EDUCATION IN MONASTERIES
A considerable educational work was accomplished by the monks and
regular canons, quite outside the careful claustral teaching of the
novices who were being trained to enter their own ranks. An able
work, published a few years ago, on the early schools of England, the
writer of which, however, never lost an opportunity of decrying the
‘religious,’ attempted to show that English monasteries had but little,
if any, connexion with education outside the actual cloister. But his
own pages of documentary school evidence might be cited against him.
We have, for instance, definite information of the close connexion
of monasteries and schools in documents pertaining to Bruton Abbey,
Somersetshire, Winchcombe Abbey, Gloucestershire, and the celebrated
abbeys of Evesham and Sherborne, as well as the priories of Lewes and
Launceston. At some of the more important hospitals, the heads of which
were often termed priors, and whose brethren were certainly regulars
and followed the Austin rule, education was one of their definite
functions. Thus the hospital, or priory, of Bridgwater educated
thirteen poor boys up to the time of its dissolution, whilst actual
thirteenth-century lists of the names of the boys being taught at the
great York hospital of St. Leonard’s, adjoining the abbey of St. Mary,
are still extant. Wherever the records or rolls of one of the greater
monasteries are extant in any abundance, references to schools and
schooling are almost certain to be found. The accounts, for instance,
of the great priory of Durham show that the monastic funds were used to
further schooling, altogether apart from the instruction or training
of their novices. The boys who attended it were called the Children
of the Almery; they were taught by one of the priory chaplains, who
received a stipend, and they were also fed at the priory’s charge,
but seem to have returned home to sleep. The accounts for 1369-70
show that Nicholas, the chaplain, received a stipend of 56_s._ 8_d._
_pro erudicione puerorum_. In 1372-3 the master of the Almery school
received 39_s._ 3_d._, in addition to a gown, and 2_s._ for coal. John
Garner, master of the grammar school, received 53_s._ 4_d._ about 1430,
payable at Pentecost and Martinmas. George Trewhytt, in 1500, received
a stipend, as grammar schoolmaster, of 60_s._, together with a furred
gown worth 10_s._ 11_d._ In 1536-7 the sacrist’s roll shows that the
boys’ schoolroom was repaired; and in the same year the bursar received
from the almoner 40_s._ to pay for a table for the schoolmaster.
[Illustration: FOUNTAINS ABBEY (Cistercian)
(By kind permission of the Editor of the _Photographic News_.)]
It is as well to set out a few details like this, and they could be
matched, as we know, from rolls of other large foundations; for those
whose business it is to belittle English monasteries continuously
assert that they educated no one but their own novices. Now at Durham
we know that the training of the novices was a matter entirely apart
from that of these boys, as narrated in the well-known _Rites of
Durham_. There were always at least six novices under tuition, who went
daily to their books in the cloister, and were under instruction for
seven years. Their master was one of the older monks, whose duty it was
not only to instruct them but to exercise a general supervision. If
any of them showed marked capacity they were sent to Durham College,
Oxford, which was one of the two exclusively Benedictine colleges. The
rolls have various entries relative to their expenses in going to the
University. Occasionally outside paid help was sought for their further
instruction at Durham; thus one of the very rolls that names the
stipend of the schoolmaster of the Almery boys, also mentions a smaller
sum paid to one _pro erudicione juvenum monochorum_. At Norwich Priory
fourteen boys were educated, and at Winchester eight. At St. Albans
there was a school under secular masters, who were selected and paid by
the abbot of the monastery; early in the fourteenth century there was
a bequest made to this school to release sixteen of the poorest of the
scholars from all payment.
Even so remote a house as that of St. Benet, Holme, in the swamps of
the Norfolk Broads, had boys under education, apart from the novices,
who were probably the more promising children of the humbler tenants.
Here, too, as at Durham, such boys formed part of the almoner’s charge.
It would indeed be passing strange if no such records of schoolwork
existed, for Benedictine and other custumals were not compiled for
amusement or to satisfy hypothetical conditions. Such documents were
practical directions for the times when they were drawn up. If they
are consulted, it will be found that it was the ordinary part of an
almoner’s duty to have control over any monastic school, apart from
the claustral one for the novices. He was enjoined to keep the boys
strictly, and had to provide the rods for their discipline. If they did
not learn sufficiently they were to be discharged, and their places
filled by those who were better disposed.
It is also worth while to mention under this head, that in the highly
interesting volume of fifteenth-century monastic visitations made by
the Bishops of Norwich, edited a few years ago by Dr. Jessopp, there
are various references to the schoolmasters and schoolrooms of small
priories which could not possibly have referred to the cloister-taught
novices. At Westacre Priory, Norfolk, there was a boarding school for
the sons of the county gentlemen.
