XXXI. _The Alliterative Romance of Alexander and Dindimus_, ed. Rev.
W. W. Skeat. 6s. „
XXXII. _Starkey’s “England in Henry VIII’s time.”_ Pt. I. Starkey’s
Life and Letters, ed. S. J. Herrtage. 8s. „
XXXIII. _Gesta Romanorum_ (englisht ab. 1440), ed. S. J. Herrtage,
B.A. 15s. 1879
XXXIV. _Charlemagne Romances:--1. Sir Ferumbras_, from Ashm. MS. 33,
ed. S. J. Herrtage. 15s. „
XXXV. _Charlemagne Romances:--2. The Sege off Melayne, Sir Otuell,
&c._, ed. S. J. Herrtage. 12s. 1880
XXXVI. _Charlemagne Romances:--3. Lyf of Charles the Grete_, Pt. I.,
ed. S. J. Herrtage. 16s. „
XXXVII. _Charlemagne Romances:--4. Lyf of Charles the Grete_, Pt. II.,
ed. S. J. Herrtage. 15s. 1881
XXXVIII. _Charlemagne Romances:--5. The Sowdone of Babylone_, ed. Dr.
Hausknecht. 15s. „
XXXIX. _Charlemagne Romances:--6. Rauf Colyear, Roland, Otuel, &c._,
ed. S. J. Herrtage, B.A. 15s. 1882
XL. _Charlemagne Romances:--7. Huon of Burdeux_, by Lord Berners,
ed. S. L. Lee, B. Part I. 15s. „
XLI. _Charlemagne Romances:--8. Huon of Burdeux_, by Lord Berners,
ed. S. L. Lee, B. Pt. II. 15s. 1883
XLII. _Guy of Warwick_: 2 texts (Auchinleck MS. and Cains MS.),
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XLIII. _Charlemagne Romances:--9. Huon of Burdeux_, by Lord Berners,
ed. S. L. Lee, B. Pt. III. 15s. 1884
XLIV. _Charlemagne Romances:--10. The Four Sons of Aymon_, ed. Miss
Octavia Richardson. Pt. I. 15s. 1884
XLV. _Charlemagne Romances:--11. The Four Sons of Aymon_, ed. Miss O.
Richardson. Pt. II. 20s. 1885
XLVI. _Sir Bevis of Hamton_, from the Auchinleck and other MSS.,
ed. Prof. E. Kölbing, Ph.D. Part I. 10s. „
XLVII. _The Wars of Alexander_, ed. Rev. Prof. Skeat, Litt.D., LL.D.
20s. 1886
XLVIII. _Sir Bevis of Hamton_, ed. Prof. E. Kölbing, Ph.D. Part II.
10s. „
XLIX. _Guy of Warwick_, 2 texts (Auchinleck and Caius MSS.), Pt. II.,
ed. Prof. J. Zupitza, Ph.D. 15s. 1887
L. _Charlemagne Romances:--12. Huon of Burdeux_, by Lord Berners,
ed. S. L. Lee, B. Part IV. 5s. „
LI. _Torrent of Portyngale_, from the unique MS. in the Chetham
Library, ed. E. Adam, Ph.D. 10s. „
LII. _Bullein’s Dialogue against the Feuer Pestilence, 1578_ (ed. 1,
1564). Ed. M. & A. H. Bullen. 10s. 1888
LIII. _Vicary’s Anatomie of the Body of Man, 1548_, ed. 1577,
ed. F. J. & Percy Furnivall. Part I. 15s. „
LIV. _Caxton’s Englishing of Alain Chartier’s Curial_, ed. Dr. F. J.
Furnivall & Prof. P. Meyer. 5s. „
LV. _Barbour’s Bruce_, ed. Rev. Prof. Skeat, Litt.D., LL.D. Part IV.
5s. 1889
LVI. _Early English Pronunciation_, by A. J. Ellis, Esq., F.R.S.
Pt. V., the present English Dialects. 25s. „
LVII. _Caxton’s Eneydos_, A.D. 1490, coll. with its French, ed. M. T.
Culley, M.A. & Dr. F. J. Furnivall. 13s. 1890
LVIII. _Caxton’s Blanchardyn & Eglantine_, c. 1489, extracts from ed.
1595, & French, ed. Dr. L. Kellner. 17s. „
LIX. _Guy of Warwick_, 2 texts (Auchinleck and Caius MSS.), Part III.,
ed. Prof. J. Zupitza, Ph.D. 15s. 1891
LX. _Lydgate’s Temple of Glass_, re-edited from the MSS. by Dr.
J. Schick. 15s. „
LXI. _Hoccleve’s Minor Poems, I._, from the Phillipps and Durham MSS.,
ed. F. J. Furnivall, Ph.D. 15s. 1892
LXII. _The Chester Plays_, re-edited from the MSS. by the late Dr.
Hermann Deimling. Part I. 15s. „
LXIII. _Thomas a Kempis’s De Imitatione Christi_, englisht ab. 1440,
& 1502, ed. Prof. J. K. Ingram. 15s. 1893
LXIV. _Caxton’s Godfrey of Boloyne_, or _Last Siege of Jerusalem_,
1481, ed. Dr. Mary N. Colvin. 15s. „
LXV. _Sir Bevis of Hamton_, ed. Prof. E. Kölbing, Ph.D. Part III.
15s. 1894
LXVI. _Lydgate’s and Burgh’s Secrees of Philisoffres_, ab. 1445-50,
ed. R. Steele, B.A. 15s. „
LXVII. _The Three Kings’ Sons_, a Romance, ab. 1500, Part I., the
Text, ed. Dr. Furnivall. 10s. 1895
LXVIII. _Melusine_, the prose Romance, ab. 1500, Part I, the Text,
ed. A. K. Donald. 20s. „
LXIX. _Lydgate’s Assembly of the Gods_, ed. Prof. Oscar L. Triggs,
M.A., Ph.D. 15s. 1896
LXX. _The Digby Plays_, edited by Dr. F. J. Furnivall. 15s. „
LXXI. _The Towneley Plays_, ed. Geo. England and A. W. Pollard, M.A.
15s. 1897
LXXII. _Hoccleve’s Regement of Princes, 1411-12, and 14 Poems_, edited
by Dr. F. J. Furnivall. 15s. „
LXXIII. _Hoccleve’s Minor Poems, II._, from the Ashburnham MS.,
ed. I. Gollancz, M.A. [_At Press._ „
LXXIV. _Secreta Secretorum_, 3 prose Englishings, by Jas. Yonge, 1428,
ed. R. Steele, B. Part I. 20s. 1898
LXXV. _Speculum Guidonis de Warwyk_, edited by Miss G. L. Morrill,
M.A., Ph.D. 10s. „
LXXVI. _George Ashby’s Poems, &c._, ed. Miss Mary Bateson. 15s. 1899
LXXVII. _Lydgate’s DeGuilleville’s Pilgrimage of the Life of Man_,
1426, ed. Dr. F. J. Furnivall. Part I. 10s. „
LXXVIII. _The Life and Death of Mary Magdalene_, by T. Robinson,
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LXXIX. _Caxton’s Dialogues, English and French_, c. 1483, ed. Henry
Bradley, M.A. 10s. 1900
LXXX. _Lydgate’s Two Nightingale Poems_, ed. Dr. Otto Glauning.
5s. „
LXXXI. _Gower’s Confessio Amantis_, edited by G. C. Macaulay, M.A.
Vol. I. 15s. „
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Vol. II. 15s. 1901
LXXXIII. _Lydgate’s DeGuilleville’s Pilgrimage of the Life of Man_,
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LXXXIV. _Lydgate’s Reason and Sensuality_, edited by Dr. E. Sieper.
Part I. 5s. „
LXXXV. _Alexander Scott’s Poems_, 1568, from the unique Edinburgh MS.,
ed. A. K. Donald, B.A. 10s. 1902
LXXXVI. _William of Shoreham’s Poems_, re-ed. from the unique MS. by
Dr. M. Konrath. Part I. 10s. „
LXXXVII. _Two Coventry Corpus-Christi Plays_, re-edited by Hardin
Craig, M.A. 10s. [_At Press._ „
LXXXVIII. _Le Morte Arthur_, re-edited from the Harleian MS. 2252 by
Prof. Bruce, Ph.D. 15s. 1903
LXXXIX. _Lydgate’s Reason and Sensuality_, edited by Dr. E. Sieper.
Part II. 15s. „
XC. _William of Shoreham’s Poems_, re-ed. from the unique MS. by
Dr. M. Konrath. Part II. [_At Press._ 1904
XCI. „
EARLY ENGLISH TEXT SOCIETY TEXTS PREPARING.
Besides the Texts named as at press on p. 12 of the Cover of the Early
English Text Society’s last Books, the following Texts are also slowly
preparing for the Society:--
ORIGINAL SERIES.
_The Earliest English Prose Psalter_, ed. Dr. K. D. Buelbring.
Part II.
_The Earliest English Verse Psalter_, 3 texts, ed. Rev. R. Harvey,
M.A.
_Anglo-Saxon Poems_, from the Vercelli MS., re-edited by Prof.
I. Gollancz, M.A.
_Anglo-Saxon Glosses_ to Latin Prayers and Hymns, edited by Dr.
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_Byrhtferth’s Handboc_, edited by Prof. G. Hempl.
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_The Master of the Game, a Book of Huntynge_ for Hen. V. when Prince
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_Early English Verse Lives of Saints_, Standard Collection, from the
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_Early English Confessionals_, edited by Dr. R. von Fleischhacker.
_A Lapidary_, from Lord Tollemache’s MS., &c., edited by Dr. R. von
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_Early English Deeds and Documents_, from unique MSS., ed. Dr. Lorenz
Morsbach.
_Gilbert Banastre’s Poems_, and other _Boccaccio englishings_, ed. by
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_Lanfranc’s Cirurgie_, ab. 1400 A.D., ed. Dr. R. von Fleischhacker,
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_Early Norwich Wills_, edited by Walter Rye and F. J. Furnivall.
_The Cartularies of Oseney Abbey and Godstow Nunnery_, englisht ab.
1450, ed. Rev. A. Clark, M.A.
_Early Lyrical Poems_ from the Harl. MS. 2253, re-edited by Prof. Hall
Griffin, M.A.
_Alliterative Prophecies_, edited from the MSS. by Prof. Brandl, Ph.D.
_Miscellaneous Alliterative Poems_, edited from the MSS. by Dr.
L. Morsbach.
_Bird and Beast Poems_, a collection from MSS., edited by Dr. K. D.
Buelbring.
_Scire Mori, &c._, from the Lichfield MS. 16, ed. Mrs. L. Grindon,
LL.A., and Miss Florence Gilbert.
_Nicholas Trivet’s French Chronicle_, from Sir A. Acland-Hood’s unique
MS., ed. by Miss Mary Bateson.
_Early English Homilies_ in Harl. 2276 &c., c. 1400, ed. J. Friedländer.
_Extracts from the Registers of Boughton_, ed. Hy. Littlehales, Esq.
_The Diary of Prior Moore of Worcester_, A.D. 1518-35, from the unique
MS., ed. Henry Littlehales, Esq.
_The Pore Caitif_, edited from its MSS., by Mr. Peake.
_Thomas Berkley’s englisht Vegetius on the Art of War_, MS. 30 Magd.
Coll. Oxf., ed. L. C. Wharton, M.A.
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_Bp. Fisher’s English Works_, Pt. II., with his _Life and Letters_,
ed. Rev. Ronald Bayne, B.A. [_At Press._
_Sir Tristrem_, from the unique Auchinleck MS., edited by George F.
Black.
_John of Arderne’s Surgery_, c. 1425, ed. J. F. Payne, M.D.
_De Guilleville’s Pilgrimage of the Sowle_, edited by Prof. Dr. Leon
Kellner.
_Vicary’s Anatomie, 1548_, from the unique MS. copy by George Jeans,
edited by F. J. & Percy Furnivall.
_Vicary’s Anatomie, 1548_, ed. 1577, edited by F. J. & Percy
Furnivall. Part II. [_At Press._
_A Compilacion of Surgerye_, from H. de Mandeville and Lanfrank, A.D.
1392, ed. Dr. J. F. Payne.
_William Staunton’s St. Patrick’s Purgatory, &c._, ed. Mr. G. P.
Krapp, U.S.A.
_Trevisa’s Bartholomæus de Proprietatibus Rerum_, re-edited by Dr.
R. von Fleischhacker.
_Bullein’s Dialogue against the Feuer Pestilence_, 1564, 1573, 1578.
Ed. A. H. and M. Bullen. Pt. II.
_The Romance of Boctus and Sidrac_, edited from the MSS. by Dr. K. D.
Buelbring.
_The Romance of Clariodus_, re-edited by Dr. K. D. Buelbring.
_Sir Amadas_, re-edited from the MSS. by Dr. K. D. Buelbring.
_Sir Degrevant_, edited from the MSS. by Dr. K. Luick.
_Robert of Brunne’s Chronicle of England_, from the Inner Temple MS.,
ed. by Prof. W. E. Mead, Ph.D.
_Maundeville’s Voiage and Travaile_, re-edited from the Cotton MS.
Titus C. 16, &c., by Miss M. Bateson.
_Avowynge of Arthur_, re-edited from the unique Ireland MS. by Dr.
K. D. Buelbring.
_Guy of Warwick_, Copland’s version, edited by a pupil of the late
Prof. Zupitza, Ph.D.
_Awdelay’s Poems_, re-edited from the unique MS. Douce 302, by Prof.
Dr. E. Wülfing.
_The Wyse Chylde_ and other early Treatises on Education, Northwich
School, Harl. 2099 &c., ed. G. Collar, B.A.
_Caxton’s Dictes and Sayengis of Philosophirs_, 1477, with Lord
Tollemache’s MS. version, ed. S. I. Butler, Esq.
_Caxton’s Book of the Ordre of Chyualry_, collated with Loutfut’s
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_Lydgate’s Court of Sapience_, edited by Dr. Borsdorf.
_Lydgate’s Lyfe of oure Lady_, ed. by Prof. Georg Fiedler, Ph.D.
_Lydgate’s Dance of Death_, edited by Miss Florence Warren.
_Lydgate’s Life of St. Edmund_, edited from the MSS. by Dr. Axel
Erdmann.
_Lydgate’s Triumph Poems_, edited by Dr. E. Sieper.
_Lydgate’s Minor Poems_, edited by Dr. Otto Glauning.
_Richard Coer de Lion_, re-edited from Harl. MS. 4690, by Prof.
Hausknecht, Ph.D.
_The Romance of Athelstan_, re-edited by a pupil of the late Prof.
J. Zupitza, Ph.D.
_The Romance of Sir Degare_, re-edited by Dr. Breul.
_Mulcaster’s Positions_ 1581, and _Elementarie_ 1582, ed. Dr. Th.
Klaehr, Dresden.
_Walton’s verse Boethius de Consolatione_, edited by Mark H. Liddell,
U.S.A.
_The Gospel of Nichodemus_, edited by Ernest Riedel.
_Sir Landeval and Sir Launfal_, edited by Dr. Zimmermann.
_Rolland’s Seven Sages_, the Scottish version of 1560, edited by
George F. Black.
The Subscription to the Society, which constitutes membership, is £1 1s.
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advance to the Hon. Secretary.
[Footnote 1: He was born about 1295. See Abbé GOUGET’S
_Bibliothèque française_, Vol. IX, p. 73-4.--P. M. The Roxburghe
Club printed the 1st version in 1893.]
[Footnote 2: The Roxburghe Club’s copy of this 2nd version was
lent to Mr. Currie, and unluckily burnt too with his other MSS.]
[Footnote 3: These 3 MSS. have not yet been collated, but are
believed to be all of the same version.]
[Footnote 4: Another MS. is in the Pepys Library.]
[Footnote 5: According to Lord Aldenham’s MS.]
[Footnote 6: These were printed in France, late in the 15th or
early in the 16th century.]
[Footnote 7: 15th cent., containing only the _Vie humaine_.]
[Footnote 8: 15th cent., containing all the 3 Pilgrimages, the 3rd
being Jesus Christ’s.]
[Footnote 9: 14th cent., containing the _Vie humaine_ and the 2nd
Pilgrimage, _de l’Ame_: both incomplete.]
[Footnote 10: Ab. 1430, 106 leaves (leaf 1 of text wanting), with
illuminations of nice little devils--red, green, tawny, &c--and
damnd souls, fires, angels &c.]
[Footnote 11: Of these, Mr. Harsley is preparing a new edition,
with collations of all the MSS. Many copies of Thorpe’s book, not
issued by the Ælfric Society, are still in stock.
Of the Vercelli Homilies, the Society has bought the copy made by
Prof. G. Lattanzi.]
Typographical Errors:
50. _King Alfred’s ... [_“5” invisible_]
_Early English Verse Lives of Saints_ ... (_Editor wanted._)
[_closing parenthesis missing_]
* * * * *
* * * *
* * * * *
Meals and Manners
in
Olden Time.
Berlin: Asher & Co., 5, Unter Den Linden.
New York: C. Scribner & Co.; Leypoldt & Holt.
Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co.
Early English Meals and Manners:
John Russell’s Boke of Nurture,
Wynkyn de Worde’s Boke of Lernynge,
The Boke of Curtasye,
R. Weste’s Booke of Demeanor,
Seager’s Schoole of Vertue,
The Babees Book, Aristotle’s A B C, Urbanitatis,
Stans Puer ad Mensam, The Lytylle Childrenes Lytil Boke,
For to serve a Lord, Old Symon, The Birched School-Boy,
&c. &c.
with some
Forewords on Education in Early England.
Edited by
FREDERICK J. FURNIVALL, M.A.,
Trin. Hall, Cambridge.
London:
Published for the Early English Text Society
by Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., Limited,
Dryden House, 43, Gerrard Street, Soho, W.
1868.
[_Reprinted 1894, 1904._]
Original Series, 32.
_Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, London and Bungay._
DEDICATED
to
The Historian Of
“The Early & Middle Ages Of England,”
CHARLES H. PEARSON, ESQ., M.A.,
Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford,
Late Professor of History at
King’s College, London,
In Admiration of his Learning
and
In Gratitude for his Help,
BY THE EDITOR
NOTICE. The _Russell_ and _De Worde_ of this work were issued, with
_Rhodes’s Boke of Nurture_, to the Roxburghe Club, in 4to, in 1867.
The whole of the work (except p. 361), with Rhodes, and some short
poems in English, French, and Latin, was issued to the Early English
Text Society, in 8vo, in 1868, with the title _The Babees Book_, &c.
