messengers, servants in household and other things
whatsoever, the like as the Prior and Convent of St. Anthony’s of
Vienne. This Hospital was united, annexed and appropriated unto the
Collegiate Church of St. George in Windsor about the year 1485. This
goodly foundation, having a free school and almshouses for poor men,
builded of hard stone, adjoining to the west end of the church, was of
old time confirmed by Henry VI. in the year 1447.” Such is his account
of the origin of the foundation. He then deals with its latter end. “One
Johnson (a schoolmaster there) became a prebendary of Windsor and then
by little and little followed the spoil of this hospital. He first
dissolved the choir, conveyed the plate and ornaments, then the bells,
and lastly put out the Almsmen from their houses, appointing them
portions of 12d. a week to each (but now I hear of no such matter),
their houses with other be now letten out for rent, and the Church is a
preaching-place for the French nation. The school-house was commanded in
the reign of Henry VI., and sithence also, above other; but now it is
decayed and come to nothing, by taking from it what thereunto belonged.”
The Hospital was at first a cell of the Hospital of St. Anthony at
Vienne, a hospital famous throughout the world. There is no mention of
any local habitation of the brethren of St. Anthony in England before
1249. Then in a document at Windsor, dated 1253, a grant to the hospital
of the earlier date is mentioned, when the Church of All Saints,
Hereford, was bestowed upon it by Henry III., and in 1253 a letter from
Pope Alexander IV. congratulates the same king on having granted to the
Master and Brethren of St. Anthony’s “a place in London among the Jews.”
For further on this subject see _Mediæval London_, vol. ii. p. 268.
Later writers have for the most part followed Stow. Thus Mr. Lupton in
his _Life of Dean Colet_ repeats[91] the story that the original
foundation included a schoolmaster; and says that Edward IV. “augmented
it. The school continued into the reign of Elizabeth, the rest of the
property was not left to wait for the inquisition of Henry VIII.,” and
then repeats, as typical, Stow’s story of the plunder by Prebendary
Johnson. Again, Dr. Sharpe says,[92] “The Hospital appears to have
always supported a Schoolmaster from its foundation.”
As a matter of fact, the school was no part of the original foundation
of the hospital, and only made its appearance when the main institution
had undergone a complete revolution. The hospital existed for at least
100 years longer, and the school began at least 200 years later, and
continued for nearly 100 years more than Stow leads us to believe. The
life of the hospital lasted for as nearly as possible four centuries. It
began about 1249; it ended in 1666. For the first 150 years of its
existence it was in tutelage to a foreign and monastic parent. A brief
period of independence followed under native English clerical (not
monastic) rulers, for some three-quarters of a century; and the era of
its complete and formal release from tutelage was signalised by the
foundation of the Grammar School in it, which enjoyed the highest
reputation for about 100 years. The institution was then again placed
under an external master. But the school continued to flourish, and,
instead of being destroyed in the reign of Elizabeth, lasted into the
reign of Charles II., under whom both school and hospital perished,
never to be revived, in the Great Fire of London.
In 1434 John Carpenter became master or warden of the hospital, and he
must be regarded as the second founder of the hospital and the actual
founder of its school. He was a very considerable person in his day,
being a great promoter of education and supporter of the secular clergy
as against the regulars, the monks, black canons, and friars. His fine
tomb, restored out of all antiquity by the ill-directed gratitude of
Oriel College, is still to be seen in the ancient collegiate church of
Westbury-on-Trym near Bristol. He was anxious to establish the secular
canons of that church as his episcopal chapter instead of, or at least
in addition to, the monks of Worcester. Indeed he actually called
himself Bishop of Westbury and Worcester. He became Provost of Oriel in
1425, and Master of the hospital at least seven years later.
Carpenter was mixed up with the foundation of Eton as well as with that
of St. Anthony’s School. When he was made Bishop of Worcester, he was
consecrated in the collegiate church of Eton, and it was as a trustee of
Eton and Oriel, and only nominally in his capacity as Master of St.
Anthony’s, that the grants, mentioned by Stow,[93] of the manor of
Ponington, and quit-rents from several places in Hampshire, were made to
him and the brethren of the hospital. What became of this grant it seems
impossible to find out. No mention of it occurs in the accounts of the
hospital, nor do the authorities of St. George’s, Windsor, Eton, or
Oriel know anything of the property. Probably it was one of the
Lancastrian grants for the benefit of Eton on which Edward IV.’s Act of
Resumption operated, and so passed away from Eton and Oriel for ever.
In 1441 the revolution in the constitution of the hospital was
consummated. A Bull of Pope Eugenius IV. released the brethren of the
hospital from the obligation to use a common dormitory and refectory,
which by the Augustinian rule they were bound to use (though it is
stated that there was no such dormitory or refectory), and enabled the
clerks who served it to live in any decent place, until a dormitory and
refectory were provided—a politic way of completely authorising its
conversion into a house of seculars. At the same time, by the licence of
Robert (Gilbert), Bishop of London, the church of St. Benet Finck was
entirely appropriated to the hospital, and converted from a rectory into
a vicarage. This was in order that the revenues of the rectory, worth
sixteen marks a year, might be applied to the maintenance of “a master
or fit Informer in the faculty of grammar,” “to keep a grammar school
(_regere scolas gramaticales_) in the precinct of the hospital or some
fit house close by, to teach, instruct, and inform gratis all boys and
others whatsoever wishing to learn and become scholars (_scolatizare_).”
Its foundation was only one of a long series of school foundations which
marked the period of the reign of Henry VI., who, far more than Edward
VI., is entitled to the credit of being the patron king of school-boys.
Eton, Newport, Shropshire, Newland, Wye (now the Wye Agricultural
College, Kent), Alnwick, Towcester, are some among the grammar schools
still existing which were founded in the ten years 1440-50; while there
were many more which are no longer existing or have been degraded into
elementary schools, or converted into exhibition funds. The movement was
the first breath of the Renaissance stirring the dry bones of the
schools. It was the outcome of a beginning of reaction against the
excessive cult of scholastic logic, and a desire to return to the
humanities of the “artists” as opposed to the sophistry of the
theologians. Considering the conspicuous part taken in the new movement
by men like Beckington, Waynflete, and Say, all Wykehamists, we may
attribute a considerable share of it at least to the influence of
Wykeham’s foundation at Winchester.
The most striking manifestation of the new spirit is seen in the Letters
Patent granted in 1439, giving leave to William Byngham, rector of St.
John Zachary in London, to found the College of God’s House in
Cambridge, at first an annex to Clare Hall, and afterwards incorporated
with Christ’s College. In his petition for the licence Bingham said that
he had found all over the country grammar schools, formerly flourishing,
now fallen into abeyance for lack of proper teachers. He therefore asked
for leave to found a college of a master and twenty-four scholars for
the training of Grammar schoolmasters, who were to issue thence to teach
school all over the country. This, then, is the first Training College
on record. In its statutes the importance of the classics was insisted
on, not merely, as in the days of Wykeham and the foundation of
Winchester, because grammar was the key which unlocked the Holy
Scriptures, and was the gate to the liberal sciences “and theology, the
mistress of all,” but because “it was necessary in dealing with law and
other difficult matters of State and also the means of mutual
communication and conversation between us and strangers and foreigners.”