The question of manumission, or the freeing from serfdom, is almost
too important to take up, save in a separate chapter; but a brief
comment may here be made upon this subject, as it has a distinct
bearing upon monastic education. The freeing of a villein from his
tied condition to a particular manor was very rarely done by a secular
lord, but it was a matter of common occurrence on monastic manors. Mr.
J. Willis Bund, who has recently edited the highly interesting _Sede
Vacante_ register of Worcester, which covers the various intervals when
that see was vacant and administered by the Priors of Worcester, draws
attention to the fact that fourteen cases of manumission occurred on
the priory estates during a very brief period about the beginning of
the fourteenth century, and points out how very large must have been
the instances of freedom-granting by the monasteries if this case
can be taken as a sample. Much evidence can be gained from episcopal
act-books in various dioceses in corroboration of manumission for the
purpose of taking Orders. The register of Bishop Drokinsford, of Bath
and Wells (1309-1329), shows that formal manumission was often granted
at the self-same time as the newly-created freeman was admitted to
the first tonsure. Bishop Hobhouse, in editing this register for the
Somerset Record Society, seems to think that there was something rather
shocking in thus taking a rough country lad fresh from the plough-tail
and admitting him to minor Orders in an uneducated condition. But
there is every probability that the young aspirant for the first step
in clerkship, freed for the purpose, was one of the humbler monastic
tenants who had already received at least the rudiments of a clerkly
education at the hands of his patrons. This, too, is the probable
explanation for the great number of monastic “titles,” or pledges for
the temporal support of those ordained to the sub-diaconate, or the
diaconate, that are to be found in many episcopal registers throughout
the fourteenth century. Those of course who were being ordained to
serve in monasteries required no title; but those who were ordained as
seculars, with monastic titles--and they often formed a large majority
of the whole candidates--had almost certainly received their primary
education (whether from the ranks of the villeins or free tenants) at
the hands of the particular monastery that vouched, if necessary, for
their maintenance. No other explanation of these very frequent monastic
titles for seculars--mostly before the Black Death of 1349--has as yet
been offered.
As to nunneries and education, all the larger houses, and probably all
the smaller ones, in proportion to their capacity, opened their gates
freely for the instruction of young girls, who were not infrequently
accompanied by their brothers when of tender years. The children of
well-to-do parents often arranged for them to be boarders at the
nunneries in mediæval days, as is still the custom. In pre-Reformation
days the nunnery was the popularly accepted place for the education of
girls of different ranks. Thus Chaucer, in describing the miller of
Trumpington, says:--
“A wyf he hadde, com of noble kyne;
Sche was i-fostryd in a nonnery....
What for hir kindred and hir nortelry
That sche had lerned in the nonnerye.”
In later days, not long after their suppression, John Aubrey wrote with
great appreciation of the educational work of the Wiltshire convents.
“The young maids were brought up at nunneries, where they had examples
of piety and humility, and modesty, and obedience to imitate and to
practice. Here they learned needlework, the art of confectionery,
surgery ... physic, writing, drawing, etc.... It was a fine way of
building up young women, who are led more by example than precept;
and a good retirement for widows and grave single women to a civil,
virtuous, and holy life.”
Much more evidence, if it was required, could be produced as to the
education so generally given by English nuns. Quite recently, in
turning over some little-explored forest accounts at the Public Record
Office, an entry was found (not hitherto referred to in print) of John
of Gaunt sending two bucks from his park at Kenilworth to certain
Spanish damsels at Nuneaton. This led to further investigation, when
it came out that several Spanish young ladies, who had accompanied the
Duke’s second wife to England, were sent to the Priory of Nuneaton for
purposes of education.
When the Commissioners visited Nunnaminster, Winchester, in May, 1536,
they forwarded a most highly favourable report of that ancient house,
pronouncing the inmates to be “very clene, vertuous, honest, and
charitable conversation, order, and rule,” as testified by the mayor
and corporation and all the country side. They found there twenty-six
“chyldren of lordys, knyghttes, and gentylmen brought up yn the sayd
monastery.” The list of these girls begins with “Bryget Plantagenet,
dowghter unto the Lord Vycounte Lysley,” and includes members of the
families of Copley, Philpot, Tyrell, Dingley, and Titchborne. There
was also one boy, Peter Titchborne, “chylde of the high aulter.” The
casual references to “the schools” at English nunneries for girls of
all conditions of life might be multiplied almost indefinitely.
No attempt of any kind was made to replace these homes for English
girls’ instruction when the nunneries were blotted out of existence.