(_Manners and Meals in Olden Time_).
CONTENTS.
PAGE
FOREWORDS, OR GENERAL PREFACE i
Education in Early England iv
Cleanliness, or Dirt, of Men, Houses, &c. lxiii
Notice of the separate Poems up to _Russell_ lxviii
PREFACE TO RUSSELL’S BOKE OF NURTURE, and the Poems and
Treatises following it (except those in the Postscript) lxix
COLLATIONS AND CORRECTIONS xcii
JOHN RUSSELL’S BOKE OF NURTURE 1
(Contents thereof, inserted after title;
Notes thereon, p. 84. Lawrens Andrewe on Fish, p. 113.)
Wilyam Bulleyn on Boxyng and Neckeweede 124
Andrew Borde on Sleep, Rising, and Dress 128
William Vaughan’s Fifteen Directions to preserve Health 133
The Dyet for every Day
(from Sir John Harington’s Schoole of Salerne) 138
On Rising, Diet, and Going to Bed (from the same) 140
Recipes (for Fritters, Jussell, and Mawmeny) 145
Recipes (for Hares and Conies in Civeye, and for Doucettes) 146
WYNKYN DE WORDE’S BOKE OF KERUYNGE (ed. 1513) 147
(Contents thereof, p. 150; Notes thereon, p. 173.
Note on the first edition of 1508, p. lxxxvii.)
THE BOKE OF CURTASYE (from the Sloane MS. 1986, ab. 1460 A.D.) 175
Contents thereof, p. 176. Notes thereto, p. 283
THE BOOKE OF DEMEANOR
(from The Schoole of Vertue by Richard Weste) 207
Bp. Grossetest’s Household Statutes (from the Sloane MS. 1986) 215
Stanzas and Couplets of Counsel (from the Rawlinson MS. C. 86) 219
THE SCHOOLE OF VERTUE by F. Seager (A.D. 1557) 221
Whate-ever thow sey, avyse thee welle! 244
A Dogg Lardyner, & a Sowe Gardyner 246
Maxims in -ly 247
Roger Ascham’s Advice to Lord Warwick’s Servant 248
THE BABEES BOOK,
(or a ‘lytyl Reporte’ of how Young People should behave) 250
Lerne or be Lewde 258
The A B C of Aristotle 260
_Vrbanitatis_ 262
The Boris Hede furst 264*
The Lytylle Childrenes Lytil Boke, or Edyllys be
(on left-hand pages to p. 273) 265
The Young Children’s Book
(on right-hand pages to p. 274) 266
Stans Puer ad Mensam (in English, from MS. Harl. 2251;
on left-hand pages to p. 281) 275
The Book of Curteisie that is clepid _Stans Puer ad Mensam_
(from Lambeth MS. 853; on right-hand pages to p. 282) 276
Notes to the Boke of Curtasye, &c. 283
Index to the Poems, &c. (before the Postscript) 286
[***] POSTSCRIPT (added after the Index was printed).
FFOR TO SERVE A LORD (see Preface to Russell, p. lxxii.),
with _A Feste for a Bryde_, p. 358 349
Suffer, and hold your tongue 361
The Houshold Stuff occupied at the
Lord Mayor’s Feast, A.D. 1505 362
The Ordre of goyng or sittyng 365
Latin Graces 366
SYMON’S Lesson of Wysedome for all maner Chyldryn 381
The Birched School-Boy of about 1500 A.D. 385
The Song of the School-Boy at Christmas 387
The Boar’s Head 388
* * * * *
* * * *
* * * * *
[Transcriber’s Note:
The Headnotes from the General Preface are collected here to act as
a table of contents. Each note will also appear in the text at
approximately its original location.]
EDWARD THE FOURTH’S HENCHMEN
RICH MEN’S EDUCATION IN EARLY ENGLAND.
HOUSES OF NOBLES AND CHANCELLORS WERE SCHOOLS.
BP. GROSSETETE TAUGHT NOBLES’ SONS.
YOUNG NOBLES IN WOLSEY’S HOUSEHOLD.
KNOWLEDGE OF FRENCH.
APPRENTICESHIP IN HENRY VII.’S TIME.
GIRLS SENT OUT TO LADIES’ HOUSES.
PRIVATE TUITION IN EARLY ENGLAND.
EDUCATION AT HOME AND AT TUTORS’.
STUDIES OF YOUTHS, TEMP. HEN. VIII. AND ELIZABETH.
NEGLECT OF EDUCATION BY MOTHERS.
UNIVERSITY EDUCATION IN EARLY ENGLAND.
POVERTY OF UNIVERSITY SCHOLARS.
UNDERGRADUATE’S EXPENSES AT OXFORD, 1478.
FEW NOBLEMEN AT CAMBRIDGE.
NOBLES AND GENTLEMEN AT OXFORD.
FAVOURITISM OF THE RICH IN THE UNIVERSITIES.
BAD EXAMPLE OF RICH MEN AT COLLEGE.
FOREIGN UNIVERSITY EDUCATION.
MONASTIC AND CATHEDRAL SCHOOLS.
LYDGATE’S TRICKS AT SCHOOL.
EDUCATION OF FIELD LABOURERS.
NO BONDSMAN’S SON TO BE AN APPRENTICE.
POST-REFORMATION CATHEDRAL SCHOOLS.
POOR MEN’S SONS HAVE HEADS AS WELL AS RICH ONES’.
AN ETON BOY IN A.D. 1478.
POST-REFORMATION GRAMMAR SCHOOLS.
STUDY OF ENGLISH RECOMMENDED IN 1582-1612.
A GRAMMAR-SCHOOL BOY’S DAY IN A.D. 1612.
THE GOOD OLD TIMES OF SMOKE AND FILTH.
NAKED SCULLIONS AND DIRTY STREETS.
FOREWORDS.
“The naturall maister Aristotell saith that euery body be the course of
nature is enclyned to here & se all that refressheth & quickeneth the
spretys of man[1] / wherfor I haue thus in this boke folowinge[2]”
gathered together divers treatises touching the Manners & Meals of
Englishmen in former days, & have added therto divers figures of men of
old, at meat & in bed,[3] to the end that, to my fellows here & to come,
the home life of their forefathers may be somewhat more plain, & their
own minds somewhat rejoiced.
The treatises here collected consist of a main one--John Russell’s _Boke
of Nurture_, to which I have written a separate preface[4]--extracts and
short books illustrating Russell, like the _Booke of Demeanor_ and _Boke
of Curtasy_, and certain shorter poems addressed partly to those whom
Cotgrave calls “_Enfans de famille_, Yonkers of account, youthes of good
houses, children of rich parents (yet aliue),” partly to carvers and
servants, partly to schoolboys, partly to people in general, or at least
those of them who were willing to take advice as to how they should mend
their manners and live a healthy life.
[Headnote: EDWARD THE FOURTH’S HENCHMEN]
The persons to whom the last poems of the present collection are
addressed, the
yonge Babees, whom{e} bloode Royall{e}
With{e} grace, feture, and hyhe habylite
Hath{e} en{ou}rmyd,
the “Bele Babees” and “swete Children,” may be likened to the “young
gentylmen, Henxmen,--VI Enfauntes, or more, as it shall please the
Kinge,”--at Edward the Fourth’s Court; and the authors or translators of
the Bokes in this volume, somewhat to that sovereign’s Maistyr of
Henxmen, whose duty it was
“to shew the schooles[5] of urbanitie and nourture of Englond, to
lerne them to ryde clenely and surely; to drawe them also to
justes; to lerne them were theyre barneys; to haue all curtesy in
wordes, dedes, and degrees; dilygently to kepe them in rules of
goynges and sittinges, after they be of honour. Moreover to teche
them sondry languages, and othyr lerninges vertuous, to harping,
to pype, sing, daunce, and with other honest and temperate
behaviour and patience; and to kepe dayly and wekely with these
children dew convenity, with corrections in theyre chambres,
according to suche gentylmen; and eche of them to be used to that
thinge of vertue that he shall be moste apt to lerne, with
remembraunce dayly of Goddes servyce accustumed. This maistyr
sittith in the halle, next unto these Henxmen, at the same boarde,
to have his respecte unto theyre demeanynges, howe manerly they
ete and drinke, and to theyre communication and other formes
curiall, after _the booke of urbanitie_.” (Liber Niger in
_Household Ordinances_, p. 45.)
That these young Henxmen were gentlemen, is expressly stated,[6] and
they had “everyche of them an honest servaunt to keepe theyre chambre
and harneys, and to aray hym in this courte whyles theyre maisters he
present in courte.” I suppose that when they grew up, some became
Esquires, and then their teaching would prove of use, for
“These Esquiers of houshold of old [were] accustumed, wynter and
sumer, in aftyrnoones and in eveninges, to drawe to lordes
chambres within courte, there to kepe honest company aftyr theyre
cunnynge, in talkyng of cronycles of Kings and of other polycyes,
or in pypeyng or harpyng, synging, or other actes martialles, to
help occupy the courte, and accompany straungers, tyll the tyme
require of departing.”
But that a higher station than an Esquier’s was in store for some of
these henchmen, may be known from the history of one of them. Thomas
Howard, eldest son of Sir John Howard, knight (who was afterwards Duke
of Norfolk, and killed at Bosworth Field), was among these henchmen or
pages, ‘enfauntes’ six or more, of Edward IV.’s. He was made Duke of
Norfolk for his splendid victory over the Scots at Flodden, and Anne
Boleyn and Catherine Howard were his granddaughters. Among the ‘othyr
lerninges vertuous’ taught him at Edward’s court was no doubt that of
drawing, for we find that ‘He was buried with much pomp at Thetford
Abbey under a tomb designed by himself and master Clarke, master of the
works at King’s College, Cambridge, & Wassel a freemason of Bury S.
Edmund’s.’ Cooper’s _Ath. Cant._, i. p. 29, col. 2.
[Headnote: RICH MEN’S EDUCATION IN EARLY ENGLAND.]
The question of the social rank of these Bele Babees,[[6a]] children,
and _Pueri_ who stood at tables, opens up the whole subject of
upper-class education in early times in England. It is a subject that,
so far as I can find, has never yet been separately treated[7], and I
therefore throw together such few notices as the kindness of friends[8]
and my own chance grubbings have collected; these as a sort of stopgap
till the appearance of Mr Anstey’s volume on early Oxford Studies in the
_Chronicles and Memorials_, a volume which will, I trust, give us a
complete account of early education in our land. If it should not,
I hope that Mr Quick will carry his pedagogic researches past Henry
VIII.’s time, or that one of our own members will take the subject up.
It is worthy of being thoroughly worked out. For convenience’ sake, the
notices I have mentioned are arranged under six heads:
1. Education in Nobles’ houses.
2. At Home and at Private Tutors’, p. xvii. (Girls, p. xxv.)
3. At English Universities, p. xxvi.
4. At Foreign Universities, p. xl.
5. At Monastic and Cathedral Schools, p. xli.
6. At Grammar Schools, p. lii.
One consideration should be premised, that manly exercises, manners and
courtesy, music and singing, knowledge of the order of precedency of
ranks, and ability to carve, were in early times more important than
Latin and Philosophy. ‘Aylmar þe kyng’ gives these directions to
Athelbrus, his steward, as to Horn’s education:
Stiwarde, tak nu here
Mi fundlyng for to lere 228
Of þine meste{re},
Of wude {and} of riuere;
{And} tech him to harpe
Wiþ his nayles scharpe; 232
Biuore me to kerue,
And of þe cupe serue;
Þu tech him of alle þe liste (craft, AS. _list_)
Þat þu eure of wiste; 236
[And] his feiren þou wise (mates thou teach)
Into oþere s{er}uise.
Horn þu underuonge,
{And} tech him of harpe {and} songe. 240
_King Horn_, E. E. T. Soc., 1866, ed. Lumby, p. 7.[9]
So in Romances and Ballads of later date, we find
The child was taught great nurterye;
a Master had him vnder his care,
& taught him _curtesie_.
_Tryamore_, in Bp. Percy’s Folio MS. vol. ii. ed. 1867.
It was the worthy Lord of learen,
he was a lord of hie degree;
he had noe more children but one sonne,
he sett him to schoole to learne _curtesie_.
_Lord of Learne_, Bp. Percy’s Folio MS. vol. i. p. 182, ed. 1867.
Chaucer’s Squire, as we know, at twenty years of age
hadde ben somtyme in chivachie,
In Flaundres, in Artoys, and in Picardie,
And born him wel, as in so litel space,
In hope to stonden in his lady grace ...
Syngynge he was, or flowtynge, al the day ...
Wel cowde he sitte on hors, and wel cowde ryde.
He cowde songes wel make and endite,
Justne and eek daunce, and wel purtray and write ...
Curteys he was, lowly, and servysable,
And carf beforn his fadur at the table.[10]
Which of these accomplishments would Cambridge or Oxford teach? Music
alone.[[10a]] That, as Harrison says, was one of the Quadrivials,
‘arithmetike, musike, geometrie, and astronomie.’ The Trivium was
grammar, rhetoric, and logic.
[Headnote: HOUSES OF NOBLES AND CHANCELLORS WERE SCHOOLS.]
1. The chief places of education for the sons of our nobility and gentry
were the houses of other nobles, and specially those of the Chancellors
of our Kings, men not only able to read and write, talk Latin and French
themselves, but in whose hands the Court patronage lay. As early as
Henry the Second’s time (A.D. 1154-62), if not before[11], this system
prevailed. A friend notes that Fitz-Stephen says of Becket:
“The nobles of the realm of England and of neighbouring kingdoms
used to send their sons to serve the Chancellor, whom he trained
with honourable bringing-up and learning; and when they had
received the knight’s belt, sent them back with honour to their
fathers and kindred: some he used to keep. The king himself, his
master, entrusted to him his son, the heir of the realm, to be
brought up; whom he had with him, with many sons of nobles of the
same age, and their proper retinue and masters and proper servants
in the honour due.” --_Vita S. Thomæ_, pp. 189, 190, ed. Giles.
Roger de Hoveden, a Yorkshireman, who was a clerk or secretary to Henry
the Second, says of Richard the Lionheart’s unpopular chancellor,
Longchamps the Bishop of Ely:
“All the sons of the nobles acted as his servants, with downcast
looks, nor dared they to look upward towards the heavens unless it
so happened that they were addressing him; and if they attended to
anything else they were pricked with a goad, which their lord held
in his hand, fully mindful of his grandfather of pious memory,
who, being of servile condition in the district of Beauvais, had,
for his occupation, to guide the plough and whip up the oxen; and
who at length, to gain his liberty, fled to the Norman territory.”
(Riley’s _Hoveden_, ii. 232, quoted in _The Cornhill Magazine_,
vol. xv. p. 165.)[12]
All Chancellors were not brutes of this kind, but we must remember that
young people were subjected to rough treatment in early days. Even so
late as Henry VI.’s time, Agnes Paston sends to London on the 28th of
January, 1457, to pray the master of her son of 15, that if the boy
“hath not done well, nor will not amend,” his master Greenfield “will
truly belash him till he will amend.” And of the same lady’s treatment
of her marriageable daughter, Elizabeth, Clere writes on the 29th of
June, 1454,
“She (the daughter) was never in so great sorrow as she is
now-a-days, for she may not speak with no man, whosoever come, ne
not may see nor speak with my man, nor with servants of her
mother’s, but that she beareth her on hand otherwise than she
meaneth; and she hath since Easter the most part been beaten once
in the week or twice, and sometimes twice on a day, and her head
broken in two or three places.” (v. i. p. 50, col. 1, ed. 1840.)
The treatment of Lady Jane Grey by her parents was also very severe, as
she told Ascham, though she took it meekly, as her sweet nature was:
“One of the greatest benefites that God ever gave me, is, that he
sent me so sharpe and severe Parentes, and so jentle a
scholemaster. For when I am in presence either of father or
mother, whether I speake, kepe silence, sit, stand, or go, eate,
drinke, be merie or sad, be sewyng, plaiyng, dauncing, or doing
anie thing els, I must do it, as it were, in soch weight, mesure,
and number, even so perfitelie as God made the world, or els I am
so sharplie taunted, so cruellie threatened; yea presentlie some
tymes, with pinches, nippes, and bobbes, and other waies which I
will not name for the honor I beare them, so without measure
misordered, that I thinke my self in hell till tyme cum that I
must go to _M. Elmer_, who teacheth me so jentlie, so pleasantlie,
with soch faire allurementes to learning, that I thinke all the
tyme nothing whiles I am with him. And when I am called from him,
I fall on weeping.” --_The Scholemaster_, ed. Mayor.
The inordinate beating[13] of boys by schoolmasters--whom he calls in
different places ‘sharp, fond, & lewd’[14]--Ascham denounces strongly in
the first book of his _Scholemaster_, and he contrasts their folly in
beating into their scholars the hatred of learning with the practice of
the wise riders who by gentle allurements breed them up in the love of
riding. Indeed, the origin of his book was Sir Wm. Cecil’s saying to him
“I have strange news brought me this morning, that divers scholars of
Eton be run away from the school for fear of beating.”
Sir Peter Carew, says Mr Froude, being rather a troublesome boy, was
chained in the Haccombe dog-kennel till he ran away from it.
[Headnote: BP. GROSSETETE TAUGHT NOBLES’ SONS.]
But to return to the training of young men in nobles’ houses. I take the
following from Fiddes’s Appendix to his Life of Wolsey:
_John de Athon_, upon the Constitutions of _Othobon, tit._ 23, in
respect to the Goods of such who dyed intestate, and upon the Word
_Barones_, has the following Passage concerning _Grodsted_ Bishop
of _Lincoln_[15] (who died 9th Oct., 1253),--
“Robert surnamed Grodsted of holy memory, late Bishop of Lincoln,
when King Henry asked him, as if in wonder, where he learnt the
Nurture in which he had instructed the sons of nobles (&) peers of
the Realm, whom he kept about him as pages
(_domisellos_[16]),--since he was not descended from a noble
lineage, but from humble (parents)--is said to have answered
fearlessly, ‘In the house or guest-chambers of greater kings than
the King of England’; because he had learnt from understanding the
scriptures the manner of life of David, Solomon, & other
Kings[15].”
_Reyner,_ in his _Apostol. Bened._ from _Saunders_ acquaints us,
that the Sons of the Nobility were placed with _Whiting_ Abbot of
_Glastenbury_ for their Education, who was contemporary with the
Cardinal, and which Method of Education was continued for some
Time afterward.