Here spoke the citizen of London and the man of the modern world. In
much the same way Waynflete, himself ex-Headmaster of Winchester and
first Headmaster of Eton, in his foundation of Magdalen College School,
carried on by him from 1448 though not finally endowed and settled till
1480, provided by his statutes for the demyes being trained in grammar
“that they might go out and teach others,” and he particularly ordered
that they were not prematurely to be made sophisters.[94]
In 1443 Walter Lyhert, who succeeded Carpenter on his promotion to the
See of Worcester, in the provostship of Oriel, also succeeded him as
Warden (Custos), as he was now called, of St. Anthony’s. He in turn
became a bishop, being promoted to Norwich in 1445. He was succeeded in
the Mastership of St. Anthony’s by William Say, a Wykehamist of some
fame, afterwards Dean of St. Paul’s. Under his rule the new constitution
was completed. By Bull of January 28, 1446, the Pope granted, on the
request of Henry VI. as patron, power to make new statutes for the
hospital and its inmates to the Bishop of Worcester (Carpenter), the
Bishop of Norwich (Lyhert), William Waynflete, then Provost of Eton, and
William Say, then master of the hospital. The school, like that of Eton,
was thus inaugurated on the model and under the guidance of members of
the College of William of Wykeham, which Henry VI. dearly loved and
deeply studied, and to which he paid the sincere homage of exact
imitation. The statutes made by Carpenter and the rest are not
forthcoming, but considering the auspices under which they were made, we
may safely conclude that they followed their model as closely as did
those of Eton, so far as what was presumably mainly a day-school could
follow the statutes of what was mainly a boarding-school. There are
indeed not wanting minor indications that some scholars at least boarded
in the hospital. We know at all events that in two things in which Eton
departed from the Winchester model, St. Anthony’s followed suit, namely,
the raising of the stipend of the master from £10 to £16, and the
direction that the school should be a free school to all who chose to
come. We also know that, as at Winchester and Eton, a singing master was
established and a Song School; for in 1440, David Fythian, who was
rector of St. Bennet Finck, and John Grene, clerks, at the request of
John Carpenter (and we may be sure at his expense and in consideration
of a payment by him) had granted a rent of ten marks issuing out of “the
Cowpe on the Hoope” in All Saints parish, London Wall, with power of
distraint on it and another brew-house called the Dolphin and a tavern
called the Bell in Southwark, to pay “John Bennet of London, clerk,
yearly 8 marks, and 4 yards of new cloth of gentlemens’ suit” for
teaching singing “to the boys, who are and shall be in the church of the
said hospital.” This meant, of course, the choristers. In 1449 the
brewery called the Cup on the Hoop was definitely devised by will,
which, when enrolled in the Hustings Court, at once operated as a
conveyance and dispensed with the necessity of a licence in mortmain, to
William Say, then Master, and the Brethren of St. Anthony’s, “for
maintenance of a clerk to teach assiduously all the boys of the house
chanting with the organ (_cantico organico_) and plain song,” but while
John Benatt (_sic_) remained, the Master was not bound to find another
teacher. The hospital was to enjoy the residue after providing for the
Song schoolmaster.
There is a series of documents connected with the hospital, the exact
purport of which it is a little difficult to make out, but they seem to
suggest some intention on the part of John Carpenter to benefit alike
St. Anthony’s School and Oriel College, Oxford, by exhibitions at the
university; bringing the school, though in a much modified degree, into
the same sort of relationship with that college which Winchester bore to
New College, or Eton to King’s, or Westminster afterwards to Christ
Church and Trinity, Cambridge.
Oriel College,[95] Oxford, possesses a conveyance, June 27, 1424, to
John Carpenter and Henry Sampson, both fellows and afterwards provosts,
and others of land at Dagenham in Essex. Nine years later, the manor or
manors of Valence Gallants and lands at Frystelings and Copped Hall were
conveyed to a similar body of feoffees. In 1442 the manor of Easthall
was acquired. By deed of June 27, 1447, all these properties were
conveyed to Carpenter and Sampson, and in 1451 by Carpenter, then Bishop
of Worcester, to Oriel College, on condition of their granting them to
St. Anthony’s, reserving a pension “for the exhibition of certain poor
scholars in St. Mary’s Hall, Oxford,” a dependency of the College. By
deed of 14th November in the same year, the college granted the lands to
the hospital, reserving a rent-charge of twenty-five marks, and by deed
of 20th November,[96] William Say, “Master or Warden of the house or
hospital of St. Anthony and the brethren of the same” granted an annual
rent of £20 to the Provost and fellows “of the Royal College, commonly
called Oreall,” payable in St. Mary’s Church, Oxford, “for the
exhibition and maintenance of scholars to study there according to the
form and effect of certain provisions or ordinances to be made by John,
Bishop of Worcester.” By another deed of the same day, the Bishop, John
Carpenter, declared the conditions of the exhibitions, but, alas! only
in general terms; and whether any ordinances were actually made by
Carpenter, and if so, what has become of them, is unknown.
When the exhibitions were established seems rather obscure. The earliest
extant accounts, now at Windsor, of the hospital are for 1478-79 and
1494-95, and contain no mention of the Essex property or of scholars at
Oxford. But in 1501-2, the rental includes the manors of Valence and
Easthall and lands called Frystelyng’s lands in Essex let for £13 a
year; and among the expenses is the item “The skolers of Oxford
stypents, £10 : 18s.” The first entry in the Oriel College accounts of
any money received for scholars is December 6, 1504, when, £10 : 6 : 8
was received by the College “for Mr. Tretyng” and paid over to him. In
1521-22, the St. Anthony’s account, which is for expenses only, includes
“for the exhibicion of the scolers of Oxford in Seynt Mary Haule £10 :
7s.” St. Mary’s Hall was originally the rectory house of St. Mary’s
Church, which was appropriated to Oriel College, who still appoint the
vicar; and was probably the original home of the college and always
remained a dependency of it.
Hardly had the hospital and school thus been put upon a sound basis than
the Wars of the Roses substituted the Yorkists for the Lancastrians on
the throne. The Yorkist accession and the Restoration of Charles II. are
the only epochs in English history since the Norman Conquest in which
the successful party have not been content with the enjoyment of power
and the prospect of having things all their own way for the future, but
have set themselves _more Gallico_ to destroy the good deeds of the
opposite party and root out their remembrance, if possible, from the
land. All the foundations of Henry VI. were threatened with destruction.
For the purpose apparently of proving himself the true heir of the
Plantagenet Edwards, Edward IV. professed the most extreme devotion to
the collegiate church of Windsor. He showed his devotion in the
vicarious way common in those days, by endowing it with the plunder of
other places. An Act of Parliament on Edward’s accession in 1460
declared all the grants of the three Lancastrian Henries void. Part of
the possessions of Eton was granted to other places; while the whole
institution was by a Bull of Union in November 1463 annexed to St.
George’s, Windsor. Whether, as has been represented,[97] it was intended
that the school should cease to exist, is very doubtful. When St.
James’s Hospital, Westminster, was granted to Eton itself as St.
Bartholomew’s Hospital, Oxford, had been to Oriel College, and St.
Julian’s Hospital, Southampton, to Queen’s College, Oxford, those
colleges only took the net surplus after keeping up the hospitals.