There is in the Custody of the present Earl of _Stafford_,
a Nobleman of the greatest Humanity and Goodness, an Original of
Instructions, by the Earl of _Arundell_, written in the Year 1620,
for the Benefit of his younger Son, the Earl of _Stafford’s_
Grandfather, under this Title;
_Instructions for you my Son _William_, how to behave
your self at _Norwich_._
In these Instructions is the following paragraph, “You shall in
all Things reverence honour and obey my Lord Bishop of _Norwich_,
as you would do any of your Parents, esteeminge whatsoever He
shall tell or Command you, as if your Grandmother of _Arundell_,
your Mother, or my self, should say it; and in all things esteem
your self as my Lord’s Page; a breeding which youths of my house
far superior to you were accustomed unto, as my Grandfather of
_Norfolk_, and his Brother my good Uncle of _Northampton_ were
both bred as Pages with Bishopps, _&c_.”
Sir Thomas More, who was born in 1480, was brought up in the house of
Cardinal Morton. Roper says that he was
“received into the house of the right reverend, wise, and learned
prelate Cardinal Morton, where, though he was young of years, yet
would he at Christmas-tide suddenly sometimes step in among the
players, and never studying for the matter make a part of his own
there presently among them, which made the lookers on more sport
than all the players beside. In whose wit and towardness the
Cardinal much delighting would say of him unto the nobles that
divers times dined with him, _This child here waiting at the
table, Whosoever shall live to see it, will prove a marvellous
man._ Whereupon for his better furtherance in learning he placed
him at Oxford, &c.” (Roper’s _Life of More_, ed. Singer, 1822,
p. 3.)
Cresacre More in his _Life of More_ (ed. 1828, p. 17) states the same
thing more fully, and gives the remark of the Cardinal more accurately,
thus:-- “that that boy there waiting _on him_, whoever should live to
see it, would prove a marvellous rare man.”[17]
[Headnote: YOUNG NOBLES IN WOLSEY’S HOUSEHOLD.]
Through Wolsey’s household, says Professor Brewer, almost all the
Officials of Henry the Eighth’s time passed. Cavendish, in his Life of
Wolsey (vol. i. p. 38, ed. Singer, 1825) says of the Cardinal, “And at
meals, there was continually in his chamber a board kept for his
Chamberlains, and Gentlemen Ushers, having with them _a mess of the
young Lords_, and another for gentlemen.” Among these young Lords, we
learn at p. 57, was
“my Lord Percy, the son and heir of the Earl of Northumberland,
[who] then attended upon the Lord Cardinal, and was also his
servitor; and when it chanced the Lord Cardinal at any time to
repair to the court, the Lord Percy would then resort for his
pastime unto the queen’s chamber, and there would fall in
dalliance among the queen’s maidens, being at the last more
conversant with Mistress Anne Boleyn than with any other; so that
there grew such a secret love between them that, at length they
were insured together, intending to marry[18].”
Among the persons daily attendant upon Wolsey in his house, down-lying
and up-rising, Cavendish enumerates “of Lords nine or ten, who had each
of them allowed two servants; and the Earl of Derby had allowed five
men” (p. 36-7). On this Singer prints a note, which looks like a guess,
signed _Growe_, “Those Lords that were placed in the great and privy
chambers were _Wards_, and as such paid for their board and education.”
It will be seen below that he had a particular officer called
“Instructor of his Wards” (_Cavendish_, p. 38, l. 2). Why I suppose the
note to be a guess is, because at p. 33 Cavendish has stated that Wolsey
“had also a great number daily attending upon him, both of noblemen and
worthy gentlemen, of great estimation and possessions,--with no small
number of the tallest yeomen that he could get in all his realm; in so
much that well was that nobleman and gentleman that might prefer any
tall and comely yeoman unto his service.”
In the household of the Earl of Northumberland in 1511 were “..yong
gentlemen at their fryndes fynding,[19] in my lords house for the hoole
yere” and “Haunsmen ande Yong Gentlemen at thir Fryndes fynding v[j] (As
to say, Hanshmen iij. And Yong Gentlemen iij” p. 254,) no doubt for the
purpose of learning manners, &c. And that such youths would be found in
the house of every noble of importance I believe, for as Walter Mapes
(? ab. 1160-90 A.D.) says of the great nobles, in his poem _De diversis
ordinibus hominum_, the example of manners goes out from their houses,
_Exemplar morum domibus procedit eorum_. That these houses were in some
instances only the finishing schools for our well-born young men after
previous teaching at home and at College is possible (though the cases
of Sir Thomas More and Ascham are exactly the other way), but the Lord
Percy last named had a schoolmaster in his house, “The Maister of
Graimer j”, p. 254; “Lyverays for the Maister of Gramer[20] in
Housholde: Item Half a Loof of Houshold Breide, a Pottell of Beere, and
two White Lyghts,” p. 97. “Every Scolemaister techyng Grammer in the
Hous C _s_.” (p. 47, 51). Edward IV.’s henxmen were taught grammar; and
if the Pastons are to be taken as a type of their class, our nobles and
gentry at the end of the 15th century must have been able to read and
write freely. Chaucer’s Squire could write, and though the custom of
sealing deeds and not signing them prevailed, more or less, till Henry
VIII.’s time, it is doubtful whether this implied inability of the
sealers to write. Mr Chappell says that in Henry VIII.’s time half our
nobility were then writing ballads. Still, the bad spelling and grammar
of most of the letters up to that period, and the general ignorance of
our upper classes were, says Professor Brewer, the reason why the whole
government of the country was in the hands of ecclesiastics. Even in
Henry the Eighth’s time, Sir Thomas Boleyn is said to have been the only
noble at Court who could speak French with any degree of fluency, and so
was learned enough to be sent on an embassy abroad. But this may be
questioned. Yet Wolsey, speaking to his Lord Chamberlain and Comptroller
when they
[Headnote: KNOWLEDGE OF FRENCH.]
“showed him that it seemed to them there should be some noblemen
and strangers [Henry VIII. and his courtiers masked] arrived at
his bridge, as ambassadors from some foreign prince. With that,
quoth the Cardinal, ‘I shall desire you, _because ye can speak
French_, to take the pains to go down into the hall to encounter
and to receive them, according to their estates, and to conduct
them into this chamber’ (_Cavendish_, p. 51). Then spake my Lord
Chamberlain unto them _in French_, declaring my Lord Cardinal’s
mind (p. 53).”
The general[21] opinion of our gentry as to the study of Letters, before
and about 1500 A.D., is probably well represented by the opinion of one
of them stated by Pace, in his Prefatory Letter to Colet, prefixed to
the former’s _De Fructu_[22].
It remains that I now explain to you what moves me to compile and
publish a treatise with this title. When, two years ago, more or
less, I had returned to my native land from the city of Rome,
I was present at a certain feast, a stranger to many; where, when
enough had been drunk, one or other of the guests--no fool, as one
might infer from his words and countenance--began to talk of
educating his children well. And, first of all, he thought that he
must search out a good teacher for them, and that they should at
any rate attend school. There happened to be present one of those
whom we call gentle-men (_generosos_), and who always carry some
horn hanging at their backs, as though they would hunt during
dinner. He, hearing letters praised, roused with sudden anger,
burst out furiously with these words. “Why do you talk nonsense,
friend?” he said; “A curse on those stupid letters! all learned
men are beggars: even Erasmus, the most learned of all, is a
beggar (as I hear), and in a certain letter of his calls τήν
κατάρατον πενίαν (that is, execrable poverty) his wife, and
vehemently complains that he cannot shake her off his shoulders
right into βαθυκήτεα πόντον, that is, into the deep sea. I swear
by God’s body I’d rather that my son should hang than study
letters. For it becomes the sons of gentlemen to blow the horn
nicely (_apte_), to hunt skilfully, and elegantly carry and train
a hawk. But the study of letters should be left to the sons of
rustics.” At this point I could not restrain myself from answering
something to this most talkative man, in defence of good letters.
“You do not seem to me, good man,” I said, “to think rightly. For
if any foreigner were to come to the king, such as the ambassadors
(_oratores_) of princes are, and an answer had to be given to him,
your son, if he were educated as you wish, could only blow his
horn, and the learned sons of rustics would be called to answer,
and would be far preferred to your hunter or fowler son; and they,
enjoying their learned liberty, would say to your face, ‘We prefer
to be learned, and, thanks to our learning, no fools, than boast
of our fool-like nobility.’ “Then he upon this, looking round,
said, “Who is this person that is talking like this? I don’t know
the fellow.” And when some one whispered in his ear who I was, he
muttered something or other in a low voice to himself; and finding
a fool to listen to him, he then caught hold of a cup of wine. And
when he could get nothing to answer, he began to drink, and change
the conversation to other things. And thus I was freed from the
disputing of this mad fellow,--which I was dreadfully afraid would
have lasted a long time,--not by Apollo, like Horace was from his
babbler, but by Bacchus.
[Headnote: APPRENTICESHIP IN HENRY VII.’S TIME.]
On the general subject it should be noted that Fleta mentions nothing
about boarders or apprentices in his account of household economy; nor
does the _Liber Contrarotulatoris Garderobæ Edw. I^mi_ mention any
young noblemen as part of the King’s household. That among tradesmen
in later times, putting out their children in other houses, and
apprenticeships, were the rule, we know from many statements and
allusions in our literature, and “The Italian Relation of England”
(temp. Hen. VII.) mentions that the Duke of Suffolk was boarded out to
a rich old widow, who persuaded him to marry her (p. 27). It also says
The want of affection in the English is strongly manifested
towards their children; for after having kept them at home till
they arrive at the age of 7 or 9 years at the utmost, they put
them out, both males and females, to hard service in the houses of
other people, binding them generally for another 7 or 9 years. And
these are called apprentices, and during that time they perform
all the most menial offices; and few are born who are exempted
from this fate, for every one, however rich he may be, sends away
his children into the houses of others, whilst he, in return,
receives those of strangers into his own. And on inquiring their
reason for this severity, they answered that they did it in order
that their children might learn better manners. But I, for my
part, believe that they do it because they like to enjoy all their
comforts themselves, and that they are better served by strangers
than they would be by their own children. Besides which, the
English being great epicures, and very avaricious by nature,
indulge in the most delicate fare themselves and give their
household the coarsest bread, and beer, and cold meat baked on
Sunday for the week, which, however, they allow them in great
abundance. That if they had their own children at home, they would
be obliged to give them the same food they made use of for
themselves. That if the English sent their children away from home
to learn virtue and good manners, and took them back again when
their apprenticeship was over, they might, perhaps, be excused;
but they never return, for the girls are settled by their patrons,
and the boys make the best marriages they can, and, assisted by
their patrons, not by their fathers, they also open a house and
strive diligently by this means to make some fortune for
themselves; whence it proceeds that, having no hope of their
paternal inheritance, that all become so greedy of gain that they
feel no shame in asking, almost “for the love of God,” for the
smallest sums of money; and to this it may be attributed, that
there is no injury that can be committed against the lower orders
of the English, that may not be atoned for by money. --_A Relation
of the Island of England_ (Camden Society, 1847), pp. 24-6.
“This evidently refers to tradesmen.[23] The note by the Editor[24]
however says it was the case with the children of the first nobility,
and gives the terms for the Duke of Buckingham’s children with Mrs
Hexstall. The document only shows that Mrs Hexstall boarded them by
contract ‘during the time of absence of my Lord and my Ladie.’”
The Earl of Essex says in a letter to Lord Burleigh, 1576, printed in
Murdin’s _State Papers_, p. 301-2.
“Neverthelesse, uppon the assured Confidence, that your love to me
shall dissend to my Childrenne, and that your Lordship will
declare yourself a Frend to me, both alive and dead, I have willed
Mr _Waterhouse_ to shew unto you how you may with Honor and Equity
do good to my Sonne _Hereford_, and how to bind him with perpetual
Frendship to you and your House. And to the Ende I wold have his
Love towardes those which are dissended from you spring up and
increase with his Yeares, I have wished his Education to be in
your Household, though the same had not bene allotted to your
Lordship as Master of the Wardes; and that the whole Tyme, which
he shold spend in _England_ in his Minority, might be devided in
Attendance uppon my Lord _Chamberlayne_ and you, to the End, that
as he might frame himself to the Example of my Lord of _Sussex_ in
all the Actions of his Life, tending either to the Warres, or to
the Institution of a Nobleman, so that he might also reverence
your Lordship for your Wisdome and Gravyty, and lay up your
Counsells and Advises in the Treasory of his Hart.”
[Headnote: GIRLS SENT OUT TO LADIES’ HOUSES.]
That girls, as well as boys, were sent out to noblemen’s houses for
their education, is evident from Margaret Paston’s letter of the 3rd of
April, 1469, to Sir John Paston, “Also I would ye should purvey for your
sister [? Margery] to be with my Lady of Oxford, or with my Lady of
Bedford, or in some other worshipful place whereas ye think best, and I
will help to her finding, for we be either of us weary of other.” Alice
Crane’s Letter, in the Paston Letters, v. i. p. 35, ed. 1840, also
supports this view, as does Sir John Heveningham’s to Margaret Paston,
asking her to take his cousin Anneys Loveday for some time as a boarder
till a mistress could be found for her. “If that it please you to have
her with you to into the time that a mistress may be purveyed for her,
I pray you thereof, and I shall content you for her board that ye shall
be well pleased.” Similarly Anne Boleyn and her sister were sent to
Margaret of Savoy, aunt of Charles V., who lived at Brussels, to learn
courtesy, &c., says Prof. Brewer. Sir Roger Twysden says that Anne was
“Not above seven yeares of age, Anno 1514,” when she went abroad. He
adds:
“It should seeme by some that she served three in France
successively; Mary of England maryed to Lewis the twelfth, an.
1514, with whome she went out of England, but Lewis dying the
first of January following, and that Queene (being) to returne
home, sooner than either Sir Thomas Bullen or some other of her
frendes liked she should, she was preferred to Clauda, daughter to
Lewis XII. and wife to Francis I. then Queene (it is likely upon
the commendation of Mary the Dowager), who not long after dying,
an. 1524, not yet weary of France she went to live with
Marguerite, Dutchess of Alançon and Berry, a Lady much commended
for her favor towards good letters, but never enough for the
Protestant religion then in the infancy--from her, if I am not
deceived, she first learnt the grounds of the Protestant religion;
so that England may seem to owe some part of her happyness derived
from that Lady.” (Twysden’s Notes quoted by Singer in his ed. of
Cavendish’s Life of Wolsey, 1825, p. 57.)
As Henry VIII. fell in love with his wife’s maid of honour,--“began to
kindle the brand of amours” at the light of Anne Boleyn’s beauty, “her
excellent gesture and behaviour,”--so we find in later times rich young
men became enamoured of poor young women staying in the same house with
them. Mr Bruce sends me an instance:
“the young lady was niece, you will perceive, to a well-beneficed
clergyman, and a thriving gentleman well-advanced in the public
service. She had lost her mother, and her father was in debt and
difficulties. She was therefore placed by the influence of her
uncles in a well-known family in Wiltshire.”
_State Papers. Dom. Car._ I. Vol. ccclii. No. 29. Dr Matthew
Nicholas, afterwards Dean of St Paul’s, to Edward Nicholas, Clerk
of the Council, and afterwards Secretary of State. Dated, West
Dean, April 4, 1637.
“I have spoken with Miss Evelyn since I wrote last unto you, and
enquired of her the cause w{hi}ch moued her to displace my coson
Hunton. She told me much accordinge to what she had sayd unto my
coson Hunton, w{i}th this addition, that she had respect in it as
well unto her good as her owne convenience, for hauinge nowe noe
employment for her but her needle, she founde that sittinge still
at her worke made her sickly, and therefore thought she might doe
better in another seruice where she might haue the orderinge of an
huswifely charge, for w{hi}ch (she told me) she had made her very
able. I expressed myselfe tender of the disgrace w{hi}ch would lay
uppon my coson in beinge displaced in such a manner by warninge
giuen, wherof whatsoeuer were the cause, it would be imagined by
all that knowe it not, to be in her ill carriage, and wished she
had done me that fauour as to haue acquainted me with her intents
in such time as I might haue taken some course to haue disposed of
her before it had bin knowne that she was to leaue her: she
slubbered it ouer w{i}th a slight excuse that she had acquainted
my wife ... but for my satisfaction she told me that she would be
as mindfull of her when God should call her as if she were w{i}th
her, and in testimony of her good likinge of her seruice she would
allowe her forty shillings yearly towarde her maintainance as
longe as herself should liue. I am soe well acquainted w{i}th what
she hath as yet disposed to her by will, and soe little value
forty shillings to my coson Hunton’s credit, as I gaue her noe
thankes. Mr Downes (I heare) is sent for home by his father w{i}th
an intent to keepe him w{i}th him, but I doe imagine that when my
coson Hunton shall be other where disposed off, he shall returne;
for my conceit is stronge that the feare of his beinge match’d to
his disadvantage, who was placed w{i}th Mr Evelyn a youth to be
bred for his p{re}ferment, hath caused this alteration; howsoever
there be noe wordes made of it. I confess that when I have bin
told of the good will that was obserued betweene my coson Hunton
and Mr Downes, I did put it by w{i}th my coson Huntons
protestation to the contrary, and was willinge by that neglect to
have suffered it to have come to pass (if it mought have bin)
because I thought it would haue bin to her aduantage, but nowe
that the busines is come to this issue (as whatsoeuer be
p{re}tended I am confident this is the cause of my cosons
partinge) I begin to quæstion my discretion.... Good brother, let
me haue your aduise what to do.”
[Headnote: PRIVATE TUITION IN EARLY ENGLAND.]
2. _Home and Private Education._ Of these, more or less must have been
going on all over England, by private tutors at home, or in the houses
of the latter. “In five years (after my baptism) I was handed over by my
father to Siward, a noble priest, to be trained in letters, to whose
mastery I was subdued during five years learning the first rudiments.
But in the eleventh year of my age I was given up by my own father for
the love of God, and destined to enter the service of the eternal King.”
--_Orderic_, vol. ii. p. 301, ed. Prevost.
From Adam de Marisco’s Letters, 53, we find that Henry and Almeric, the
eldest and youngest sons of the Earl of Montfort, were put under
Grosseteste for tuition, he being then a Bishop. At Paris, John of
Salisbury (who died in 1180) gained a living by teaching the sons of
noblemen,--(_instruendos susceperam_, ? took them in to board).