Windsor in like manner was probably only intended to get the surplus
after keeping up Eton school. However, the Bull was strongly opposed by
William Westbury, the provost and ex-headmaster. In 1467 a large part of
the Eton estates was restored to it, and in 1470 King Edward IV. himself
asked for the revocation of the Bull of Union and obtained a commission
from the Pope for the purpose, and a final decree revoking it was
pronounced by Cardinal-Archbishop Bouchier on August 30, 1476. It was,
one can hardly doubt, by way of compensation to Windsor for the loss of
Eton College that St. Anthony’s Hospital was, in 1475, annexed and
appropriated to it in the same way as Eton had been. The terms of the
annexation were absolute.[98] The King granted to “the Warden of Dean of
the College of the Blessed Mary, St. George and Edward the Confessor in
his castle of Windsor and to the chapter of the same college the
Wardenship, advowson, parsonage, donation, collation, presentation, and
free bestowal of the house, hospital or free chapel of St. Anthony,
London, by whatever name it might be called, and the house hospital, or
free chapel itself, with all its liberties, franchises, privileges,
immunities, lands, tenements, rents, services,” etc., etc., belonging
thereto, “to hold in pure and perpetual alms to their own use whenever
it next became vacant by death, resignation, or otherwise”; and with
power to take possession without any further process. On June 2, 1475,
Dean and Chapter appointed Richard Beauchamp, Bishop of Salisbury, and
others their attorneys to take possession of the hospital, they having
got Peter Courtney, then master of the hospital, to resign in
consideration of a pension of 100 marks or £66 : 13 : 4 a year. As in
1478 he became himself Dean of Windsor, he did not suffer much by the
transaction.
Nor, indeed, did the hospital or school, which went on for at least 200
years more. Absolute as the terms of annexation were they seem to have
been interpreted not as an abolition of the hospital, but only as a
transfer to the dean and chapter of the right to the surplus, formerly
taken by the master for his own use, estimated in the pension
arrangement at 100 marks.
This comes out clearly in one of the earliest Account Rolls of the
hospital after the transfer, which is fortunately preserved at Windsor,
and gives an exact picture of the way the hospital was managed. It is
for the year 1478-79 when David Hopton, Canon of Windsor, acted as
Master of the hospital. The total income was the very large sum of
£539 : 19s. or about £10,800 a year of our money. Of this only £18 : 2 :
4 was derived from rents or property, and that rental was subject to
outgoings in the way of quit-rents of £7 : 6 : 8 and repairs to the
extent of £9 : 5s.; so that the endowment was really a minus quantity.
The whole of the rest of the revenue was derived from voluntary
subscriptions, which are called in the accounts “procurations,” being
collected by procurators or proctors, exactly on the same principle that
collections on Church Briefs were made after the Reformation. Indeed
these and other like accounts make it clear[99] that the system of
Church Briefs,[100] only abolished in 1828, was not of post-Reformation
origin, but was extremely ancient. The right of collecting in a
particular district was farmed out to different people who paid a fixed
rent for the privilege for a term of years, and pocketed in return for
the expenditure of their time and trouble whatever they managed to
extract from the pockets of the faithful beyond the stipulated rent.
Some specimens of St. Anthony’s Hospital leases to these farmers are
preserved. There is one for the year 1479. It’s an Indenture made
between the Dean or Warden of St. George’s College, the Master of St.
Anthony’s, London, or in England, and the Canons of Windsor of the one
part, and Thomas Morton of Worcester of the other part. In the same form
as in a lease of land the Dean and Canons transfer, grant, and let to
the aforesaid Thomas “all goods, profits, and commodities for any reason
given, or to be given, assigned, or to be assigned, bequeathed, or to be
bequeathed to and for the Hospital of St. Anthony in and throughout the
whole bishopric of Hereford and archdeaconry of Oxford in places exempt
[from the ordinary’s authority] as well as not exempt; with all pigs and
other animals in the places aforesaid”; and constitute the said Thomas
their lawful proctor and receiver in the premises, with full power of
appointing substitutes, and without rendering any account. The term was
ten years and the rent reserved £30 a year, payable in two half-yearly
payments at Michaelmas and St. Philip and St. James’s Day. If the rent
was in arrear the Dean and Canons were at liberty to dismiss the said
Thomas and appoint another proctor in his place. The total rents of the
Hospital shown in the account for 1478-79 derived in this fashion were:
Bishoprics of Salisbury and Ely, and
archdeaconries of Lincoln, Stow, Huntingdon, and
Leicester, and Deanery of Rutland (3 proctors in
one lease) £128 13 4
Archdeaconries of Northampton, Bedford, Bucks, and
the jurisdiction of St. Alban’s (1 proctor) 40 0 0
Bishoprics of Exeter and Bath and Wells (3
proctors) 44 0 0
Bishopric of Rochester, and Deaneries of Shoreham
and Croydon, with church of Criff 4 0 0[101]
Archdeaconries of Derby, Stafford, Coventry, and
Shrewsbury (2 proctors) 22 0 0
Archdeaconries of Chester and Lancaster 11 0 0
Bishopric of London 22 0 0
Bishopric of Winchester 26 10 0
Bishopric of Chichester 8 0 0[102]
Province of York and Isle of Man (2 proctors) 76 13 4[103]
Bishopric of Winchester 28 13 4
Bishopric of Hereford and Archdeaconry of Oxford 29 6 8[104]
Archdeaconry of Canterbury 26 13 4
Bishopric of Norwich 44 0 0
Bishoprics of St. David’s and Llandaff 8 0 0[105]
Bishoprics of Bangor and Asaph 4 16 8
£523 16 8
The rentals are interesting as showing approximately the relative wealth
and population of the various districts of England at the time. The
superior wealth of the south over the north and the eastern over the
western parts stands out clearly. The total receipts, equal in value to
over £10,000 a year of our money, show an astounding liberality on the
part of the givers of the voluntary donations and subscriptions by which
the Hospital was maintained.
The expenditure is only given under a few different headings in gross,
the reader being referred for details to a “paper book” which is not
forthcoming. The wages of ministers, “priests, clerks, other ministers
and servants” came to £45 : 12 : 8; the “robes of the said priests,
clerks, scholars, poor, and other ministers and servants” cost £10 :
13 : 9. Bread made by Hobald, a baker of London, £21 : 18 : 7; beer
bought from divers brewers at 1-1/2d. and 1d. a gallon, £35 : 11 : 8;
other purchases (_cati_) £70 : 14s. “Foreign” expenses totalled £40 :
5 : 11-1/2d. The Sacrist of the Chapel received £4 : 0 : 9 for general
expenses; a general obit, 8s. 8d., and Thomas Sainge’s obit, 6s. 8d. The
clothes of the poor of the Hospital consisted of ten shirts and eight
pairs of drawers of fustian at 3-1/2d. a yard; ten pairs of shoes at 2s.
5d. each; and ten pairs of stockings (caligis) of wool at 8d. a yard,
and cost 19s. 11-1/2d. A new vestry at All Saints’, Hereford, was
erected for £10 : 17 : 11. Repairs on the Hospital and the Swan next
door came to £82 : 12 : 2-1/2d. So that the “arrears” (_arregaia_,
meaning in mediæval accounts, not money due, but the clear surplus),
amounting to £98, were handed over to the Treasurer of St. George’s,
Windsor, “for the wages of 7 clerks and 7 choristers there.” In this
amount, unfortunately, the salaries of the schoolmasters are not given
separately, nor the number of “the children” or boys attending the
school. Indeed, beyond the bare fact of its existence we know little of
the history of St. Anthony’s School up to this time. It comes to light
incidentally in a letter[106] from William Selling, Prior of Canterbury,
to Thomas Bourchier, Cardinal-Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1472. “Please
it your good fatherhood to have in knowledge that, according to your
commandment, I have provided for a Schoolmaster for your ‘Gramerscole’
in Canterbury, the which hath lately taught grammar at Winchester and
St. Anthony’s in London, that as I trust to God shall so guide him that
it shall be worship and pleasure to your lordship and profit and
increase to them that he shall have in governance.” As Archbishop
Bourchier’s own nephew, the heir to the earldom of Essex, was a commoner
at Winchester College,[107] this reference to the master of St,
Anthony’s as having been also a master at Winchester, probably usher or
second master there, shows that St. Anthony’s School already stood high
in reputation.
There is a much more detailed account than that above given in English
for the year 10 Henry VII., 1494-95, which gives the expenses of the
Hospital for the Michaelmas quarter, day by day, being in fact one of
the “paper books” referred to in the Latin account. It is extremely
interesting by reason of its details, telling us exactly what the Master
and “the Hall,” _i.e._ clergy and schoolmaster on the one hand, and “the
Hospital,” _i.e._ almsfolk and “children,” had for dinner every day. The
account begins on Michaelmas Day, when two of the traditional geese[108]
were given to the Hall “at dener” at a cost of 18d., while “the Hospital
and chyldryn” were put off with two loins of veal at 8d. The Master, a
Canon of Windsor, is the only one who is debited with anything for
breakfast, but that was a substantial one, consisting of a neck of
mutton and chicken. The others presumably only had the commons of bread
and beer. At “soper,” “the Hall” enjoyed ten chickens for 15d, while
“the Hospital and children” had two quarters of mutton for 7d., with a
halfpenny for “erbis,” or vegetables, and 5d. for “potage fleich”; the
day’s diet cost 4s. 9d. Next day all fared well with seven ribs of roast
beef and stewed veal at dinner; and three-quarters of mutton at supper.
The 1st of October there was “potage fleich” and loins of mutton for
dinner; mutton and two “coneys” or rabbits for supper. On the 2nd of the
month there was again “pottage flesh,” and pork for dinner, “for all the
house”; ten chickens for supper for “the Hall”; mutton for the rest.
Friday, October 3, though it was the feast of the dedication of the
church, was no-flesh day. There was a “sewe” for 4d.; twenty plaice for
all the house, twenty small pike, a quarter and a half of roach, and
fresh herrings. The total cost was 9s. 5-1/2d. Presumably there were
strangers. Saturday was again a no-flesh day. There was milk, 3d., and
butter, 7d., for dinner, in the form of frumenty probably; salt salmon
for “the Hall” and stockfish for “the Hospital” at dinner; five barbels
for “the Hall,” and 100 eggs for “all the house” at supper, while the
Master had, all to himself, oysters at 1d.
The next week began with “half a beeff to lay in powdyr for the weke,
6s. 8d.,” while the Sunday dinner consisted of roast pork for dinner and
mutton for supper. Pork, veal, beef, and mutton, varied with conies and
soup, and for “the Hall” chickens; meat twice a day, and never the same
at dinner and supper, show that our ancestors lived on a very much more
generous and wholesomely varied diet than is commonly supposed. The two
fast days only represented a pleasing change of diet: “Lamprons” or
lampreys “for sew,” bream, fresh herrings and salt salmon on Friday;
milk and butter “for dinner,” haddocks and whitings, 100 eggs on
Saturday, were really not unsatisfying. The varieties of the fish menu
were very extensive; it comprised sturgeon, cod, stockfish, fresh
salmon, haddock, halibut, roach with shrimps (for sauce apparently),
trout, carp, turbot, plaice, mackerel, thornbacks, gudgeons, guinards,
flounders, smelts, sprats, mussels, crayfish, crabs, lobsters, eels, and
conger eels, besides those already mentioned. On All Saints’ Day, which
fell on a non-fast day, there was a warden-pie for all the house, the
wardens, or pears, which cost 6d., while the flour cost 7d., and the
“serypp” or sirop, 4d. On St. Nicholas’ Day, December 6, there was
“fruit for them that ete no fish,” and 2 lb. of almonds. Among birds,
besides cocks and fowls, geese frequently appear, with mallards,
plovers, woodcocks, and larks, the latter for the Master’s table only.
Beer as usual flowed in streams. The “good man” of the Swan—the brewery
next door belonging to the Hospital—supplied for one quarter eighteen
barrels of “threehalpenny ale,” and ten barrels of penny ale (a penny a
gallon), while another brewer at the Checker supplied fifteen barrels of
1-1/2d., and ten barrels of 1d. beer. Beer, of course, served for
breakfast and tea as well as dinner and supper. Still the quantity used
was enormous. At St. Cross Hospital, Winchester, every poor man had a
gallon a day, and at St. Anthony’s the provision must have been on the
same scale. Wine was only drunk at the Master’s table, and that only on
feast days.
On Christmas Day everybody had mutton for breakfast. There was a filet
of pork for “force gruel,” six geese and fourteen fowls for all the
house at dinner, while “the Hall” had eight conies besides. There were
eight plovers, six cocks, and three dozen larks for the Master’s dinner
and supper; and mallards or wild duck for “the Hall,” at supper; a
gallon of cream for the Master’s custard, a gallon of milk for curd. Two
and a half gallons of red wine and “claryet” were drunk. There was
dessert: 4 lb. of “raysons” and currants at 5d.; 2 lb. of great raisins,
2d.; 4 lb. prunes, 8d.; ½ lb. ginger, 10d.; 3 lb. dates, 7-1/2d.; 1
quarter of cloves and mace, 8d.; ½ lb. “saundre,” 7d.; ½ oz. saffron,
8d.; comfits, “counfeits,” 1 lb., 5d.; 4 lb. of almonds, 8d. On Boxing
Day, the Hall had a “pottle of Malmsey to their brawn, 6d.,” and another
gallon and half of wine. On New Year’s Day the Master had, among other
things, half a lamb; curd for tart, and oranges, which, with butter,
cost 2d. On Twelfth Day, the Epiphany, the whole house enjoyed mutton
and frumenty, made of milk and wheat, for breakfast. Dinner included
four fillets of pork in mortrews, bake-meats and tarts. But the great
event was a “wassayle.” To this there went 3 gallons of red wine at 2s.;
3 lb. sugar, 12s.; 2 gallons of “strok” (what was that?); a curd, powder
of cinnamon, ginger and other spices, and pears. It was a mighty brew,
and must have been almost as trying as a Winchester “egg-flip” on
Founder’s Commemoration.
The staff of the Hospital (besides the Master, who was one of the Canons
appointed for a year, who only resided at intervals) consisted first and
foremost of “Master Nicholas,” the Grammar schoolmaster, at 50s. a
quarter, or £10 a year—being at the same rate of pay as that of the
headmasters of Winchester and Eton. Then there were four priests, of
whom the senior, Sir John Galaway, received £4 : 13 : 4 a year, as
against £5 a year given to a Fellow of Winchester for performing much
the same functions, while the three others got £4 a year. A clerk (not
called Sir), John Marche, “Maister of the children of the Song-School,”
also got £4 a year. Then came six clerkes at £2 : 13 : 4 a year each.