--_Metalogicus_, lib. 11, c. 10.
Henry of Huntingdon says, “Richard, the king’s (Henry I.’s) bastard son,
was honourably brought up (_festive nutritus_) by our Bishop Robert
(Blote of Lincoln), and duly reverenced by me and others in the same
household I lived in.” --_Anglia Sacra_, vol. ii. p. 696. Giraldus
Cambrensis speaks of beating his _coætanei et conscolares terræ suæ_, of
being reproved for idleness by his uncle, the Bishop of St David’s, and
of being constantly chaffed by two of his uncle’s chaplains, who used to
decline _durus_ and _stultus_ to him. Also he alludes to the rod.
Probably there was some sort of school at either Pembroke or St
David’s[[24a]].--_De Rebus a se Gestis_, lib. 1, c. 2.[25]
The Statutes of a Gild of young Scholars formed to burn lights in honour
of some saint or other, and to help one another in sickness, old age,
and to burial, will be printed for us by Mr Toulmin Smith in the Early
English Text Society’s books this year.
Under this head of Private Tuition we may class the houses of Abbots,
where boys of good birth were educated. In his History of English
Poetry, section 36, vol. iii. p. 9, ed. 1840, Warton says:
“It appears to have been customary for the governors of the most
considerable convents, especially those that were honoured with
the mitre, to receive into their own private lodgings the sons of
the principal families of the neighbourhood for education. About
the year 1450, Thomas Bromele, abbot of the mitred monastery of
Hyde near Winchester, entertained in his own abbatial house within
that monastery eight young gentlemen, or _gentiles pueri_, who
were placed there for the purpose of literary instruction, and
constantly dined at the abbot’s table. I will not scruple to give
the original words, which are more particular and expressive, of
the obscure record which preserves this curious anecdote of
monastic life. ‘_Pro octo gentilibus pueris apud dominum abbatem
studii causa perhendinantibus, et ad mensam domini victitantibus,
cum garcionibus suis ipsos comitantibus, hoc anno_, xvii_l._ ixs.
_Capiendo pro_[26]...’” This, by the way, was more extraordinary,
as William of Wykeham’s celebrated seminary was so near. And this
seems to have been an established practice of the abbot of
Glastonbury, “whose apartment in the abbey was a kind of
well-disciplined court, where the sons of noblemen and young
gentlemen were wont to be sent for virtuous education, who
returned thence home excellently accomplished.[27]” Richard
Whiting, the last abbot of Glastonbury, who was cruelly executed
by the king, during the course of his government educated near
three hundred ingenuous youths, who constituted a part of his
family; beside many others whom he liberally supported at the
universities.[28] Whitgift, the most excellent and learned
archbishop of Canterbury in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, was
educated under Robert Whitgift his uncle, abbot of the Augustine
monastery of black canons at Wellhow in Lincolnshire, “who,” says
Strype, “had several other young gentlemen under his care for
education.” (Strype’s Whitgift, v. i. ch. i. p. 3.)
Of Lydgate--about 1420-30 A.D. I suppose--Prof. Morley says in his
_English Writers_, vol. ii. Pt. I. p. 423:
“After studying at Oxford, Paris, and Padua, and after mastering
with special delight the writings of such poets as Dante,
Boccaccio, and Alain Chartier, Lydgate opened at his monastery of
Bury St Edmund’s a school of rhetoric in which he taught young
nobles literature and the art of versifying!”
Richard Pace says in his _De Fructu_, 1517:
“Now the learning of music too demands its place, especially from
me whom it distinguished when a boy amongst boys. For Thomas
Langton, bishop of Winchester (the predecessor of him who is now
living), whose secretary I was, when he had marked that I was
making a proficiency in music far beyond my age (as
himself--perchance from his too great affection for me--would
point out and repeatedly say), ‘The talent of this lad,’ he said,
‘is born for greater things,’ and a few days afterwards he sent
me, to pursue the study of literature, into Italy, to the school
at Padua, which then was at its greatest prime, and benevolently
supplied the annual expenses, as he showed wonderful favour to all
men of letters, and in his day played the part of a second
Mecænas, well remembering (as he ofttimes said) that he had been
advanced to the episcopal dignity on account of his learning. For
he had gained, with the highest commendation, the distinctions of
each law[29] (as they say now-a-days). Also he so highly prized
the study of Humanity[30] that he had boys and youths instructed
in it at a school in his house; And he was vastly delighted to
hear the scholars repeat to him at night the lessons given them by
the teacher during the day. In this competition he who had borne
himself notably went away with a present of something suitable to
his character, and with commendation expressed in the most refined
language; for that excellent governor had ever in his mouth the
maxim that merit grows with praise.”[31]
[Headnote: EDUCATION AT HOME AND AT TUTORS’.]
Palsgrave in 1530 speaks of “maister Petrus Vallensys, scole maister
to his [Charles, Duke of Suffolk’s] excellent yong sonne the Erle of
Lyncolne.”
Roger Ascham, author of the _Scholemaster_, &c., born in 1515,
“was received at a very youthful age into the family of Sir Antony
Wingfield, who furnished money for his education, and placed
Roger, together with his own sons, under a tutor whose name was
Bond. The boy had by nature a taste for books, and showed his good
taste by reading English in preference to Latin, with wonderful
eagerness. This was the more remarkable from the fact that Latin
was still the language of literature, and it is not likely that
the few English books written at that time were at all largely
spread abroad in places far away from the Universities and
Cathedral towns. In or about the year 1530, Mr Bond the domestic
tutor resigned the charge of young Roger, who was now about
fifteen years old, and by the advice and pecuniary aid of his kind
patron Sir Antony, he was enabled to enter St John’s College,
Cambridge, at that time the most famous seminary of learning in
all England ... he took his bachelor’s degree in 1531, Feb. 18, in
the 18th year of his age [“being a boy, new bachelor of art,” he
says himself,] a time of life at which it is now more common to
enter the University than to take a degree, but which, according
to the modes of education then in use, was not thought premature.
On the 23rd of March following, he was elected fellow of the
College.” Giles’s Life of Ascham, Works, vol. i. p. xi-xiv.
Dr Clement and his wife were brought up in Sir T. More’s house. Clement
was taken from St Paul’s school, London, appointed tutor to More’s
children, and afterwards to his daughter Margaret, p. 402, col. 1.
What a young nobleman learnt in Henry the Eighth’s time may be gathered
from the following extracts (partly given by Mr Froude, Hist., v. i. p.
39-40) from the letters of young Gregory Cromwell’s tutor, to his
father, the Earl of Essex, the King’s Chief Secretary.
“The order of his studie, as the houres lymyted for the Frenche
tongue, writinge, plaienge att weapons, castinge of accomptes,
pastimes of instruments, and suche others, hath bene devised and
directed by the prudent wisdome of Mr Southwell; who with a
ffatherly zeale and amitie muche desiringe to have hime a sonne
worthy suche parents, ceasseth not aswell concerninge all other
things for hime mete and necessary, as also in lerninge,
t’expresse his tendre love and affection towardes hime, serchinge
by all meanes possible howe he may moste proffitte, dailie heringe
hime to rede sumwhatt in thenglishe tongue, and advertisenge hime
of the naturell and true kynde of pronuntiacõn therof, expoundinge
also and declaringe the etimologie and native signification of
suche wordes as we have borowed of the Latines or Frenche menue,
not evyn so comonly used in our quotidiene speche. Mr Cheney and
Mr Charles in lyke wise endevoireth and emploieth themselves,
accompanienge Mr Gregory in lerninge, amonge whome ther is a
perpetuall contention, strife, and conflicte, and in maner of an
honest envie who shall do beste, not oonlie in the ffrenche tongue
(wherin Mr Vallence after a wonderesly compendious, facile,
prompte, and redy waye, nott withoute painfull delegence and
laborious industrie doth enstructe them) but also in writynge,
playenge at weapons, and all other theire exercises, so that if
continuance in this bihalf may take place, whereas the laste
Diana, this shall (I truste) be consecrated to Apollo and the
Muses, to theire no small profecte and your good contentation and
pleasure. And thus I beseche the Lord to have you in his moste
gratious tuition.
At Reisinge in Norff[olk] the last daie of Aprill.
Your faithfull and most bounden servaunte
HENRY DOWES.
To his right honorable maister Mr Thomas Crumwell
chief Secretary vnto the King’s Maiestie.”
Ellis, _Original Letters_. Series I. vol. i. p. 341-3.
The next Letter gives further details of Gregory’s studies--
“But forcause somer was spente in the servyce of the wylde goddes,
it is so moche to be regarded after what fashion yeouth is educate
and browght upp, in whiche tyme that that is lerned (for the moste
parte) will nott all holelie be forgotten in the older yeres,
I thinke it my dutie to asserteyne yo^r Maistershippe how he
spendith his tyme.... And firste, after he hath herde Masse he
taketh a lecture of a Diologe of Erasmus Colloquium, called Pietas
Puerilis, whereinne is described a veray picture of oone that
sholde be vertuouselie brought upp; and forcause it is so
necessary for hime, I do not onelie cause him to rede it over, but
also to practise the preceptes of the same, and I have also
translated it into Englishe, so that he may conferre theime both
to-githers, whereof (as lerned men affirme) cometh no smalle
profecte[32] ... after that, he exerciseth his hande in writing
one or two houres, and redith uppon Fabian’s Chronicle as longe;
the residue of the day he doth spende uppon the lute and
virginalls. When he rideth (as he doth very ofte) I tell hime by
the way some historie of the Romanes or the Greekes, whiche I
cause him to reherse agayn in a tale. For his recreation he useth
to hawke and hunte, and shote in his long bowe, which frameth and
succedeth so well with hime that he semeth to be therunto given by
nature.”
Ellis, i. 343-4.
[Headnote: STUDIES OF YOUTHS, TEMP. HEN. VIII. AND ELIZABETH.]
Of the course of study of ‘well-bred youths’ in the early years of
Elizabeth’s reign we have an interesting account by Sir Nicholas Bacon,
Lord Keeper, father of the great Bacon, in a Paper by Mr J. Payne
Collier in the _Archæologia_, vol. 36, Part 2, p. 339, Article xxxi.[33]
“Before he became Lord Keeper, Sir Nicholas Bacon had been Attorney of
that Court” [the Court of Wards and Liveries] “a most lucrative
appointment; and on the 27th May, 1561, he addressed a letter to Sir
William Cecil, then recently (Jan., 1561) made Master of the Wards,
followed by a paper thus entitled:--’Articles devised for the bringing
up in vertue and learning of the Queenes Majesties Wardes, being heires
males, and whose landes, descending in possession and coming to the
Queenes Majestie, shall amount to the cleere yearly value of c. markes,
or above.’” Sir Nicholas asks the new Master of Wards to reform what he
justly calls most “preposterous” abuses in the department:--“That the
proceeding hath bin preposterous, appeareth by this: the chiefe thinge,
and most of price, in wardeship, is the wardes mynde; the next to that,
his bodie; the last and meanest, his land. Nowe, hitherto the chiefe
care of governaunce hath bin to the land, being the meaneste; and to the
bodie, being the better, very small; but to the mynde, being the best,
none at all, which methinkes is playnely to sett the carte before the
horse” (p. 343). Mr Collier then summarises Bacon’s Articles for the
bringing up of the Wards thus: “The wards are to attend divine service
at six in the morning: nothing is said about breakfast,[34] but they are
to study Latin until eleven; to dine between 11 and 12; to study with
the music-master from 12 till 2; from 2 to 3 they are to be with the
French master; and from 3 to 5 with the Latin and Greek masters. At 5
they are to go to evening prayers; then they are to sup; to be allowed
honest pastimes till 8; and, last of all, before they go to bed at 9,
they are again to apply themselves to music under the instruction of the
master. At and after the age of 16 they were to attend lectures upon
temporal and civil law, as well as _de disciplinâ militari_. It is not
necessary to insert farther details; but what I have stated will serve
to show how well-bred youths of that period were usually brought up, and
how disgracefully the duty of education as regards wards was
neglected.... It may appear singular that in these articles drawn up by
Sir Nicholas, so much stress is laid upon instruction in music[35]; but
it only serves to confirm the notion that the science was then most
industriously cultivated by nearly every class of society.” Pace in 1517
requires that every one should study it, but should join with it some
other study, as Astrology or Astronomy. He says also that the greatest
part of the art had perished by men’s negligence; “For all that our
musicians do now-a-days, is almost trivial if compared with what the old
ones (_antiqui_) did, so that now hardly one or two (_unus aut alter_)
can be found who know what harmony is, though the word is always on
their tongue.” (_De Fructu_, p. 54-5.) Ascham, while lamenting in 1545
(_Toxophilus_, p. 29) ‘that the laudable custom of England to teach
children their plain song and prick-song’ is ‘so decayed throughout all
the realm as it is,’ denounces the great practise of instrumental music
by older students: “the minstrelsy of lutes, pipes, harps, and all other
that standeth by such nice, fine, minikin fingering, (such as the most
part of scholars whom I know use, if they use any,) is far more fit, for
the womanishness of it, to dwell in the Court among ladies, than for any
great thing in it which should help good and sad study, to abide in the
University among scholars.”
[Headnote: NEGLECT OF EDUCATION BY MOTHERS.]
By 1577 our rich people, according to Harrison, attended properly to the
education of their children. After speaking “of our women, whose beautie
commonlie exceedeth the fairest of those of the maine,” he says:
“This neuerthelesse I vtterlie mislike in the poorer sort of them,
for the wealthier doo sildome offend herein: that being of
themselues without competent wit, they are so carelesse in the
education of their children (wherein their husbands also are to be
blamed,) by means whereof verie manie of them neither fearing God,
neither regarding either manners or obedience, do oftentimes come
to confusion, which (if anie correction or discipline had beene
vsed toward them in youth) might haue prooued good members of
their common-wealth & countrie, by their good seruice and
industrie.” --_Descr. of Britaine_, Holinshed, i. 115, col. 2.
This is borne out by Ascham, who says that young men up to 17 were well
looked after, but after that age were turned loose to get into all the
mischief they liked:
“In deede, from seven to seventene, yong jentlemen commonlie be
carefullie enough brought up: But from seventene to seven and
twentie (the most dangerous tyme of all a mans life, and most
slipperie to stay well in) they have commonlie the rein of all
licens in their owne hand, and speciallie soch as do live in the
Court. And that which is most to be merveled at, commonlie the
wisest and also best men be found the fondest fathers in this
behalfe. And if som good father wold seek some remedie herein, yet
the mother (if the household of our Lady) had rather, yea, and
will to, have her sonne cunnyng and bold, in making him to lyve
trimlie when he is yong, than by learning and travell to be able
to serve his Prince & his countrie, both wiselie in peace, and
stoutlie in warre, whan he is old.
“The fault is in your selves, ye noble mens sonnes, and therfore
ye deserve the greater blame, that commonlie the meaner mens
children cum to be the wisest councellours, and greatest doers, in
the weightie affaires of this realme.” --_Scholemaster_, ed. Mayor,
p. 39-40.
Note lastly, on this subject of private tuition, that Mulcaster in his
_Elementarie_, 1582, complains greatly of rich people aping the custom
of princes in having private tutors for their boys, and withdrawing them
from public schools where the spirit of emulation against other boys
would make them work. The course he recommends is, that rich people
should send their sons, with their tutors, to the public schools, and so
get the advantage of both kinds of tuition.
_Girls’ Home Education._ The earliest notice of an English Governess
that any friend has found for me is in “the 34th Letter of Osbert de
Clare in Stephen’s reign, A.D. 1135-54. He mentions what seems to be a
Governess of his children, ‘_quædam matrona quæ liberos ejus_ (sc.
_militis, Herberti de Furcis_) _educare consueverat_.’ She appears to be
treated as one of the family: e.g. they wait for her when she goes into
a chapel to pray. I think a nurse would have been ‘ancilla quæ liberos
ejus nutriendos susceperat.’” Walter de Biblesworth was the tutor of the
“lady Dionysia de Monchensi, a Kentish heiress, the daughter of William
de Monchensi, baron of Swanescombe, and related, apparently,[[35a]] to
the Valences, earls of Pembroke, and wrote his French Grammar, or rather
Vocabulary[36], for her. She married Hugh de Vere, the second son of
Robert, fifth earl of Oxford. (Wright.) Lady Jane Grey was taught by a
tutor at home, as we have seen. Palsgrave was tutor to Henry VIII.’s
“most dere and most entirely beloved suster, quene Mary, douagier of
France,” and no doubt wrote his _Lesclaircissement de la Langue
Francoise_ mainly for her, though also “desirous to do some humble
service unto the nobilitie of this victorious realme, and universally
unto all other estates of this my natyfe country.” Giles Du Guez, or as
Palsgrave says to Henry VIII., “the synguler clerke, maister Gyles
Dewes, somtyme instructor to your noble grace in this selfe tong, at the
especiall instaunce and request of dyvers of your highe estates and
noble men, hath also for his partye written in this matter.” His book is
entitled “An Introductorie for to lerne to rede, to pronounce & to speke
French trewly: compyled for the Right high, excellent, and most vertuous
lady The Lady Mary of Englande, doughter to our most gracious soverayn
Lorde Kyng Henry the Eight.”
[Headnote: UNIVERSITY EDUCATION IN EARLY ENGLAND.]
3. _English University Education._ In early days Cambridge and Oxford
must be looked on, I suppose, as mainly the great schools for boys, and
the generality of scholars as poor men’s children,[37] like Chaucer’s
‘poore scolares tuo that dwelten in the soler-halle of Cantebregge,’ his
Clerk of Oxenford, and those students, gifts to whom are considered as
one of the regular burdens on the husbandman, in “God speed the Plough.”
Mr Froude says, Hist. of England, I. 37:
“The universities were well filled, by the sons of yeomen chiefly.
The cost of supporting them at the colleges was little, and
wealthy men took a pride in helping forward any boys of
promise[38] (_Latimer’s Sermons_, p. 64). It seems clear also, as
the Reformation drew nearer, while the clergy were sinking lower
and lower, a marked change for the better became perceptible in a
portion at least of the laity.”
But Grosseteste mentions a “noble” scholar at Oxford (_Epist._ 129), and
Edward the Black Prince and Henry V. are said to have been students of
Queen’s College, Oxford. Wolsey himself was a College tutor at Oxford,
and had among his pupils the sons of the Marquess of Dorset, who
afterwards gave him his first preferment, the living of Lymington.
(Chappell.) [[38a]]
The legend runs that the first school at Oxford was founded by King
Alfred[39], and that Oxford was a place of study in the time of Edward
the Confessor (1041-66). If one may quote a book now considered to be ‘a
monkish forgery and an exploded authority,’ Ingulfus, who was Abbot of
Croyland, in the Isle of Ely, under William the Conqueror, says of
himself that he was educated first at Westminster, and then passed to
Oxford, where he made proficiency in such books of Aristotle as were
then accessible to students,[40] and in the first two books of Tully’s
Rhetoric.--_Malden_, On the Origin of Universities, 1835, p. 71.
In 1201 Oxford is called a _University_, and said to have contained 3000
scholars; in 1253 its first College (University) is founded. In 1244,
Hen. III. grants it its first privileges as a corporate body, and
confirms and extends them in 1245. In his reign, Wood says the number of
scholars amounted to 30,000, a number no doubt greatly exaggerated.
[Headnote: POVERTY OF UNIVERSITY SCHOLARS.]
In the reign of Stephen, we know that Vacarius, a Lombard by birth, who
had studied the civil law at Bologna, came into England, and formed a
school of law at Oxford[41] ... he remained in England in the reign of
Henry II. On account of the difficulty and expense of obtaining copies
of the original books of the Roman law, and _the poverty of his English
scholars_, Vacarius [ab. 1149, A.D.] compiled an abridgment of the
Digests and Codex, in which their most essential parts were preserved,
with some difference of arrangement, and illustrated from other
law-books.... It bore on its title that it was “_pauperibus presertim
destinatus_;” and hence the Oxford students of law obtained the name of
_Pauperists._--_Malden_, p. 72-3.
Roger Bacon (who died 1248)[[41a]] speaks of a young fellow who came to
him, aged 15, not having wherewithal to live, or finding proper masters:
“because he was obliged to serve those who gave him necessaries, during
two years found no one to teach him a word in the things he learned.”
--_Opus Tertium_, cap. xx. In 1214 the Commonalty of Oxford agreed to
pay 52s. yearly for the use of poor scholars, and to give 100 of them a
meal of bread, ale, and pottage, with one large dish of flesh or fish,
every St Nicholas day.--_Wood’s An._ i. 185. _Wood’s Annals_ (ed. Gutch,
v. i. p. 619-20) also notes that in 1461 A.D. divers Scholars were
forced to get a license under the Chancellor’s hand and seal (according
to the Stat. 12 Ric. II., A.D. 1388, _Ib._, p. 519) to beg: and Sir
Thos. More says “then may wee yet, like poor Scholars of Oxford, go a
begging with our baggs & wallets, & sing salve Regina at rich mens
dores.” On this point we may also compare the Statutes of Walter de
Merton for his College at Oxford, A.D. 1274, ed. Halliwell, 1843, p. 19:
Cap. 13. De admissione scholarium.
Hoc etiam in eadem domo specialiter observari volo et decerno, ut
circa eos, qui ad hujusmodi eleemosinæ participationem admittendi
fuerint, diligenti solicitudine caveatur, ne qui præter castos,
honestos, pacificos, humiles, _indigentes_, ad studium habiles ac
proficere volentes, admittantur. Ad quorum agnitionem singulis,
cum in dicta societate fuerint admittendi sustentationis gratia in
eadem, ad annum unum utpote probationis causa primitus concedatur,
ut sic demum si in dictis conditionibus laudabiliter se habuerint,
in dictam congregationem admittantur.
See also cap. 31, against horses of scholars being kept.
Lodgings were let according to the joint valuation of 2 Magistri
(scholars) and two townsmen (probi et legales homines de Villa). _Wood_,
i. 255. An. 15 Hen. III. A.D. 1230-1.
In the beginning of the 15th century it had become the established rule
that every scholar must be a member of some college or hall. The
scholars who attended the public lectures of the university, without
entering themselves at any college or hall, were called _chamber
dekyns_, as in Paris they were called martinets; and frequent enactments
were made against them.--_Malden_, p. 85, ref. to _Woods Annals_, 1408,
-13, -22, and 1512, &c.
The following are the dates of the foundations of the different Colleges
at Oxford as given in the University Calendar:--
University College, 1253-80[42]
Balliol Coll., betw. 1263 & 1268
Merton College, founded at
Maldon, in Surrey, in
1264, removed to Oxford
in 1274
Exeter College 1314
Oriel „ 1326
The Queen’s College 1340
New „ 1386
Lincoln „ 1427
All Souls „ 1437
Magdalen „ 1458
The King’s Hall and }
College of Brasenose } 1509
Corpus Christi College 1516
Christ Church „ 1526
Trinity College 1554
St John’s „ 1555
Jesus „ 1571
Wadham „ 1613
Pembroke „ 1624
Worcester „ 1714
HALLS
St Edmund Hall 1317
St Mary’s „ 1333
New Inn „ 1438
Magdalen „ 1487
St Alban „ after 1547
[Headnote: UNDERGRADUATE’S EXPENSES AT OXFORD, 1478.]
‘The Paston Letters’ do not give us much information about studies or
life at Oxford, but they do give us material for estimating the cost of
a student there (ii. 124[43]); they show us the tutor reporting to a
mother her son’s progress in learning (ii. 130), and note the custom of
a man, when made bachelor, giving a feast: “I was made bachelor ... on
Friday was se’nnight (18 June, 1479), and I made my feast on the Monday
after (21 June). I was promised venison against my feast, of my Lady
Harcourt, and of another person too, but I was deceived of both; but my
guests held them pleased with such meat as they had, blessed be God.”
The letter as to the costs is dated May 19, 1478.
“I marvel sore that you sent me no word of the letter which I sent
to you by Master William Brown at Easter. I sent you word that
time that I should send you mine expenses particularly; but as at
this time the bearer hereof had a letter suddenly that he should
come home, & therefore I could have no leisure to send them to you
on that wise, & therefore I shall write to you in this letter the
whole sum of my expenses since I was with you till Easter last
past, and also the receipts, reckoning the twenty shillings that I
had of you to Oxon wards, with the bishop’s finding:--
£ s. d.
The whole sum of receipts is 5 17 6
And the whole sum of expenses is 6 5 5¾
And that [= what] cometh over my receipts
& my expenses I have borrowed of Master Edmund,
& it draweth to 8 0
and yet I reckon none expenses since Easter; but as for them, they
be not great.”
On this account Fenn says,
“he (Wm. Paston) had expended £6 5s. 5¾d. from the time he left
his mother to Easter last, which this year fell on the 22nd March,
from which time it was now two months, & of the expenses ‘since
incurred’ he says ‘they be not great.’ We may therefore conclude
the former account was from the Michaelmas preceding, and a
moderate one; if so, we may fairly estimate his university
education at £100 a-year of our present money. I mean that £12
10s. 11½d. would then procure as many necessaries and comforts as
£100 will at this day.”
What was the basis of Fenn’s calculation he does not say. In 1468, the
estimates for the Duke of Clarence’s household expenses give these
prices, among others:
s. d. £ s. d.
Wheat, a quarter 6 0 now, say 3 0 0
Ale, a gallon - 1½ „ - 1 0
Beves, less hide and tallow, each 10 0 „ 15 0 0[*]
Muttons „ „ 1 4 „ 2 10 0[*]
Velys „ „ 2 6 „ 4 0 0[*]
Porkes „ „ 2 0 „ 5 0 0
Rice, a pound 3 „ 5
Sugar „ 6 „ 6
Holland, an ell (6d., 8d., 16d.) 10 „ 1 3
Diapre „ 4 6 „ 3 0
Towelles „ 1 8 „ 1 6
Napkyns, a dozen, 12s., £1, £2, 17 4 „ 2 0 0
---------- -------------
£2 7 0½ £31 17 8
[*: Poor ones.]
This sum would make the things named nearly 14 times as dear now as in
1468, and raise Fenn’s £100 to about £180; but no reliance can be placed
on this estimate because we know nothing of the condition of the beves,
muttons, veles, and porkys, then, as contrasted with ours. Possibly they
were half the size and half the weight. Still, I have referred the
question to Professor Thorold Rogers, author of the _History of Prices_
1250-1400 A.D., and he says:
“In the year to which you refer (1478) bread was very dear, 50 per
cent. above the average. But on the whole, wheat prices in the
15th century were lower than in the 14th. Fenn’s calculation,
a little below the mark for wheat, is still less below it in most
of the second necessaries of life. The multiple of wheat is about
9, that of meat at least 24, those of butter and cheese nearly as
much. But that of clothing is not more than 6, that of linen from
4 to 5. Taking however one thing with another, 12 is a safe
general multiplier.”
This would make the cost of young Paston’s university education £150
11s. 6d. a year.
Mr Whiston would raise Fenn’s estimate of £100 to £200. He says that
the rent of land in Kent in 1540 was a shilling or eighteenpence an
acre,--see _Valor Ecclesiasticus_,--and that the tithes and glebes of
the Dean and Chapter of Rochester, which were worth about £480 a-year in
1542, are now worth £19,000.
The remaining Oxford letter in the Paston volumes seems to allude to the
students bearing part of the expenses of the degree, or the feast at it,
of a person related to royal family.
“I supposed, when that I sent my letter to my brother John, that
the Queen’s brother should have proceeded at Midsummer, and
therefore I beseeched her to send me some money, _for it will be
some cost to me_, but not much.”
The first school at Cambridge is said to have been founded by Edward the
Elder, the son of Alfred, but on no good authority. In 1223 the term
_University_ was applied to the place. The dates of the foundations of
its Colleges, as given in its Calendar, are:
St Peter’s 1257
(date of charter, 1264)
Clare Hall 1326
Pembroke 1347
Caius 1349
Trinity Hall 1350
Corpus Christi 1351
King’s 1441
Queen’s 1446
(refounded 1465)
St Catherine’s Hall 1473
Jesus 1496
Christ’s 1505
St John’s 1511
Magdalene 1519
Trinity 1546
Emmanuel 1584
Sidney 1598
Downing 1800
[Headnote: FEW NOBLEMEN AT CAMBRIDGE.]
Lord Henry Brandon, son of the Duke of Suffolk, died of the sweating
sickness then prevalent in the University, on the 16th July, 1551, while
a student of Cambridge. His brother, Lord Charles Brandon, died on the
same day. Their removal to Buckden was too late to save them (_Ath.
Cant._, i. 105, 541). Of them Ascham says, ‘two noble Primeroses of
Nobilitie, the yong Duke of Suffolke and Lord _H. Matrevers_ were soch
two examples to the Courte for learnyng, as our tyme may rather wishe,
than look for agayne.’--_Scholemaster_, ed. Mayor, p. 62. Besides
these two young noblemen, the first 104 pages of Cooper’s _Athenæ
Cantabrigienses_ disclose only one other, Lord Derby’s son, and the
following names of sons of knights:[44]
CAMBRIDGE MEN.
1443
Thomas Rotherham, Fellow of King’s, son of Sir Thomas Rotherham,
knight, and Alice his wife.
1494
Reginald Bray, high-steward of the university of Oxford, son of
Sir Richard Bray, knight, and the lady Joan his second wife.
1502
Humphrey Fitzwilliam, of Pembroke Hall, Vice-Chancellor, _appears_
to have been the son of Sir Richard Fitzwilliam of Ecclesfield,
and Elizabeth his wife.
ab. 1468
Richard Redman, son of Sir Richard Redman and Elizabeth [Aldburgh]
his wife; made Bp. of St Asaph.
1492
Thomas Savage, son of Sir John Savage, knight, Bp. of Rochester.
Was LL.D. ? educated at Cambridge.
1485
James Stanley, younger son of Thomas Earl of Derby, educated at
both universities, graduated at Cambridge, and became prebendary
of Holywell in 1485, Bp. of Ely in 1506.
1497
William Coningsby, son of Sir Humphrey Coningsby, elected from
Eton to King’s.
1507
Thomas Elyot, son of Sir Richard Elyot, made M.A.
ab. 1520
George Blagge, son of Sir Robert Blagge.
Queen Elizabeth’s favourite, Lord Essex, was at Trinity College,
Cambridge. See his letter of May 13, from there, in Ellis, series II. v.
iii. p. 73; the furniture of his room, and his expenses, in the note p.
73-4; and his Tutor’s letter asking for new clothes for ‘my Lord,’ or
else ‘he shall not onely be thrid bare, but ragged.’
Archbp. Whitgift[45], when B.D. at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, A.D. 1563,
“bestowed some of his time and abilities in the instruction of ingenious
youth, sent to the college for education, in good learning and Christian
manners. And among such his pupils, were two noblemen’s sons, viz. the
Lord Herbert, son and heir to the Earl of Pembroke; and John, son and
heir to the Lord North.” (_Life_, by Strype, ed. 1822, vol. i. p. 14.)
While Whitgift was Master of Trinity, Strype says he had bred up under
him not only several Bishops, but also “the Earls of Worcester and
Cumberland, the Lord Zouch, the Lord Dunboy of Ireland, Sir Nicolas and
Sir Francis Bacon. To which I may add one more, namely, the son of Sir
Nicolas White, Master of the Rolls in Ireland, who married a Devereux.”
(_Life_, i. 157, ed. 1822.)
[Headnote: NOBLES AND GENTLEMEN AT OXFORD.]
A search through the whole of the first volume of Wood’s _Athenæ
Oxonienses_, comprising a period of nearly 100 years, has resulted in
the following meagre list of men of noble or knightly birth who
distinguished themselves. There are besides many men of “genteel
parents,” some of trader-ones, many friars, some Winchester men, but no
Eton ones, educated at Oxford.
1478
Edmund Dudley, son of John Dudley, Esq., 2nd son of John Lord
Dudley, of Dudley Castle in Staffordshire.
ab. 1483
John Colet, the eldest son of Sir Henry Colet, twice lord mayor
of London ... was educated in grammaticals, partly in London or
Westminster.
„
Nicholas Vaux, son of Sir Will. Vaux of Harwedon in
Northamptonshire (not the Poet, Lord Vaux).
end of Edw. IV.
John Bourchier, Lord Berners, eldest son of Sir John Bourchier,
knight, Lord Berners of Hertfordshire ... was instructed in
several sorts of learning in the university in the latter end of
K. Edw. IV.; in whose reign, and before, were the sons of divers
of the English nobility educated in academical literature in
Baliol Coll.,[46] wherein, as ’tis probable, this our author was
instructed also.
1497
Thomas More, son of Sir John More, knight. (_The_ Sir Thomas More.)
? ab. 1510
George Bulleyn, son and heir of Sir Tho. Bullen, and brother of
Anne Bulleyn.
? „
Henry Parker, son of Sir William Parker, knight.
1515
Christopher Seintgerman, son of Sir Henry Seintgerman, knight.
? ab. 1520
Thomas Wyatt, son of Henry Wyatt of Alington Castle in Kent,
knight and baronet, migrated from St John’s, Cambridge.[47]
1538[48]
John Heron, a Kentish man born, near of kin to Sir John Heron,
knight.
? ab. 1520
Edward Seymoure, son of Sir John Seymoure, or St Maure of
Wolf-hall in Wilts, knight, was educated in trivials, and partly
in quadrivials for some time in this university. He was Jane
Seymour’s brother, and afterwards Duke of Somerset, and was
beheaded on Jan. 22, 1552-3.
1534
John Philpot, son of Sir Pet. Philpot, knight of the Bath. Fellow
of New Coll.
ab. 15--
Henry Lord Stafford (author of the _Mirror for Magistrates_), the
only son of Edward, Duke of Bucks, ‘received his education in both
the universities, especially in that of Cambridge, to which his
father had been a benefactor.’
1515
Reynold Pole (the Cardinal), a younger son of Sir Rich. Pole.
? ab. 1530
Anthony Browne, son of Sir Weston Browne, of Abbesroding and of
Langenhoo in Essex, knight.
ab. 1574
Patrick Plunket, baron of Dunsary in Ireland, son of Rob. Plunket,
baron of the same place.
ab. 1570
Philip Sidney (the poet), son of Sir Henry Sidney.
?
John Smythe, son of Sir Clem. Smythe.
(Peter Levens or Levins, our _Manipulus_ or Rhyming-Dictionary
man, became a student in the university, an. 1552, was elected
probationer-fellow of Mag. Coll. into a Yorkshire place, 18 Jan.
1557, being then bach. of arts, and on the 19th Jan. 1559 was
admitted true and perpetual fellow. In 1560 he left his
fellowship. _Ath. Ox._ p. 547, col. 2.)
? ab. 1570
Reynolde Scot, a younger son of Sir John Scot of Scotshall, near
to Smeeth in Kent.
1590
Hayward Townshend, eldest son of Sir Henry Townshend, knight.
ab. 1587
Francis Tresham (of Gunpowder Plot notoriety), son of Sir Thomas
Tresham, knight.
The number of friars and monks at the Universities before the
Reformation, and especially at Oxford, must have been large. Tanner
says,
In our universities ... were taught divinity and canon law (then,
t. Hen. III., much in vogue), and the friers resorting thither in
great numbers and applying themselves closely to their studies,
outdid the monks in all fashionable knowledge. But the monks
quickly perceived it, and went also to the universities and
studied hard, that they might not be run down by the friers.[49]
And as the friers got houses in the universities, the monks also
got colleges founded and endowed there[50] for the education of
their novices, where they were for some years instructed in
grammar, philosophy, and school divinity, and then returning home,
improved their knowledge by their private studies, to the service
of God and the credit of their respective societies. So that a
little before the Reformation, the greatest part of the proceeders
in divinity at Oxford were monks and Regular canons.
[Headnote: FAVOURITISM OF THE RICH IN THE UNIVERSITIES.]
By Harrison’s time, A.D. 1577[51], rich men’s sons had not only pressed
into the Universities, but were scrooging poor men’s sons out of the
endowments meant only for the poor, learning the lessons that Mr Whiston
so well shows our Cathedral dignitaries have carried out with the
stipends of their choristers, boys and men. “_Les gros poissons mangent
les menus._ Pro. Poore men are (easily) supplanted by the rich, the
weake by the strong, the meane by the mighty.”[52] (Cotgrave, u.
_manger_.) The law of “natural selection” prevails. Who shall say nay in
a Christian land professing the principles of the great “Inventor of
Philanthropy”? Whitgift for one, see his Life of Strype, Bk. I. chap.
xiii. p. 148-50, ed. 1822. In 1589 an act 31 Eliz. c. 6, was passed to
endeavour to prevent the abuse, but, like modern Election-bribery Acts
with their abuse, did not do it.