The poor usher, or “oysshur,” of the Grammar School only got 6s. 8d. a
quarter, or £1 : 6 : 8 a year, a sad contrast to the £6 : 13 : 4 of the
usher of Winchester College. It was less than the wages of the cook of
St. Anthony’s, who got £2 a year, and the same as those of the butler or
buttery man. Even his name is not given. Probably the explanation is
that John Goreham, one of the priests, or one of the clerks acted also
as usher. Of course, as was the case at Winchester and Eton, and all the
College and Hospital schools, these salaries were in addition to board,
lodging, and “liveries,” or broad cloth for their gowns.
In the next extant account, 17 Henry VII., 1502-3, Mr. David was
“skolemaister,” but received only 20s. a quarter, the same as R. Hall
“the maister of Queresters”—a term which the Wykehamist will recognise
as a living word. It looks as if this reduction of the schoolmaster’s
salary was due to greed on the part of the Dean and Chapter of Windsor,
who wished to have a larger surplus to put in their own pockets. Rogers
was the usher, and received 6s. 8d. The livery of the schoolmaster and
priests consisted of 4 yards of cloth at 3s. 4d. a yard, while that of
the “clerks,” including the Master of the children, was only 3¼ yards,
and the usher’s livery was the same as that of the clerks, sexton, and
butler, 3 yards at 3s. The 12 “chylder” had 2½ yards at 2s. 4d. It is a
little difficult to understand who the twelve children were. In a
subsequent account for Michaelmas to Christmas 1521, twelve whose names
are given had cloth for gowns; but then comes a heading “For the
chylthern of the Songe Scole,” under which six only out of the twelve
received hose and shoes, and had them repaired as well. Are the other
six to be regarded as scholars in the Grammar School, or, as is perhaps
more probable, choristers on probation?
The next extant account is for 1521-22, when Mr. Ball was the
schoolmaster and Richard-a-Lee the Song schoolmaster. The latter was
succeeded in 1522 by William Johnson, who, although he got £5 a year as
against the Grammar schoolmasters’ £4, was still reckoned on a lower
grade among the clerks, while the schoolmaster was always ranked with
the priests. There had apparently been a considerable curtailment in
expenditure as the surplus handed over to Windsor this year was no less
than £210, or more than double the sum they derived from it in their
first year.
The next schoolmaster whose name is known was Edmund Johnson. This was
the “one Johnson,” of Stow’s account of “the spoil of the Hospital,”
which is nothing more than a baseless libel. Edmund Johnson, or Jonson,
was admitted a scholar of Winchester, at the age of eleven, in 1514, and
became a Fellow of New College in 1522, remaining such for two years,
and is described in the New College Register as having become “a
schoolmaster.” Whether he was appointed to St. Anthony’s then, there are
no means of knowing. Edmund Johnson was a “clerk” in the Hospital in
1522, and perhaps acted as usher, as no usher’s name is given. He can
hardly be the same man. At all events he is described as “Scolemaster of
the Grammar Schole in the said Hospitall” in a lease of November 16, 35
Henry VIII., _i.e._ 1543, by the Dean and Chapter to him of a house
fronting “Saint Anthonies yarde,” being, perhaps, the house which had
been usually occupied by the Master of the Hospital. The lease contained
a reservation “for the use of the Scolemaister for the time then being,”
of “the scolle house and the rome over yt, with the chambre next
adioyning to the same schole.”
In 1546, the first of the Acts for the dissolution of colleges and
chantries was passed, and commissioners were appointed under it to
certify the chantries and their value. They included St. Anthony’s
Hospital under the heading of Berkshire, it being treated as part of
Windsor in that county.[109] They reported, on the authority of “Sir
Anthonye Baker, clerk, Master of the Hospital,” that in the parish of
St. Benedict Fink, London, was “one hospytall of St. Anthony, founded to
fynde one master, 2 prestes, one scolemaster, and 12 pore men there,
perpetually to serve and saye the devyne service and to praye for the
soules of there founders.” This is the statement which misled Stow and
the other historians into thinking that the school was part of the
original foundation. The correct description of the foundation of Henry
VI.’s time was misread as a description of the original foundation under
Henry III., to which it was wholly inapplicable.
The value of the lands and possessions of the Hospital is put in the
chantry certificate at £55 : 6 : 8 gross, with deductions of £4 : 1s.,
bringing it down to £51 : 5 : 8. The stipends of the two priests were £8
each; of the curate of Seynt Benet Fynkes, £8; and of “the clerk that
keepeth our Lady’s mass,” £9. These four make up the four priests we
find in the Hospital accounts. The steward received £5, while the poor
cost £31 : 17s.; the “sexten” had £2. The schoolmaster’s stipend was
£16; so that so far from the school being plundered at this time, the
Master was far better paid than several of his predecessors, and
received more than the Masters of Winchester or Eton.
The total expenses came to £95 odd. “And so lacketh for the proportion
of the same house £40 : 11 : 11, which ys borne by the Dean and Cannons
of Wyndsore, whereunto this Hospytalle is annexede [and] unytide.” This
is a somewhat slim way of putting the fact that the surplus expenses of
the Hospital were met by subscriptions from the public to such an
amount, that instead of the Dean and Chapter of Windsor defraying the
deficit out of their own revenues, a sum three or four times as large as
the whole revenue from endowment of the Hospital found its way into
their pockets.
The Chantries Dissolution Act of Henry was only permissive, giving the
King, during his life, power to take possession of any chantries or
colleges he chose; and advantage was taken of it to enter on barely half
a dozen colleges, of which Windsor was not one. In 1547, a new Act of
dissolution of colleges and chantries was passed in Edward VI.’s first
Parliament; but Windsor was, alone among colleges that were not
educational, specially exempted from its provisions. There is, however,
a certificate, by the Chantry Commissioners of London and Middlesex, for
the parish of St. Benet Finck, in which, while certifying a chantry in
the parish church, they say complainingly (the certificates were in fact
drawn up by the church wardens) that the Dean and Chapter of Windsor “is
parson,” and the value of the same £16, “and but one priest by them
found to serve the same, which priest is very unhable to serve the
same.” They add that “within the said parish is a Grammar Scole by the
name of a Fre Scole, called Saynt Anthonies, the Scolemaister whereof is
nowe Maister Edmond Johnson, and his wages paid by the Stewarde of Seynt
Anthonyes, and how muche is not knowen.”
Now Stow is said to have been born about 1525. He tells us in a passage
which is a _locus classicus_ in the history of London schools as much as
the famous “Description” of Fitzstephen himself, that in his youth,
which, for this purpose, we may take to be from 1535 to 1545, the
arguing of the schoolboys as to the principles of grammar of which
Fitzstephen wrote, was still continued.[110]
For I myself in my youth have yearly seen on the eve of St.
Bartholomew the Apostle, the scholars of divers grammar schools
repair unto the churchyard of St. Bartholomew, the Priory in
Smithfield, where, upon a bank, boarded about under a tree, some one
scholar hath stepped up, and there hath opposed and answered, till
he were by some better scholar overcome and put down, and then the
overcomer, taking the place, did like as the first, and in the end
the best opposers and answerers had rewards; which I observed not
but it made both good schoolmasters and also good scholars
diligently against such times to prepare themselves for the
obtaining of this garland. I remember there repaired to these
exercises amongst others the Masters and scholars of the free
schools of St. Paul’s of London, of St. Peter’s of Westminster, of
St. Thomas Acon’s Hospital and of St. Anthony’s Hospital; whereof
the last named commonly presented the best scholars and had the
prize in those days.