[Headnote: BAD EXAMPLE OF RICH MEN AT COLLEGE.]
“at this present, of one sort & other, there are about three
thousand students nourished in them both (as by a late serveie it
manifestlie appeared). They [the Colleges at our Universities]
were created by their founders at the first, onelie for pore men’s
sons, whose parents were not able to bring them up unto learning:
but now they have the least benefit of them, by reason the rich do
so incroch upon them. And so farre hath this inconvenence spread
itself, that it is in my time an hard matter for a pore man’s
child to come by a fellowship (though he be neuer so good a
scholer & worthie of that roome.) Such packing also is used at
elections, that not he which best deserveth, but he that hath most
friends, though he be the worst scholer, is alwaies surest to
speed; which will turne in the end to the overthrow of learning.
That some gentlemen also, whose friends have been in times past
benefactors to certeine of those houses, doe intrude into the
disposition of their estates, without all respect of order or
statutes devised by the founders, onelie thereby to place whome
they think good (and not without some hope of gaine) the case is
too too evident, and their attempt would soone take place, if
their superiors did not provide to bridle their indevors. In some
grammar schooles likewise, which send scholers to these
universities, it is lamentable to see what briberie is used; for
yer the scholer can be preferred, such briberye is made, that pore
men’s children are commonly shut out, and the richer sort received
(who in times past thought it dishonour to live as it were upon
almes) and yet being placed, most of them studie little other than
histories, tables, dice & trifles, as men that make not the living
by their studie the end of their purposes; which is a lamentable
bearing. Besides this, being for the most part either gentlemen,
or rich men’s sonnes, they oft bring the universities into much
slander.[53] For standing upon their reputation and libertie, they
ruffle and roist it out, exceeding in apparell, and hanting
riotous companie (which draweth them from their bookes into an
other trade). And for excuse, when they are charged with breach of
all good order, thinke it sufficient to saie, that they be
gentlemen, which grieveth manie not a little. But to proceed with
the rest.
“Everie one of these colleges haue in like manner their professors
or readers of the tongs and severall sciences, as they call them,
which dailie trade up the youth there abiding privatlie in their
halles, to the end they may be able afterwards (when their turne
commeth about, which is after twelve termes) to show themselves
abroad, by going from thence into the common schooles and publike
disputations (as it were _In aream_) there to trie their skilles,
and declare how they have profited since their coming thither.
“Moreover in the publike schooles of both the universities, there
are found at the prince’s charge (and that verie largelie) five
professors & readers, that is to saie, of divinitie, of the civill
law, physicke, the Hebrew and the Greek tongues. And for the other
lectures, as of philosophie, logike, rhetorike and the
quadriuials, although the latter (I mean, arithmetike, musike,
geometrie and astronomie, and with them all skill in the
perspectives are now smallie regarded in either of them) the
universities themselves do allowe competent stipends to such as
reade the same, whereby they are sufficiently provided for,
touching the maintenance of their estates, and no less encouraged
to be diligent in their functions.”
On the introduction of the study of Greek into the Universities,
Dr S. Knight says in his _Life of Colet_:
“As for _Oxford_, its own _History_ and _Antiquities_ sufficiently
confess, that nothing was known there but _Latin_, and that in the
most depraved Style of the _School-men_. _Cornelius Vitellius_, an
_Italian_, was the first who taught _Greek_ in that
University[54]; and from him the famous _Grocyne_ learned the
first Elements thereof.
“In _Cambridge_, _Erasmus_ was the first who taught the _Greek
Grammar_. And so very low was the State of Learning in that
University, that (as he tells a Friend) about the Year 1485, the
Beginning of _Hen._ VII. Reign, there was nothing taught in that
publick Seminary besides _Alexander’s Parva Logicalia_, (as they
called them) the old _Axioms_ of _Aristotle_, and the _Questions_
of John Scotus, till in Process of time _good Letters_ were
brought in, and some Knowledge of the _Mathematicks_; as also
_Aristotle_ in a new Dress, and some Skill in the _Greek_ Tongue;
and, by Degrees, a Multitude of _Authors_, whose _Names_ before
had not been heard of.[55]
“It is certain that even _Erasmus_ himself did little understand
_Greek_, when he came first into _England_, in 1497 (13 _Hen._
VII.), and that our Countryman _Linacer_ taught it him, being just
returned from _Italy_ with great Skill in that Language: Which
_Linacer_ and _William Grocyne_ were the two only Tutors that were
able to teach it.” Saml. Knight, Life of Dr John Colet, pp.
17, 18.
The age at which boys went up to the University seems to have varied
greatly. When Oxford students were forbidden to play marbles they could
not have been very old. But in “The Mirror of the Periods of Man’s Life”
(? ab. 1430 A.D.), in the Society’s _Hymns to the Virgin and Christ_ of
this year, we find the going-up age put at twenty:
Quod resou{n}, in age of .XX. ȝeer,
Goo to oxenford, or lerne lawe[56].
This is confirmed by young Paston’s being at Eton at nineteen (see
below, p. lvi). In 1612, Brinsley (_Grammar Schoole_, p. 307) puts the
age at fifteen, and says,
“such onely should be sent to the Vniuersities, who proue most
ingenuous and towardly, and who, in a loue of learning, will begin
to take paines of themselues, hauing attained in some sort the
former parts of learning; being good Grammarians at least, able to
vnderstand, write and speake Latine in good sort.
“Such as haue good discretion how to gouerne themselues there, and
to moderate their expenses; which is seldome times before 15
yeeres of age; which is also the youngest age admitted by the
statutes of the Vniuersity, as I take it.”
[Headnote: FOREIGN UNIVERSITY EDUCATION.]
4. _Foreign University Education._ That some of our nobles sent their
sons to be educated in the French universities (whence they sometimes
imported foreign vices into England[57]) is witnessed by some verses in
a Latin Poem “in MS. Digby, No. 4 (Bodleian Library) of the end of the
13th or beginning of the 14th century,” printed by Mr Thomas Wright in
his _Anecdota Literaria_, p. 38.
Filii nobilium, dum sunt juniores,
Mittuntur in Franciam fieri doctores;
Quos prece vel pretio domant corruptores,
Sic prætaxatos referunt artaxata mores.
An English _nation_ or set of students of the Faculty of Arts at Paris
existed in 1169; after 1430 the name was changed to the German nation.
Besides the students from the French provinces subject to the English,
as Poictou, Guienne, &c, it included the English, Scottish, Irish,
Poles, Germans, &c. --_Encyc. Brit._ John of Salisbury (born 1110) says
that he was twelve years studying at Paris on his own account. Thomas a
Becket, as a young man, studied at Paris. Giraldus Cambrensis (born
1147) went to Paris for education; so did Alexander Neckham (died 1227).
Henry says,
“The English, in particular, were so numerous, that they occupied
several schools or colleges; and made so distinguished a figure by
their genius and learning, as well as by their generous manner of
living, that they attracted the notice of all strangers. This
appears from the following verses, describing the behaviour of a
stranger on his first arrival in Paris, composed by Negel Wircker,
an English student there, A.D. 1170:--
The stranger dress’d, the city first surveys,
A church he enters, to his God he prays.
Next to the schools he hastens, each he views,
With care examines, anxious which to chuse.
The English most attract his prying eyes,
Their manners, words, and looks, pronounce them wise.
Theirs is the open hand, the bounteous mind;
Theirs solid sense, with sparkling wit combin’d.
Their graver studies jovial banquets crown,
Their rankling cares in flowing bowls they drown.[58]
Montpelier was another University whither Englishmen resorted, and is to
be remembered by us if only for the memory of Andrew Borde, M.D., some
bits of whose quaintness are in the notes to Russell in the present
volume.
Padua is to be noted for Pace’s sake. He is supposed to have been born
in 1482.
Later, the custom of sending young noblemen and gentlemen to Italy--to
travel, not to take a degree--was introduced, and Ascham’s condemnation
of it, when no tutor accompanied the youths, is too well known to need
quoting. The Italians’ saying, _Inglese Italianato è un diabolo
incarnato_, sums it up.[59]
[Headnote: MONASTIC AND CATHEDRAL SCHOOLS.]
5. _Monastic and Cathedral Schools._ Herbert Losing, Bp. of Thetford,
afterwards Norwich, between 1091 and 1119, in his 37th Letter restores
his schools at Thetford to Dean Bund, and directs that no other schools
be opened there.
Tanner (_Not. Mon._ p. xx. ed. Nasmith), when mentioning “the use
and advantage of these Religious houses”--under which term “are
comprehended, cathedral and collegiate churches, abbies, priories,
colleges, hospitals, preceptories (Knights Templars’ houses), and
frieries”--says,
“Secondly, They were schools of learning & education; for every
convent had one person or more appointed for this purpose; and all
the neighbours that desired it, might have their children taught
grammar and church musick without any expence to them.[60]
In the nunneries also young women were taught to work, and to read
English, and sometimes Latin also. So that not only the lower rank
of people, who could not pay for their learning, but most of the
noblemen and gentlemen’s daughters were educated in those
places.”[61]
[Headnote: LYDGATE’S TRICKS AT SCHOOL.]
As Lydgate (born at Lydgate in Suffolk, six or seven miles from
Newmarket) was ordained subdeacon in the Benedictine monastery of Bury
St Edmunds in 1389[62], he was probably sent as a boy to a monastic
school. At any rate, as he sketches his early escapades--apple-stealing,
playing truant, &c.,--for us in his _Testament_[63], I shall quote the
youth’s bit of the poem here:--
[Line numbers in the following selections were added by the
transcriber for use with sidenotes.]
Harleian MS. 2255, fol. 60.
Duryng the tyme / of this sesou{n} ver
I meene the sesou{n} / of my yeerys greene
Gynnyng fro childhood / strecchith{e}[A] vp so fer
to þe yeerys / accountyd ful Fifteene
bexperience / as it was weel seene
The gerissh{e} sesou{n} / straunge of condiciou{n}s
Dispoosyd to many vnbridlyd passiouns 7
[Sidenote: [fol. 60 b.]]
¶ Voyd of resou{n} / yove to wilfulnesse
Froward to vertu / of thrift gaf[B] litil heede
loth to lerne / lovid no besynesse
Sauf pley or merthe / strau{n}ge to spelle or reede
Folwyng al appetites / longyng to childheede
lihtly tournyng wylde / and seelde sad
Weepyng for nouht / and anoon afftir glad 14
¶ For litil wroth / to stryve with my felawe
As my passiou{n}s / did my bridil leede
Of the yeerde somtyme / I Stood in awe
to be scooryd[C] / that was al my dreede
loth toward scole / lost my tyme in deede
lik a yong colt / that ran with-owte brydil
Made my freendys / ther good to spend in ydil / 21
[Sidenotes (by line number):
[1] In my boyhood, [4] up to 15, [10] I loved no work but play
[17] yet I was afraid of being scored by the rod.]
¶ I hadde in custom / to come to scole late
Nat for to lerne / but for a contenaunce
with my felawys / reedy to debate
to Iangle and Iape / was set al my plesaunce
wherof rebukyd / this was my chevisaunce
to forge a lesyng / and therupon to muse
whan I trespasyd / my silven to excuse 28
[Sidenote: [fol. 61.]]
¶ To my bettre / did no reverence
Of my sovereyns / gaf no fors at al
wex obstynat / by inobedience
Ran in to garydns / applys ther I stal
To gadre frutys / sparyd hegg[D] nor wal
to plukke grapys / in othir mennys vynes
Was moor reedy / than for to seyn[E] matynes 35
¶ My lust was al / to scorne folk and iape
Shrewde tornys / evir among to vse
to Skoffe and mowe[F] / lyk a wantou{n} Ape
whan I did evil / othre I did[G] accuse
My wittys five / in wast I did abuse[H]
Rediere chirstoonys / for to[I] telle
Than gon to chirche / or heere the sacry[K] belle 42
[Sidenotes (by line number):
[22] I came to school late, [25] talked, [27] lied to get off
blame, [29] and mocked my masters. [32] I stole apples and
grapes, [36] played tricks and mocked people, [40] liked counting
cherry-stones better than church.]
¶ Loth to ryse / lother to bedde at eve
with vnwassh handys[L] / reedy to dyneer
My _pater noster_ / my _Crede_ / or my beleeve
Cast at the[M] Cok / loo this was my maneer
Wavid with ech{e} wynd / as doth a reed speer
Snybbyd[N] of my frendys / such techchys fortame{n}de[O]
Made deff ere / lyst nat / to them attende 49
[Sidenote: [fol. 61 b.]]
¶ A child resemblyng / which was nat lyk to thryve
Froward to god / reklees[P] in his servise
loth to correcciou{n} / slouh{e} my sylf to shryve
Al good thewys / reedy to despise
Cheef bellewedir / of feyned[Q] trwaundise
this is to meene / my silf I cowde feyne
Syk lyk a trwaunt / felte[R] no maneer peyne 56
¶ My poort my pas / my foot alwey vnstable
my look my eyen / vnswre and vagabounde
In al my werkys / sodeynly chaungable
To al good thewys / contrary I was founde
Now ovir sad / now moornyng / now iocounde
Wilful rekles / mad[S] stertyng as an hare
To folwe my lust / for no man wold I spare. 63
[Sidenotes (by line number):
[43] Late to rise, I was; dirty at dinner, [49] dea to the
snubbings of my friends, [51] reckless in God’s service,
[54] chief shammer of illness when I was well, [57] always
unsteady, [60] ill-conducted, [62] sparing none for my pleasure.]
[Collations:
A: strecched. (These collations are from Harl. 218, fol. 65, back.)
B: toke. C: skoured. D: nedir hegge. E: sey. F: mowen.
G: koude. H: alle vse. I: cheristones to. K: sacryng.
L: hondes. M: atte. N: Snybbyng. O: tamende. P: rekkes.
Q: froward. R: and felt. S: made.]
At these monastic schools, I suppose, were educated mainly the boys whom
the monks hoped would become monks, cleric or secular; mostly the poor,
the Plowman’s brother who was to be the Parson, not often the ploughman
himself. Once, though, made a scholar and monk there, and sent by the
Monastery to the University, the workman’s, if not the ploughman’s, son,
might rule nobles and sit by kings, nay, beard them to their face.
Thomas a Becket, himself the son of independent[[63a]] parents, was sent
to be brought up in the “religious house of the Canons of Merton.”
In 1392 the writer of Piers Plowman’s Crede sketches the then state of
things thus:
Now mot ich soutere hys sone · seten to schole,
And ich a beggeres brol · on the book lerne,
And worth to a writere · and with a lorde dwelle,
Other falsly to a frere · the fend for to serven; 4
So of that beggares brol · a [bychop[64]] shal worthen,
Among the peres of the lond · prese to sytten,
And lordes sones[65] lowly · to tho losels alowte,
Knyghtes crouketh hem to · and cruccheth ful lowe; 8
And his syre a soutere · y-suled in grees,
His teeth with toylyng of lether · tatered as a sawe.
[Sidenotes (by line number):
[1] Now every cobbler’s son and beggar’s brat turns writer, then
Bishop, [7] and lords’ sons crouch to him, [9] a cobbler’s son.]
Here I might stop the quotation, but I go on, for justice has never yet
been done[66] to this noble _Crede_ and William’s _Vision_ as pictures
of the life of their times,--chiefly from the profound ignorance of us
English of our own language; partly from the grace, the freshness, and
the brilliance of Chaucer’s easier and inimitable verse:--
Alaas! that lordes of the londe · leveth swiche wreechen,
And leveth swych lorels · for her lowe wordes.
They shulden maken [bichopes[64]] · her owen bretheren childre,
Other of som gentil blod · And so yt best semed, 4
And fostre none faytoures[64] · ne swich false freres,
To maken fat and fulle · and her flesh combren.
For her kynde were more · to y-clense diches
Than ben to sopers y-set first · and served with sylver. 8
A grete bolle-ful of benen · were beter in hys wombe,
And with the bandes[A] of bakun · his baly for to fillen
Than pertryches or plovers · or pecockes y-rosted,
And comeren her stomakes · with curiuse drynkes 12
That maketh swyche harlotes · hordom usen,
And with her wikkid word · wymmen bitrayeth.
God wold her wonyynge · were in wildernesse,
And fals freres forboden · the fayre ladis chaumbres; 16
For knewe lordes her craft · treuly I trowe
They shulden nought haunten her house · so ho[m]ly[64] on nyghtes,
Ne bedden swich brothels · in so brode shetes, 20
But sheten her heved in the stre · to sharpen her wittes.
[Sidenotes (by line number):
[1] Lords [3] should make gentlemen Bishops, [5] and set these
scamps [7] to clean ditches, [9] and eat beans and bacon-rind
instead of peacocks, [13] and having women. [17] If Lords but knew
their tricks, [20] they’d turn these beggars into the straw.]
[Textnote A: ? randes. Sk.]
[Headnote: EDUCATION OF FIELD LABOURERS.]
There is one side of the picture, the workman’s son turned monk, and
clerk to a lord. Let us turn to the other side, the ploughman’s son who
didn’t turn monk, whose head _was_ ‘shet’ in the straw, who delved and
ditched, and dunged the earth, eat bread of corn and bran, worts
fleshless (vegetables, but no meat), drank water, and went miserably
(_Crede_, l. 1565-71). What education did he get? To whom could he be
apprenticed? What was his chance in life? Let the Statute-Book answer:--
A.D. 1388. 12º Rich. II., Cap. v.
_Item._ It is ordained & assented, That he or she which used to
labour at the Plough and Cart, or other Labour or Service of
Husbandry _till they be of the Age of Twelve Years, that from
thenceforth they shall abide at the same Labour_, without being
put to any Mystery or Handicraft; and if any Covenant or Bond of
Apprentie (_so_) be from henceforth made to the Contrary, the same
shall be holden for none.
A.D. 1405-6. 7º Henri IV., Cap. xvii.