It is very doubtful, for reasons which will appear when we come to deal
with Westminster and St. Thomas Acon’s, whether Stow’s memory was
accurate when he brought scholars from Westminster and the Mercers’
School to St. Bartholomew’s before its dissolution. However that may be,
Stow goes on:
This Priory of St. Bartholomew being surrendered to Henry VIII.
those disputations of scholars in that place surceased; and was
again, only for a year or twain, in the reign of Edward VI., renewed
in the cloister of Christ’s Hospital, when the best scholars then
still of St. Anthony’s school, howsoever the same be now fallen both
in number and estimation, were rewarded with bows and arrows of
silver given to them by Sir Martin Bowes, goldsmith.
Now, as Christ’s Hospital was only founded on June 26, 1552, and then,
as we shall see, as a mere Foundlings’ Hospital, and Edward VI. died in
the following January, there was not time for these renewed contests in
his reign and Stow’s memory must have been at fault. The resuscitation
of the contests is more likely to have taken place in the reign of Mary
when the “old learning” and boy-bishops and the like revived with the
“old religion.” However that may be, the school continued to flourish
under Elizabeth, on Stow’s own showing.[111]
Nevertheless, however, the encouragement failed. The schollers of
Paules meeting with them of St. Anthonies, would call them “Anthonie
pigs” and they againe would call the other “Pigeons of Paules,”
because many pigeons were bred in Paules church, and Saint Anthonie
was always figured with a pig following him, and, mindfull of the
former usage, did for a long season disorderly in the open streete
provoke one another with “Salve tu quoque! placet tibi mecum
disputare?” “Placet.” And so proceeding from this to questions in
grammar, they usually fell from wordes to blows, with their satchels
full of bookes, many times in great heaps, that they troubled the
streets and passengers; so that finally they were restrained, with
the decay of St. Anthonies schoole.
Strype,[112] in his edition of Stow a century later, gives further
evidence:
This school kept equal credit with that of Paul’s; both which had
the greatest reputation in the city in former times. I meet[113]
with a merry retainer at Queen Elizabeth’s Court, giving an account
of the great entertainment she had in her progress, anno 1575, at
Kenilworth Castle by the Earl of Leicester: “I went to school
forsooth both at Polles and also at St. Antoniez! In the 5th form
past Æsop’s fables, I wiz; read Terence, ‘Vos, isthœc intro
auferte,’ and began with my Virgil ‘Tityre tu patulae.’ I could
[_i.e._ knew] my Rules: and could construe and pars with the best of
them.”
Strype tells us also how this school used at a certain time of the year
to go in procession. “Thus I find in the year 1562 on the 15th day of
September there set out from Mile End 200 children of this St. Anthonies
School, all well be-seen, and so along through Algate down Cornhill to
the Stocks and so to the Freer Austins, with streamers and flags and
drums beating. And after, every child went home to their fathers and
friends.” This September outing was an old custom in schools. It was for
a nut gathering. It appears in the accounts of St. Anthony’s on
September 3, 1510, when “a sporting day in the cuntre” cost “the
Hospital” 18d., the almsmen and choristers being entertained at home for
7d. William Malim mentions it as one of the Eton holidays in 1560;
indeed, the drums and flags strongly suggest the Eton “montem.” Payments
for such an outing occur frequently in the accounts of Winchester
College. It forms the subject of a “theme” at Winchester by Christopher
Johnson, Headmaster in 1560-70. As late as 1711[114] “nutting-money” was
one of the regular payments exacted from Winchester scholars.
Stow’s story of the suppression of the street-shows of the scholars is
borne out by the curious injunction issued by the Lord Mayor on August
20, 1561.[115]
Item, yt was agreyd that precepts shall forthewith be made to every
one of my maisters the Aldermen for the stayinge of all
skolemaysters and teacher of youthe within this cytye from makynge
of eny more musters or commen and open shewes of theyr skollers,
within the said cyttye or without, in ryche apparrell or otherwyse,
eyther on horseback or on foote, upon payne of imprysonment.
Edmund Johnson above mentioned became a Canon of Windsor in 1560 and
apparently died in 1562.[116] So that the school was in fact at the
height of its fame and success under the very man whom Stow accuses of
having ruined it. Its fame and greatness outlived its so-called spoiler.
Edmund Johnson, so far from being considered a spoiler of school, ought
to be enrolled among the many great schoolmasters whom Winchester
produced, along with Christopher Johnson, the witty Latin poet, who
ruled over Winchester itself at the same time (1558-68) and was perhaps
a relation.
Among the archives of St. Paul’s Cathedral is a stray account of St.
Anthony’s Hospital for the year 1564, and it shows both almshouse and
school going on; the twelve almspeople duly receiving their shilling a
week and the “Instructor of the school (scolarum) in grammar” his due
stipend of £16 a year.
After Johnson’s departure a fall may have taken place in the character
of the school, but if so, that was not his fault. Strype indeed goes out
of his way to correct Stow, and carefully tells us[117] that “it was in
being in Elizabeth’s time when one Hilton a great and good man was
master.” He must have succeeded Johnson. In 1584 another master, Thomas
Browne, was schoolmaster and receiver of the Hospital, as one of his
accounts[118] remaining shows. He duly paid twelve almsfolk 7s. a week
and his own wages £16, besides £1 for himself as receiver.
Even as to its then state and the state of the Hospital itself, there is
reason to believe that Stow’s information was wrong and was probably
derived from a tainted source. For in 1590 a determined attack on the
Hospital was made by one of the band of informers who infested the
reigns of Elizabeth and James I. It was a favourite device for some
speculative attorney or money-lender to hunt up old monastic or chantry
lands, allege that they had been confiscated to the Crown under the Acts
for the dissolution of monasteries or of chantries, as the case might
be, but had been concealed from it by the tenants, or other holders; and
to obtain a grant from the Crown of such concealed lands by letters
patent. Sometimes these patents were in the form of roving commissions
for concealed lands over whole counties, sometimes for all the
possessions of specific monasteries or chantries, sometimes for specific
lands belonging to such foundations. The Crown in any case gained the
cash paid down for the grant. The informer, if he recovered the whole
property, made an enormous gain. More often he only levied blackmail on
the proprietor, who was glad for a moderate payment to escape the
trouble and vexation of a law suit, with the Crown as nominal plaintiff.
The practice went on as late as 1620, when a too determined attack on
the chantry lands of the City Livery Companies induced the Companies to
combine and pay the Crown a sum down for quiet possession of the lands
and for an Act of Parliament which stopped all further proceedings for
concealed lands. The facts of the St. Anthony’s case are these:—
In 1589 Edward Wymarke and John Leake obtained from Queen Elizabeth a
grant by letters patent of all the lands of St. Anthony’s Hospital, as
lands which had properly passed to the Crown, but had been “concealed”
by the Dean and Chapter of Windsor.
They then brought an action for ejectment in the Queen’s Bench against
Timothy Lucy, gentleman, and Thomas Cooper, farmers of the manors of
Valence Galant and Easthall and other lands in Essex. The Dean and
Chapter took counter action by a Bill on the Equity side of the Court of
Exchequer to restrain further proceedings in the ejectment. Leake
alleged that the Dean and Chapter “compounded with the poor and put them
out of their houses, and others that would not remain in a corner there
until their end.” The church was shut up and “so remained until it was
appointed to the French nation, long in Her Majesty’s time.” “The School
was no more a Free School; but the Master had £16 per annum allowed him,
and compounded with the parents of the children to be taught there, at
his pleasure; and now of late the curate of the parish church is farmer
of the parsonage and master of the school and a preacher abroad, and by
reason of his other calling there are now very few scholars, the master
not employed, a bad room to dwell in and a school in name, but not free
or of credit.”
The patentees, however, generously offered that if the Lord Treasurer
should think “that in passing the patent Her Majesty was hardly dealt
with in it, or your zeal for the school to be maintained which is no
Free School, so your Honour would procure from Her Majesty a foundation
and take the patronage. I can be content there go a better maintenance
to the Master, viz. £30 per annum or more, or to do any act your Honour
should think conscionable.”
The Dean and Chapter in their answer did not deny that they had
diminished the number of priests, clerks, choristers, and scholars in
the Hospital, but urged that they no longer got £323 a year as they used
to do “by begging,” but now spent more on the Hospital by twenty nobles
a year at least than they received. As to the School they said “the
Schoolmaster teacheth as many freely as his grant bindeth him unto, for
it was never free for all that come thither, but only for the poorer
sort.” The schoolmaster himself, Mr. Brown, put in a separate answer. He
alleged that “the School was never free to all comers, but only for the
choristers of the house and all such other destitute children; as may be
gathered by sundry ancient accompts. The Schoolmaster is bound by the
words of his patent to entertain 40 poor scholars, whose friends are not
able to pay for their teaching, if so many come, and offer their
children to be taught freely.” He said that he had never refused any who
claimed to be free. As for compounding, that was granted him, in regard
that the revenues of the house will neither allow him an usher, nor his
diet, as his predecessors had, among the priests. He denied that he was
curate of the church as well as schoolmaster, though he acknowledged
that having “the lease of the appropriation come into his hands he
thought himself bound to do some duty in the church as well as in the
school, and therefore entered the ministry the sooner.” “Neither,” he
remarked, “is it so strange or odious a matter for a schoolmaster to be
a preacher as it seemeth in Mr. Leake’s eyes,” though in this we may
fairly say that Mr. Leake’s eyes were more far-seeing than the
parson-schoolmaster’s. Then he pays a tribute to his predecessor. “This
place prospered well enough under a schoolmaster who was also a
preacher, Mr. Edmund Johnson. But then there was some hope that learning
and religion might be rewarded; but the daily decreasing and falling
away of which reward, as by other sinister means so most apparently by
concealments” (this was a side blow at Mr. Leake), “hath discouraged
parents to bring up their sons at their book, but even in the
Universities also at this day, more is the pity.” He then utters the
complaint which the unsuccessful schoolmaster, like the unsuccessful in
all professions, has always made, and makes, that there is too much
competition. “If there be fewer scholars in S. Anthony’s than have been
heretofore, the true cause thereof has to be imputed to the multitude of
teachers in every corner both of the city and country, and to the wonted
reward of learning, and not to the want of diligence in the schoolmaster
there.” Finally, he challenges the facts. “If trial be made it may be
that both the number and the learning of his scholars may fall out
better than Mr. Leake would have it.”
The end of the whole matter was that it was referred to Her Majesty’s
General Attorney, Sir John Pepham, and the Solicitor General, Thomas
Gerton. They certified that as the grant of Edward IV., confirmed by
Innocent the Pope, had made the Hospital unconditionally a possession of
St. George’s College, the purchasers from Her Majesty ought not to
molest the Dean and Canons or any of their Governors in the said lands.
So Mr. Leake and his friends took nothing by their pains.
Not many years later, however, the Chapter, on the ground that the
Hospital cost more than they got from it, tried to withhold payment of
the scholarship fund from Oriel College. This roused Oriel to look up
the documents, and they counterclaimed not merely the customary £10 :
8s. but the whole twenty-five marks of the original grants and
threatened to enter on the Essex lands if it was not paid. Thereon the
Windsor Chapter filed a Bill in chancery. Lord Keeper Bacon’s decree,
November 17, 1617, founded on an award of Sir Henry Savile, T. Frith, a
canon of Windsor, and Joshua Sanders, confirmed the right of Oriel to
some payment; but in the absence of any proof from Oriel that they had
ever received more, and the presence of proof on the part of Windsor
that since they became possessed of St. Anthony’s they had never paid
more, the decree was for £10 : 8s. a year only. Windsor paid £30 for
costs. The sum of £10 : 8s. a year is still paid to Oriel College by
Windsor College, though it is to be feared that not many scholars are
now maintained by the payment.
In 1600 St. Anthony’s School must have been in very low water. A curious
compact was made by Mr. Thomas Smith, the schoolmaster in that year,
with Mr. Thomas Bradshaw. The latter was to come to the school with “a
dozen of his own scholars at the least” and to teach all the poor
children in the parish of St. Benet Finck “being offered and brought
unto him according to the limitation of the patent,” and hold the office
of teacher or master conjointly with Mr. T. Smith, taking all the
profits of his own pupils, while Mr. Smith was to take the profit on
those brought in by him. Neither was to interfere with the teaching or
management of the other’s scholars, except in case one of them was ill
or absent, when the other was to teach the whole school. The scholars
belonging to either were to be placed equally on both sides of the
school. Finally, on payment at any time of £10 by Bradshaw, he was to
have an assignment of Smith’s patent and place. The Chapter do not seem
to have relished this bargain, as there are some notes attached to this
agreement as to the terms of the original grant to Smith, which included
a condition to appoint a deputy, and to teach free as many children as
were brought thither up to forty; and to keep a register of such free
scholars, to be exhibited to the Dean whenever required, and it is
remarked that the arrangement with Bradshaw was a breach of these
conditions. A draft surrender of the mastership by Smith, May 1, 43
Elizabeth (1601), is with this paper. It was not, however, executed by
him, as ten years afterwards he is found still keeping the Hospital
accounts as receiver and paying himself “pro informatione scholarium.”
In 1622-23 William Walker acted in the same capacity as receiver and
schoolmaster, and duly paid himself and twelve almsmen and women their
stipends. In 1661-62, the latest account preserved shows him still
acting in the double capacity, but receiving the augmented salary of £25
a year.
In 1666 St. Anthony’s was burnt with the rest of London. The church was
rebuilt after the Fire for the French Church, and still continues. But
the school seems never to have been rebuilt, and when Strype published
his edition of _Stow_ in 1720 it no longer existed. So ended this once
famous school.
* * * * *
We must now return from the later history of St. Anthony’s School to its
beginning. It was founded, as we have seen, in 1441. Five years
afterwards there is a series of documents which are evidence of some
struggle going on in regard to education in London, the exact purport
and the result of which are equally obscure. All we know is that on May
3, 24 Henry VI., _i.e._ 1446, a writ of Privy Seal was sent to the
Chancellor directing him to issue letters patent, which was duly done on
May 6, dealing with schools in London. The letters patent are of course
in Latin, in which language they long remained, but the Privy Seal,
which is verbatim to the same effect, was in English. It begins by a
recital which is almost an echo of the Petition to Parliament in 1394.