.....And Whereas in the Statutes made at Canterbury among other
Articles it is contained That he or she that useth to labour at
the Plough or Cart, or other Labour or Service of Husbandry, till
he be of the age of Twelve Years, that from the same time forth he
shall abide at the same Labour, without being put to any Mystery
or Handicraft; and if any Covenant or Bond be made from that time
forth to the contrary, it shall be holden for none:
Notwithstanding which Article, and the good Statutes afore made
through all parts of the Realm, the Infants born within the Towns
and Seignories of Upland, whose Fathers & Mothers have no Land nor
Rent nor other Living, but only their Service or Mystery, be put
by their said Fathers and Mothers and other their Friends to
serve, and bound Apprentices, to divers Crafts within the Cities
and Boroughs of the said Realm _sometime at the Age of Twelve
Years, sometime within the said Age_, and that for the Pride of
Clothing and other evil Customs that Servants do use in the same;
so that there is so great Scarcity of Labourers and other Servants
of Husbandry _that the Gentlemen and other People of the Realm be
greatly impoverished for the Cause aforesaid:_ Our Sovereign Lord
the King considering the said Mischief, and willing thereupon to
provide Remedy, by the advice & assent of the Lords Spiritual and
Temporal, and at the request of the said Commons, hath ordained
and stablished, That no Man nor Woman, of what Estate or Condition
they be, shall put their Son or Daughter, of whatsoever Age he or
she be, to Serve as Apprentice to no Craft nor other Labour within
any City or Borough in the Realm, except he have Land or Rent to
the Value of Twenty Shillings by the Year at the least, but they
shall be put to other labours as their Estates doth require, upon
Pain of one Year’s Imprisonment, and to make Fine and Ransom at
the King’s Will. And if any Covenant be made of any such Infant,
of what Estate that he be, to the contrary, it shall be holden for
none. Provided Always, that every Man and Woman, of what Estate or
Condition that he be, shall be free to set their Son or Daughter
to take Learning at any manner School that pleaseth them within
the Realm.
A most gracious saving clause truly, for those children who were used to
labour at the plough and cart till they were twelve years old[67]. Let
us hope that some got the benefit of it!
These Acts I came across when hunting for the Statutes referred to by
the _Boke of Curtasye_ as fixing the hire of horses for carriage at
fourpence a piece, and they caused me some surprise. They made me wonder
less at the energy with which some people now are striving to erect
“barriers against democracy” to prevent the return match for the old
game coming off.--However improving, and however justly retributive,
future legislation for the rich by the poor in the spirit of past
legislation for the poor by the rich might be, it could hardly be
considered pleasant, and is surely worth putting up the true barrier
against, one of education in each poor man’s mind. (He who americanizes
us thus far will be the greatest benefactor England has had for some
ages.)--These Statutes also made me think how the old spirit still
lingers in England, how a friend of my own was curate in a Surrey
village where the kind-hearted squire would allow none of the R’s but
Reading to be taught in his school; how another clergyman lately
reported his Farmers’ meeting on the school question: Reading and
Writing might be taught, but Arithmetic not; the boys would be getting
to know too much about wages, and that would be troublesome; how,
lastly, our gangs of children working on our Eastern-counties farms, and
our bird-keeping boys of the whole South, can almost match the children
of the agricultural labourer of 1388.
[Headnote: NO BONDSMAN’S SON TO BE AN APPRENTICE.]
The early practice of the Freemasons, and other crafts, refusing to let
any member take a bondsman’s son as an apprentice, was founded on the
reasonable apprehension that his lord would or might afterwards claim
the lad, make him disclose the trade-secrets, and carry on his art for
the lord’s benefit. The fourth of the ‘Fyftene artyculus or fyftene
poyntus’ of the Freemasons, printed by Mr Halliwell (p. 16), is on this
subject.
_Articulus quartus_ (MS. Bibl. Reg. 17 A, Art. I., fol. 3, &c.)
The fowrthe artycul thys moste be,
That the mayster hym wel be-se
That he _no bondemon_ prentys make,
Ny for no covetyse do hym take;
For the lord that he ys bond to,
May fache the prentes whersever he go.
Ȝef yn the logge he were y-take,
Muche desese hyt myȝth ther make,
And suche case hyt myȝth befalle
That hyt myȝth greve summe or alle;
For alle the masonus that ben there
Wol stonde togedur hol y-fere.
Ȝef suche won yn that craft schulde dwelle,
Of dyvers desesys ȝe myȝth telle.
For more ȝese thenne, and of honesté,
Take a prentes of herre[A] degré.
By olde tyme, wryten y fynde
That the prentes schulde be of gentyl kynde;
And so sumtyme grete lordys blod
Toke thys gemetry that ys ful good.
[Text Note:
A: higher.]
I should like to see the evidence of a lord’s son having become a
working mason, and dwelling seven years with his master ‘hys craft to
lurne.’
[Headnote: POST-REFORMATION CATHEDRAL SCHOOLS.]
_Cathedral Schools._ About the pre-Reformation Schools I can find only
the extract from Tanner given above, p. xlii. On the post-Reformation
Schools I refer readers to Mr Whiston’s _Cathedral Trusts_, 1850. He
says:
“The Cathedrals of England are of two kinds, those of the old and
those of the new foundation: of the latter, Canterbury (the old
archiepiscopal see) and Carlisle, Durham, Ely, Norwich, Rochester,
and Worcester, old episcopal sees, were A.D. 1541-2 refounded, or
rather reformed, by Henry VIII. ... Besides these, he created five
other cathedral churches or colleges, in connexion with the five
new episcopal sees of Bristol, Chester, Gloucester, Oxford, and
Peterborough. He further created the see of Westminster, which was
... subsequently (A.D. 1560) converted to a deanery collegiate by
Queen Elizabeth ... (p. 6). The preamble of the Act 31 Henry VIII.
c. 9, for founding the new cathedrals, preserved in Henry’s own
handwriting, recites that they were established ‘To the intente
that Gods worde myght the better be sett forthe, _cyldren broght
up in lernynge, clerces nuryshyd in the universities_, olde
servantes decayed, to have lyfing, allmes housys for pour folke to
be sustayned in, _Reders of grece, ebrew, and latyne to have good
stypende_, dayly almes to be mynistrate, mending of hyght wayes,
and exhybision for mynisters of the chyrche.’”
“A general idea of the scope and nature of the cathedral establishments,
as originally planned and settled by Henry VIII., may be formed from
the first chapter of the old statutes of Canterbury, which is almost
identical with the corresponding chapter of the statutes of all the
other cathedrals of the new foundation. It is as follows:
“On[68] the entire number of those who have their sustentation
(qui sustentantur) in the cathedral and metropolitical church of
Canterbury:
“First of all we ordain and direct that there be for ever in our
aforesaid church, one dean, twelve canons, six preachers, twelve
minor canons, one deacon, one subdeacon, twelve lay-clerks, _one
master of the choristers, ten choristers, two teachers of the boys
in grammar, one of whom is to be the head master, the other,
second master, fifty boys to be instructed in grammar_,[69] twelve
poor men to be maintained at the costs and charges of the said
church, two vergers, two subsacrists (_i.e._, sextons), four
servants in the church to ring the bells, and arrange all the
rest, two porters, who shall also be barber-tonsors, one
caterer,[70] one butler, and one under butler, one cook, and one
under-cook, who, indeed, in the number prescribed, are to serve in
our church every one of them in his own order, according to our
statutes and ordinances.”
In the Durham statutes, as settled in the first year of Philip and Mary,
the corresponding chapter is as follows:
On[71] the total number of those who have their sustentation (qui
sustentantur) in the cathedral church of Durham.
“We direct and ordain that there be for ever in the said church,
one dean, twelve prebendaries, twelve minor canons, one deacon,
one sub-deacon, ten clerks, (who may be either clerks or laymen,)
_one master of the choristers, ten choristers, two teachers of the
boys in grammar, eighteen boys to be instructed in grammar_, eight
poor men to be maintained at the costs of the said church, two
subsacrists, two vergers, two porters, one of whom shall also be
barber-tonsor, one butler, one under-butler, one cook, and one
under-cook.”
“The monastic or collegiate character of the bodies thus
constituted, is indicated by the names and offices of the inferior
ministers above specified, who were intended to form a part of the
establishment of the Common Hall, in which most of the subordinate
members, including the boys to be instructed in grammar, were to
take their meals. There was also another point in which the
cathedrals were meant to resemble and supply the place of the old
religious houses, _i.e._, in the maintenance of a certain number
of students at the universities.”
R^t. WHISTON, _Cathedral Trusts and their Fulfilment_, p. 2-4.
”The nature of these schools, and the desire to perpetuate and improve
them, may be inferred from ‘certein articles noted for the reformation
of the cathedral churche of Excestr’, submitted by the commissioners of
Henry VIII., unto the correction of the Kynges Majestie,’ as follows:
_The tenth Article_ submitted. “That ther may be in the said
Cathedral churche a free songe scole, the scolemaster to have
yerly of the said pastor and prechars xx. marks for his wages, and
his howss free, to teache xl. children frely, to rede, to write,
synge and playe upon instruments of musike, also to teache ther
A. B. C. in greke and hebrew. And every of the said xl. children
to have wekely xiid. for ther meat and drink, and yerly vi^s
viii^d. for a gowne; they to be bownd dayly to syng _and_ rede
within the said Cathedral churche such divine service as it may
please the Kynges Majestie to allowe; the said childre to be at
comons alltogether, with three prests hereaffter to be spoke off,
to see them well ordered at the meat and to reforme their
manners.”
_Article the eleventh_, submitted. “That ther may be a fre grammer
scole within the same Cathedral churche, the scole-master to have
xx^li. by yere and his howss fre, the ussher x^li. & his howss
fre, and that the said pastor and prechars may be bound to fynd
xl. children at the said grammer scole, giving to every oon of the
children xiid. wekely, to go to commons within the citie at the
pleasour of the frendes, so long to continew as the scolemaster do
se them diligent to lerne. The pastor to appointe viii. every
prechar iiii. and the scolemaster iiii.; the said childre serving
in the said churche and going to scole, to be preferred before
strangers; provided always, that no childe be admitted to
thexhibicion of the said churche, whose father is knowne to be
worthe in goodes above ccc^li., or elles may dispend above xl^li.
yerly enheritance.” --_Ibid._, p. 10--12.
“Now £300 at that time was worth about £5,000 now, so that these schools
were _designed_ for the lower ranks of society, and open to the sons of
the poorer gentry.
“An interesting illustration of this [and of the class-feeling in
education at this time] is supplied,” says Mr Whiston, “by the narrative
of what took place--
“when the Cathedral Church of Canterbury was altered from monks
to secular men of the clergy, viz.: prebendaries or canons,
petty-canons, choristers and scholars. At this erection were
present, Thomas Cranmer, archbishop, with divers other
commissioners. And nominating and electing such convenient and fit
persons as should serve for the furniture of the said Cathedral
church according to the new foundation, it came to pass that, when
they should elect the children of the Grammar school, there were
of the commissioners more than one or two who would have none
admitted but sons or younger brethren of gentlemen. As for other,
husbandmen’s children, they were more meet, they said, for the
plough, and to be artificers, than to occupy the place of the
learned sort; so that they wished none else to be put to school,
but only gentlemen’s children. Whereunto the most reverend father,
the Archbishop, being of a contrary mind, said, ‘That he thought
it not indifferent so to order the matter; for,’ said he, ‘poor
men’s children are many times endued with more singular gifts of
nature, which are also the gifts of God, as, with eloquence,
memory, apt pronunciation, sobriety, and such like; and also
commonly more apt to apply their study, than is the gentleman’s
son, delicately educated.’ Hereunto it was on the other part
replied, ‘that it was meet for the ploughman’s son to go to
plough, and the artificer’s son to apply the trade of his parent’s
vocation; and the gentleman’s children are meet to have the
knowledge of government and rule in the commonwealth. For we
have,’ said they, ‘as much need of ploughmen as any other state;
and all sorts of men may not go to school.’ ‘I grant,’ replied the
Archbishop, ‘much of your meaning herein as needful in a
commonwealth; but yet utterly to exclude the ploughman’s son and
the poor man’s son from the benefits of learning, as though they
were unworthy to have the gifts of the Holy Ghost bestowed upon
them as well as upon others, is as much to say, as that Almighty
God should not be at liberty to bestow his great gifts of grace
upon any person, nor nowhere else but as we and other men shall
appoint them to be employed, according to our fancy, and not
according to his most goodly will and pleasure, who giveth his
gifts both of learning, and other perfections in all sciences,
unto all kinds and states of people indifferently. Even so doth he
many times withdraw from them and their posterity again those
beneficial gifts, if they be not thankful. If we should shut up
into a strait corner the bountiful grace of the Holy Ghost, and
thereupon attempt to build our fancies, we should make as perfect
a work thereof as those that took upon them to build the Tower of
Babel; for God would so provide that the offspring of our
first-born children should peradventure become most unapt to
learn, and very dolts, as I myself have seen no small number of
them very dull and without all manner of capacity. And to say the
truth, I take it, that none of us all here, being gentlemen born
(as I think), but had our beginning that way from a low and base
parentage; and through the benefit of learning, and other civil
knowledge, for the most part all gentlemen ascend to their
estate.’ Then it was again answered, that the most part of the
nobility came up by feats of arms and martial acts. ‘As though,’
said the Archbishop, ‘that the noble captain was always
unfurnished of good learning and knowledge to persuade and
dissuade his army rhetorically; who rather that way is brought
unto authority than else his manly looks. To conclude; the poor
man’s son by pains-taking will for the most part be learned when
the gentleman’s son will not take the pains to get it. And we are
taught by the Scriptures that Almighty God raiseth up from the
dunghill, and setteth him in high authority. And whensoever it
pleaseth him, of his divine providence, he deposeth princes unto a
right humble and poor estate. Wherefore, if the gentleman’s son be
apt to learning, let him be admitted; if not apt, let the poor
man’s child that is apt enter his room.’ With words to the like
effect.”
R. WHISTON, _Cathedral Trusts_, p. 12-14.
The scandalous way in which the choristers and poor boys were done out
of their proportion of the endowments by the Cathedral clergy, is to be
seen in Mr Whiston’s little book.
[Headnote: POOR MEN’S SONS HAVE HEADS AS WELL AS RICH ONES’.]
6. _Endowed Grammar Schools._ These were mainly founded for citizens’
and townsmen’s children. Winchester (founded 1373) was probably the only
one that did anything before 1450 for the education of our gentry. Eton
was not founded till 1440. The following list of endowed schools founded
before 1545, compiled for me by Mr Brock from Carlisle’s _Concise
Description_, shows the dates of all known to him.
BEFORE 1450 A.D.
bef. 1162 Derby. Free School.
1195 St Alban’s. Free Grammar School.
1198 St Edmund’s, Bury. Fr. Sch.
1328 Thetford. Gr. Sch.
? 1327 Northallerton. Gr. Sch.
1332 Exeter. Gr. Sch.
1343 Exeter. High School.
bef. 1347 Melton Mowbray. Schools.
1373 Winchester College.
1384 Hereford. Gr. Sch.
1385 Wotton-under-Edge. Fr. Gr. Sch.
1395 or 1340 Penrith. Fr. Gr. Sch.
1399-1413 (Hen. IV.) Oswestry. Fr. Gr. Sch.
1418 Sevenoaks. Fr. Gr. Sch.
1422 Higham Ferrers. Fr. Gr. Sch.
1422-61 (Hen. VI.) Ewelme. Gr. Sch.
1440 Eton College.
1447 London. Mercers’ School, but founded earlier.
SCHOOLS FOUNDED 1450--1545 A.D.
1461-83 (Edw. IV.) Chichester. The Prebendal School.
bef. 1477 Ipswich.[72] Gr. Sch.
1484 Wainfleet. Fr. Gr. Sch.
1485-1509 (Hen. VII.) or before. Kibroorth, near Market
Harborough. Fr. Gr. Sch.
bef. 1486 Reading. Gr. Sch.
1486 Kingston upon Hull. Fr. Gr. Sch.
1487 Stockport. Gr. Sch.
1487 Chipping Campden. Fr. Gr. Sch.
1491 Sudbury. Fr. Gr. Sch.
bef. 1495 Lancaster. Fr. Gr. Sch.
1497 Wimborne Minster. Fr. Gr. Sch.
time of Hen. VII., 1485-1509 King’s Lynn. Gr. Sch.
1502-52 Macclesfield. Fr. Gr. Sch.
1503 Bridgenorth. Fr. Sch.
1506 Brough _or_ Burgh _under_ Stainmore. Fr. Sch.
1507 Enfield. Gr. Sch.
1507 Farnworth, in Widnes, near Prescot. Fr. Gr. Sch.
ab. 1508 Cirencester. Fr. Gr. Sch.
1509 Guildford. Royal Gr. Sch.
t. Hen. VIII. 1509-47 Peterborough. Gr. Sch.
t. Hen. VIII. 1509-47 Basingstoke. Gr Sch.
t. Hen. VIII. 1509-47 Plymouth. Gr. Sch.
t. Hen. VIII. 1509-47 Warwick. College or Gr. Sch.
t. Hen. VIII. 1509-47 Earl’s Colne, near Halsted. Fr. Gr. Sch.
t. Hen. VIII. 1509-47 Carlisle. Gr. Sch.
1512 Southover and Lewes. Fr. Gr. Sch.
1513 Nottingham. Fr. Sch.
1515 Wolverhampton. Fr. Gr. Sch.
1517 Aylesham. Fr. Gr. Sch.
1512-18 London.[73] St Paul’s Sch.
1520 Bruton or Brewton. Fr. Gr. Sch.
ab. 1520 Rolleston, nr. Burton-upon-Trent. Fr. Gr. Sch.
bef. 1521 Tenterden. Fr. Sch.
1521 Milton Abbas, near Blandford. Fr. Gr. Sch.
1522 Taunton. Fr. Gr. Sch.
1522 Biddenden, near Cranbrook. Free Latin Gr. Sch.
bef. 1524-5 Manchester. Fr. Gr. Sch.
1524 Berkhampstead. Fr. Gr. Sch.
1526 Pocklington. Fr. Gr. Sch.
1526 Childrey, near Wantage. Fr. Sch.
bef. 1528 Cuckfield. Fr. Gr. Sch.
1528 Gloucester. Saint Mary de Crypt. Fr. Gr. Sch.
1528 Grantham. Fr. Gr. Sch.
1530 Stamford, or Stanford. Fr. Gr. Sch.
1530 Newark-upon-Trent. Fr. Gr. Sch.
bef. Reform. Norwich. Old Gr. Sch.
t. Ref. Loughborough. Fr. Gr. Sch.
1532 Horsham. Fr. Sch.
1533 Bristol. City Fr. Gr. Sch.
ab. 1533 Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Royal Gr. Sch.
ab. 1535 Stoke, near Clare. Fr. Gr. Sch.
1541 Brecknock. Gr. Sch.
1541 Ely. Fr. Sch.
1541 Durham. Gr. Sch.
1541-2 Worcester. The King’s [t.i. Cathedral Grammar] or
College School.
1542 Canterbury. The King’s School.
1542 Rochester. The King’s Sch.[74]
1542 Findon, properly Thingdon, near Wellingborough. Fr. Sch.
1542 Northampton. Fr. Gr. Sch.
1543 Abergavenny. Fr. Gr. Sch.
1544 Chester. [Cathedral] Gr., or King’s School.
1544 Sutton Coldfield. Gr. Sch.
bef. 1545 Gloucester. Cathedral [t.i. King’s], or College School.
1545 St Mary of Ottery. Gr. Sch.
bef. 1547 Wisbech. Gr. Sch.
bef. 1549 Wellington. Gr. Sch.
About 1174 A.D., Fitzstephen speaks of the London schools and scholars
thus:--I use Pegge’s translation, 1772, to which Mr Chappell
referred me,--
“The three principal churches in London[75] are privileged by
grant and ancient usage with schools, and they are all very
flourishing. Often indeed through the favour and countenance of
persons eminent in philosophy, more schools are permitted. On
festivals, at those churches where the Feast of the Patron Saint
is solemnized, the masters convene their scholars. The youth, on
that occasion, dispute, some in the demonstrative way, and some
logically. These produce their enthymemes, and those the more
perfect syllogisms. Some, the better to shew their parts, are
exercised in disputation, contending with one another, whilst
others are put upon establishing some truth by way of
illustration. Some sophists endeavour to apply, on feigned topics,
a vast heap and flow of words, others to impose upon you with
false conclusions. As to the orators, some with their rhetorical
harangues employ all the powers of persuasion, taking care to
observe the precepts of art, and to omit nothing opposite to the
subject. The boys of different schools wrangle with one another in
verse; contending about the principles of Grammar, or the rules of
the Perfect Tenses and Supines. Others there are, who in Epigrams,
or other compositions in numbers, use all that low ribaldry we
read of in the Ancients; attacking their school-masters, but
without mentioning names, with the old Fescennine licentiousness,
and discharging their scoffs and sarcasms against them; touching
the foibles of their school-fellows, or perhaps of greater
personages, with true Socratic wit, or biting them more keenly
with a Theonine tooth: The audience, fully disposed to laugh,
‘With curling nose ingeminate the peals.’”
Of the sports of the boys, Fitzstephen gives a long description. On
Shrove-Tuesday, each boy brought his fighting cock to his master, and
they had a cock-fight all morning in the school-room.[76] After dinner,
football in the fields of the suburbs, probably Smithfield. Every Sunday
in Lent they had a sham-fight, some on horseback, some on foot, the King
and his Court often looking on. At Easter they played at the
Water-Quintain, charging a target, which if they missed, souse they went
into the water. ‘On holidays in summer the pastime of the youths is to
exercise themselves in archery, in running, leaping, wrestling, casting
of stones, and flinging to certain distances, and lastly with bucklers.’
At moonrise the maidens danced. In the winter holidays, the boys saw
boar-fights, hog-fights, bull and bear-baiting, and when ice came they
slid, and skated on the leg-bones of some animal, punting themselves
along with an iron-shod pole, and charging one another. A set of merry
scenes indeed.
“In general, we are assured by the most learned man of the
thirteenth century, Roger Bacon, that there never had been so
great an appearance of learning, and so general an application to
study, in so many different faculties, as in his time, when
schools were erected in every city, town, burgh, and castle.”
(Henry’s Hist. of England, vol. iv. p. 472-3.)
In the twenty-fifth year of Henry VI., 1447, four Grammar schools were
appointed to be opened in London[77] for the education of the City youth
(_Carlisle_). But from the above lists it will be seen that Grammar
Schools had not much to do with the education of our nobility and gentry
before 1450 A.D.
[Headnote: AN ETON BOY IN A.D. 1478.]
Of Eton studies, the Paston Letters notice only Latin versifying, but
they show us a young man supposed to be nineteen, still at school,
having a smart pair of breeches for holy days, falling in love, eating
figs and raisins, proposing to come up to London for a day or two’s
holiday or lark to his elder brother’s, and having 8d. sent him in a
letter to buy a pair of slippers with. William Paston, a younger brother
of John’s, when about nineteen years old, and studying at Eton, writes
on Nov. 7, 1478, to thank his brother for a noble in gold, and says,
“my creanser (creditor) Master Thomas (Stevenson) heartily
recommendeth him to you, and he prayeth you to send him some money
for my commons, for he saith ye be twenty shillings in his debt,
for a month was to pay for when he had money last; also I beseech
you to send me a hose cloth, one for the holy days of some colour,
and another for working days (how coarse soever it be, it maketh
no matter), and a stomacher and two shirts, and a pair of
slippers: and if it like you that I may come with Alweder by
water”--would they take a pair-oar and pull down? (the figs and
raisins came up by a barge;)--“and sport me with you at London a
day or two this term-time, then ye may let all this be till the
time that I come, and then I will tell you when I shall be ready
to come from Eton by the grace of God, who have you in his
keeping.” _Paston Letters_, modernised, vol. 2, p. 129.
This is the first letter; the second one about the figs, raisins, and
love-making (dated 23 Feb. 1478-9) is given at vol. ii. p. 122-3.
Tusser, who was seized as a Singing boy for the King’s Chapel, lets us
know that he got well birched at Eton.
“From Paul’s I went · to Eton sent
To learn straightways · the Latin phrase
When fifty-three · stripes given to me
At once I had:
For fault but small · or none at all
It come to pass · thus beat I was.
See, Udall,[78] see · the mercy of thee
To me poor lad!”
I was rather surprised to find no mention of any Eton men in the first
vol. of Wood’s _Athenæ Oxonienses_ (ed. Bliss) except two, who had first
taken degrees at Cambridge, Robert Aldrich and William Alley, the latter
admitted at Cambridge 1528 (Wood, p. 375, col. 2). Plenty of London men
are named in Wood, vol. 1. No doubt in early times the Eton men went to
their own foundation, King’s (or other Colleges at) Cambridge, while the
Winchester men went to their foundation, New College, or elsewhere at
Oxford. In the first volume of Bliss’s edition of Wood, the following
Winchester men are noticed:
p. 30, col. 2, William Grocyn, educated in grammaticals in Wykeham’s
school near Winchester.
p. 78, col. 2, William Horman, made fellow of New Coll. in 1477.
Author of the _Vulgaria Puerorum_, &c. (See also Andrew
Borde, p. xxxiv, above, note.)
p. 379, col. 2, John Boxall, Fellow of New Coll. 1542.
402, col. 2, Thomas Hardyng „ „ „ 1536.
450, col. 2, Henry Cole „ „ „ 1523.
469, col. 1, Nicholas Saunders „ „ „ 1548.
678, col. 2, Richard Haydock „ „ „ 1590.
[Headnote: POST-REFORMATION GRAMMAR SCHOOLS.]
That the post-Reformation Grammar Schools did not at first educate as
many boys as the old monastic schools is well known. Strype says,
“On the 15th of January, 1562, Thomas Williams, of the Inner
Temple, esq. being chosen speaker to the lower house, was
presented to the queen: and in his speech to her ... took notice
of the want of schools; that at least an hundred were wanting in
England which before this time had been, [being destroyed
(I suppose he meant) by the dissolution of monasteries and
religious houses, fraternities and colleges.] He would have had
England continually flourishing with ten thousand scholars, which
the schools in this nation formerly brought up. That from the want
of these good schoolmasters sprang up ignorance: and covetousness
got the livings by impropriations; which was a decay, he said, of
learning, and by it the tree of knowledge grew downward, not
upward; which grew greatly to the dishonour, both of God and the
commonwealth. He mentioned likewise the decay of the universities;
and how that great market-towns were without schools or preachers:
and that the poor vicar had but 20_l._ [or some such poor
allowance,] and the rest, being no small sum, was impropriated.
And so thereby, no preacher there; but the people, being trained
up and led in blindness for want of instruction, became obstinate:
and therefore advised that this should be seen to, and
impropriations redressed, notwithstanding the laws already made
[which favoured them].--Strype, _Annals of the Reformation_, vol.
i. p. 437.
Of the Grammar Schools in his time (A.D. 1577) Harrison says:
Besides these universities, also there are a great number of
Grammer Schooles throughout the realme, and those verie liberallie
endued for the better relief of pore scholers, so that there are
not manie corporate townes, now under the queene’s dominion that
have not one Gramer Schole at the least, with a sufficient living
for a master and usher appointed to the same.
There are in like manner divers collegiat churches, as Windsor,
Wincester, Eaton, Westminster (in which I was sometime an
unprofitable Grammarian under the reverend father, master Nowell,
now dean of Paules) and in those a great number of pore scholers,
dailie maintained by the liberality of the founders, with meat,
bookes, and apparell; from whence after they have been well
entered in the knowledge of the Latine and Greek tongs, and rules
of versifying (the triall whereof is made by certain apposers,
yearlie appointed to examine them), they are sent to certain
especiall houses in each universitie[79], where they are received
& trained up in the points of higher knowledge in their privat
halls till they be adjudged meet to show their faces in the
schooles, as I have said alreadie.
[Headnote: STUDY OF ENGLISH RECOMMENDED IN 1582-1612.]
Greek was first taught at a public school in England by Lillye soon
after the year 1500. This was at St Paul’s School in London, then newly
established by Dean Colet, and to which Erasmus alluded as the best of
its time in 1514, when he said that he had in three years taught a youth
more Latin than he could have acquired in any school in England, _ne
Liliana quidem excepta_, not even Lillye’s excepted. (Warton, iii. 1.)
The first schoolmaster who stood up for the study of English was,
I believe, Richard Mulcaster, of King’s College, Cambridge, and Christ
Church, Oxford. In 1561 he was appointed the first head-master of
Merchant-Taylors School in London, then just founded as a feeder or
pro-seminary for St John’s College, Oxford (_Warton_, iii. 282). In his
Elementarie, 1582, he has a long passage on the study of English, the
whole of which I print here, at Mr Quick’s desire, as it has slipt out
of people’s minds, and Mulcaster deserves honour for it:--
“But bycause I take vpon me in this Elementarie, besides som
frindship to secretaries for the pen, and to correctors for the
print, to direct such peple as teach childern to read and write
English, and the _reading_ must nedes be such as the writing leads
vnto, thererfor, (_sic_) befor I medle with anie particular
precept, to direct the Reader, I will thoroughlie rip vp the hole
certaintie of our English writing, so far furth and with such
assurance, as probabilitie can make me, bycause it is a thing both
proper to my argument, and profitable to my cuntrie. For our
naturall tung being as beneficiall vnto vs for our nedefull
deliuerie, as anie other is to the peple which vse it: & hauing as
pretie, and as fair obseruations in it, as anie other hath: and
being as readie to yield to anie rule of Art, as anie other is:
why should I not take som pains to find out the right writing of
ours, as other cuntrimen haue don to find the like in theirs? & so
much the rather, bycause it is pretended, that the writing thereof
is meruellous vncertain, and scant to be recouered from extreme
confusion, without som change of as great extremitie? I mean
therefor so to deall in it, as I maie wipe awaie that opinio{n} of
either vncertaintie for co{n}fusion, or impossibilitie for
directio{n}, that both the naturall English maie haue wherein to
rest, & the desirous st[r]anger maie haue whereby to learn. For
the performa{n}ce whereof, and mine own better direction, I will
first examin those means, whereby other tungs of most sacred
antiquitie haue bene brought to Art and form of discipline for
their right writing, to the end that by following their waie,
I maie hit vpo{n} their right, and at the least by their president
deuise the like to theirs, where the vse of our tung, & the
propertie of our dialect will not yeild flat to theirs. That don,
I will set all the varietie of our now writing, & the vncertaine
force of all our letters, in as much certaintie, as anie writing
ca{n} be, by these sene{n} precepts,-- 1. _Generall rule_, which
concerneth the propertie and vse of ech letter: 2. _Proportion_
which reduceth all words of one sou{n}d to the same writing:
3. _Composition_, which teacheth how to write one word made of mo:
4. _Deriuation_, which examineth the ofspring of euerie originall:
5. _Distinction_ which bewraieth the difference of sound and force
in letters by som writen figure or accent: 6. _Enfranchisment_,
which directeth the right writing of all incorporat foren words:
7. _Prerogatiue_, which declareth a reseruation, wherein common
vse will continew hir precèdence in our En[g]lish writing, as she
hath don euerie where else, both for the form of the letter, in
som places, which likes the pen better: and for the difference in
writing, where som particular caueat will chek a common rule. In
all these seuen I will so examin the particularities of our tung,
as either nothing shall seme strange at all, or if anie thing do
seme, yet it shall not seme so strange, but that either the self
same, or the verie like vnto it, or the more strange then it is,
shal appear to be in, those things, which ar more familiar vnto vs
for extraordinarie learning, then required of vs for our ordinarie
vse. And forasmuch as the eie will help manie to write right by a
sene president, which either cannot vnderstand, or cannot entend
to vnderstand the reason of a rule, therefor in the end of this
treatis for right writing, I purpos to set down a generall table
of most English words, by waie of president, to help such plane
peple, as cannot entend the vnderstanding of a rule, which
requireth both time and conceit in perceiuing, but can easilie run
to a generall table, which is readier to their hand. By the which
table I shall also confirm the right of my rules, that theie hold
thoroughout, & by multitude of exa{m}ples help som maim (_so_) in
precepts. Thus much for the right writing of our English tung,
which maie seme (_so_) for a preface to the principle of
_Reading_, as the matter of the one is the maker of the
other.--1582. Rich^d. Mulcaster. The First Part of the
Elementarie, pp. 53-4.
Brinsley follows Mulcaster in exhorting to the study of English:
“there seemes vnto mee, to bee a verie maine want in all our
Grammar schooles generally, or in the most of them; whereof I haue
heard som great learned men to complain; That there is no care had
in respect, to traine vp schollars so as they may be able to
expresse their minds purely and readily in our owne tongue, and to
increase in the practice of it, as well as in the Latine or
Greeke; whereas our chiefe indeuour should bee for it, and that
for these reasons. 1. Because that language which all sorts and
conditions of men amongst vs are to haue most vse of, both in
speech & writing, is our owne natiue tongue. 2. The purity and
elegancie of our owne language is to be esteemed a chiefe part of
the honour of our nation: which we all ought to aduance as much as
in vs lieth. As when Greece and Rome and other nations haue most
florished, their languages also haue beene most pure: and from
those times of Greece & Rome, wee fetch our chiefest patterns, for
the learning of their tongues. 3. Because of those which are for a
time trained vp in schooles, there are very fewe which proceede in
learning, in comparison of them that follow other callings.
John Brinsley, _The Grammar Schoole_, p. 21, 22.
His “Meanes to obtaine this benefit of increasing in our English tong,
as in the Latin,” are
1. Daily vse of Lillies rules construed.
2. Continuall practice of English Grammaticall translations.
3. Translating and writing English, with some other Schoole exercises.
_Ibid._, side-notes, p. 22, 23.
On this question of English boys studying English, let it be remembered
that in this year of grace 1867, in all England there is just one public
school at which English is studied historically--the City of London
School--and that in this school it was begun only last year by the new
Head-Master, the Rev. Edwin A. Abbot, all honour to him. In every class
an English textbook is read, _Piers Plowman_ being that for the highest
class. This neglect of English as a subject of study is due no doubt to
tutors’ and parents’ ignorance. None of them know the language
historically; the former can’t teach it, the latter don’t care about it;
why should their boys learn it? Oh tutors and parents, there are such
things as asses in the world.
[Headnote: A GRAMMAR-SCHOOL BOY’S DAY IN A.D. 1612.]
Of the school-life of a Grammar-school boy in 1612 we may get a notion
from Brinsley’s p. 296, “chap. xxx. Of Schoole times, intermissions and
recreations,” which is full of interest. ‘1. The Schoole-time should
beginne at sixe: all who write Latine to make their exercises which were
giuen ouernight, in that houre before seuen’.--To make boys punctual,
‘so many of them as are there at sixe, to haue their places as they had
them by election[80] or the day before: all who come after six, euery
one to sit as he commeth, and so to continue that day, and vntill he
recouer his place againe by the election of the fourme or otherwise....
If any cannot be brought by this, them to be noted in the blacke Bill by
a speciall marke, and feele the punishment thereof: and sometimes
present correction to be vsed for terrour.... Thus they are to continue
vntill nine [at work in class], signified by Monitours, Subdoctour or
otherwise. Then at nine ... to let them to haue a quarter of an houre at
least, or more, for intermission, eyther for breakefast ... or else for
the necessitie of euery one, or their honest recreation, or to prepare
their exercises against the Masters comming in. [2.] After, each of them
to be in his place in an instant, vpon the knocking of the dore or some
other sign ... so to continue vntill eleuen of the clocke, or somwhat
after, to counteruaile the time of the intermission at nine.
(3.) To be againe all ready, and in their places at one, in an instant;
to continue vntill three, or halfe an houre after: then to haue another
quarter of an houre or more, as at nine for drinking and necessities; so
to continue till halfe an houre after fiue: thereby in that halfe houre
to counteruaile the time at three; then to end so as was shewed, with
reading a peece of a Chapter, and with singing two staues of a Psalme:
lastly with prayer to be vsed by the Master.’
To the objectors to these intermissions at nine and three, who may
reproach the schoole, thinking that they do nothing but play, Brinsley
answers,-- ‘2. By this meanes also the Schollars may bee kept euer in
their places, and hard to their labours, without that running out to the
Campo (as the[y] tearme it) at school times, and the manifolde disorders
thereof; as watching and striuing for the clubbe,[81] and loytering then
in the fields; some hindred that they cannot go forth at all. (5.) it is
very requisite also, that they should have weekly one part of an
afternoone for recreation, as a reward of their diligence, obedience and
profiting; and that to be appointed at the Masters discretion, eyther
the Thursday, after the vsuall custom; or according to the best
opportunity of the place.... All recreations and sports of schollars,
would be meet for Gentlemen. Clownish sports, or perilous, or yet
playing for money, are no way to be admitted.’
On the age at which boys went to school, Brinsley says, p. 9,
“For the time of their entrance with vs, in our countrey schooles,
it is commonly about 7. or 8. yeares olde: six is very soone. If
any begin so early, they are rather sent to the schoole to keepe
them from troubling the house at home, and from danger, and shrewd
turnes, then for any great hope and desire their friends haue that
they should learne anything in effect.”