The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London “considered the
great ‘abusions’ that have been of long time in London, that many and
divers persons not sufficiently instructed in grammar presumed to hold
common grammar schools in great deceit of their scholars, as also of the
friends that find them to school,” and so they had “in their great
wisdom” devised a remedy. They had ordained 5 schools of grammar and “no
moo” within the said city; “one within the churchyard of St. Paul;
another within the collegiate church of St. Martin; the third in Bow
Church (Beate Marie de Arcubus, in the Letters Patent); the fourth in
the church of St. Dunstan in the East; the 5th in our hospital of St.
Anthony within our said city.” This they had openly declared by their
letters patent thereupon made. The King, therefore, ordered his letters
patent to be made confirming the letters of the bishops, and commanding
“all our subjittes of our said citee “that they, nor none of them,
trouble nor impeach the masters of the said schools in any wise in this
“partie,” but rather help and assist them inasmuch as in them is. The
letters patent were duly issued on the day the writ of Privy Seal was
delivered, as the Act of Parliament required. This patent was
misinterpreted by Stow[119] as creating schools “besides St. Paul’s” in
the places named, only he puts St. Dunstan on the West for St. Dunstan
in the East. He repeats this error[120] apropos of Bow Church, which he
says was a grammar school by commandment of Henry VI., whereas, as we
have seen, it existed before the reign of Henry II. Stow then goes on:
“And in the next year, to wit 1394 (_sic_), the said King ordained by
Parliament that four other Grammar schools should be created.” It is
curious that in all the editions till Strype’s this extraordinary error
of making 1394 the next year to 1446 was repeated. No doubt Stow had
become acquainted with the ordinance of Richard II. and mixed it up with
that of Henry VI. and never noticed the confusion. It is the case that
in February 1446/7 an ordinance was made in Parliament about London
schools. It was founded upon a very remarkable petition. The full wise
and discreet Commons were asked “to consider the great number of Grammar
Schools that sometime were in divers parts of the realm, beside those
that were in London and how few ‘ben in these days.’ This,” they say,
“causes great hurt not only in the spiritual part of the church, where
often times it appears too openly in some persons with great shame”—we
feel inclined to call Name, name!—“but also in temporal part, to whom it
is full expedient to have competent congruity for many causes”—whatever
that may mean. The petitioners go on to point out how London is “the
common concourse of this land,” not only for Londoners born, but for
others who come up, “some for lack of schoolmasters in their own
country, and some for the great alms of Lords, Merchants and others,” so
that many poor creatures would never have gained the “virtue and
cunning” they have without such alms. Therefore they say it is desirable
to have in London “a sufficient number of Schools and good Informers of
Grammar” (the headmaster of Winchester’s title is _Magister
Informator_), “and not for the singular avail of 2 or 3 persons,
grievously to hurt the multitude of young people of all this London.”
“For where,” they sententiously observe, “there is a great number of
learners and few teachers, and all the learners be compelled to go to
the same few teachers, and to no other, the Masters wax rich in money,
and the learners poor in cunning, as experience openly shows, against
all virtue and order of weal public.”
Four parsons, Mr. William Lichfield of All Hallows the Great, Thames
Street; Mr. Gilbert (Worthington) of St. Andrew’s in Holborn, suburb of
the City; Mr. John Cole of St. Peter’s, Cornhill; and John Neell of St.
Mary Abchurch, and Master of St. Thomas Acon’s Hospital, were, they say,
stirred to devotion and pity by such considerations, and therefore asked
that the rectors and their successors in their respective parishes may
“ordain, create, establish and set a person sufficiently learned in
grammar, and there to teach to all that will learn” with power of
removal and new appointment in the rectors. The answer was “The King
wills that it be do as it is desired, so that it be done by the advice
of the Ordinary, or else of the Archbishop of Canterbury for the time
being.”
It has been assumed that these schools were set up accordingly. Stow
states it for a fact as to St. Peter’s, Cornhill,[121] St. Andrew’s,
Holborn,[122] and St. Thomas of Acon’s Hospital,[123] and has been
followed by other writers. It is doubtful if a single one of these
schools was ever established, except that in St. Thomas of Acon’s
Hospital. The very unusual form of the King’s answer to the petition at
once raises suspicion. The first clause of it is the common formula for
consent to a “private” bill, “Le roi fait comme il est desiré.” But it
is followed by the very significant condition “so that it be by the
advice of the Ordinary, the Bishop of London, or the Archbishop.” A veto
was thus given to the very two officials who, doubtless under much the
same pressure, had, only the year before, limited the schools in London
to five: of which three were immemorial, that of St. Anthony’s Hospital
in an exempt place of the Crown’s patronage was already established with
the consent of the Bishop, and the fifth St. Dunstan’s was, like St.
Mary-le-Bow, a “peculiar” of the Archbishop of Canterbury. It is not
very likely, therefore, that the Archbishop and Bishop would be eager to
assist in almost doubling the number of authorised schools in London. As
regards St. Andrew’s and All Hallows the Great it is practically certain
that no school was ever established. The two petitioning parsons of
these churches both died very soon afterwards. The will of Gilbert
Worthington of St. Andrew’s, Holborn, is given in Strype’s edition of
_Stow_.[124] It was made July 28, 1447, and was proved on August 12
following. The only reference to schools or education in it is a bequest
of five marks to his brother Walter to put him to school, and 40s. to
the poor scholars of God’s House in Cambridge, just founded by Bingham.
The inscription on his tomb, also preserved,[125] makes no mention of
any school foundation. Neither Stow nor any one else states that there
was any evidence of a school at St. Andrew’s. The date of the death of
the parson of All Hallows, William Lichfield, is not given by Newcourt
in the _Repertorium_, but as it there appears that Thomas Westleigh,
S.T.B., was appointed to the rectory, vacant on the death of Lichfield,
on November 1448, he must have died some time before that date. No proof
of any grammar school having been kept here has yet been produced.
Whether a school was established in St. Thomas’s Hospital is also
doubtful. There is no trace of such a school in the documents published
by Sir John Watney in his account of the Hospital, privately printed by
the Mercers Company in 1592. The Hospital was surrendered to King Henry
VIII., October 20, 1538. The Mercers Company, whose hall was next door
and who had used its church for their purposes, almost immediately,
December 18, 1538, opened negotiations with the King to buy it. On April
21, 1541, the King sold it to them for £969 : 17 : 6, an enormous sum,
equivalent to some £20,000 of our money, subject to the conditions that
they should keep three chaplains to pray for his soul, and also a Free
Grammar School with a sufficient master to teach 25 children and
scholars freely for ever. This was the origin of the Mercers’ School,
and this alone is the reason for supposing that there had been a grammar
school in the Hospital before. Until the Mercers allow their records to
be ransacked by some expert with an eye open to the evidence as to
schools, it is impossible to assert that there was or was not a school
in the Hospital. It is strange, if there was, that no evidence has yet
been forthcoming of its existence. The verdict must be, for the present
at least, that its existence is not proven.
APPENDICES
APPENDIX I
THE CITY COMPANIES
On August 14, 1880, the Royal Commission appointed to inquire into the
City Companies issued a circular addressed to all the Companies. This
circular sought information on the various points as follows: