A difference of opinion exists as to the normal number of monastic students who were in residence at Gloucester College. The editors of “Worcester College” estimate that there were from one hundred to two hundred students as a general rule at the college.[563]Mr. Leach denies this, and considers that the usual number of monks to be found at the college would be about sixty.[564]In 1537, there were thirty-two students there.[565]The importance of university education for Benedictine monks was emphasised by the Benedictine statutes of 1334, which enacted that “the cathedral churches, monasteries, priories, and other such places, each of them ... shall be bound to send out of every twenty monks one who is fit to acquire the fruit of greater learning to a university, and to provide each one so sent with the yearly pension underwritten.”[566]
Whether or not this decree was systematically complied with, we have no means of determining. It is interesting to note that further action was subsequently necessary, because, in 1504, John Islip, Abbot of Westminster, complained that “for lakke of grounded lerned men in the lawes of God, vertue emonges religious men is little used, religion is greatly confounded, and fewe or noo hable persones founde in dyvers houses of religion, lakking lerned men to be the heddes of the same houses to the high displeasure of God and great subversion of religion.”[567]
In order to deal with this ignorance on the part of the monks, Henry VII. conveyed lands for the endowment of three chantry priests at Westminster Abbey. It was resolved that “the said Abbot, Prior, and Convent andtheir successours shall provide encrease have and fynd three moo monkes of the said monastery over and above the said three monkes contynually and perpetually to be and contynue scolers in the said Universitie of Oxonford there to studye in the science of Divinitie.”[568]
Dr. Rashdall does not consider that the monastic colleges were of great importance, either in the history of learning or of education. He maintains that the aim of these colleges was simple and practical, viz. the preparation of a few instructed theologians who were able to preach an occasional sermon, and to give an elementary theological education to the novices. In addition, a supply of men capable of transacting the legal business of the convent was also necessary.[569]The real services of the monks to literature lay in the realm of medieval history. “The Benedictine monks of this period were, above all things, men of the world: their point of honour was a devotion to the interests of the House; their intellectual interests lay in its history and traditions.”[570]
VI.The Mendicant Orders and Education.
Reference must also be made to the part played in education by the Mendicant Orders. St. Francis of Assisi was a devout and earnest believer in Christianity. Impelled by a force working in him, he renounced all material and worldly possessions, and accepted for himself the task of building up the Church, through the conversion of the souls of men. In 1207 he received formal recognition from Pope Innocent III.; a band of enthusiastic converts soon gathered around him, with the single aim of preaching and ministering to the poor. “To the poor by the poor. Those masses, those dreadful masses, crawling, sweltering in the foul hovels, in many a southern town with never a roof to cover them, huddling in groups under a dry arch alive with vermin; gibbering cretins with the ghastly wens; lepers too shocking for mothers to gaze at and therefore driven to curse and howl in the lazar houseoutside the walls, there stretching out their bony hands to clutch the frightened almsgiver’s dole, or, failing that, to pick up shreds of offal from the heaps of garbage—to those, St. Francis came.”[571]
The Franciscan movement was originally a movement of piety only, and did not contain within itself any intellectual elements. In fact, learning was distinctly discouraged. “Must I part with my books?” said the scholar with a sinking heart. “Carry nothing with you for your journey” was the inexorable answer. “Not a Breviary? Not even the Psalms of David?” “Get them in your heart of hearts, and provide yourself with a treasure in the heavens. Whoever heard of Christ reading books save when He opened the book in the synagogue and thenclosedit and went forth to teach the world for ever.”[572]
Almost simultaneously with the founding of the Franciscan movement, St. Dominic realised the necessity of bringing about a moral reformation. His method, however, differed appreciably from that adopted by St. Francis. To St. Dominic, ignorance and vice were the great evils to be contended against: hence, he formed a community whose purpose it was to instruct the unlearned and to confute the heretic, through the agency of the pulpit.[573]To this community, Innocent III. gave his formal sanction in 1215.
Study was not regarded in the same way by the Friar as it was by the monk. To the monk, study or labour was enjoined as a means for bringing about a subjugation of human passions, or as an occupation for hours that would otherwise be spent in idleness; the extent to which they became teachers arose out of the exigencies of the times. “Officium monachi non docentis sed plangentis.” The aim of the monk was simply the salvation of his own soul; for the outside world he disclaimed duty or responsibility.Seclusion and separation from all but the members of his own community, were regarded as the great instruments by which his object was to be achieved. To the friar christianity appeared as a means by which the regeneration of society could be effected. Hence the cause of the difference in the attitude towards education. It was not an occupation for idle hours, or a prophylactic against temptation, but a means by which a power to influence the minds of men could be acquired. Particularly was this true of the Dominicans. The immediate purpose of their Order was resistance to the Albigensian heresy. “Hence it was natural that Dominic should have looked to the universities as the most suitable recruiting ground for his Order; to secure for his preachers the highest theological training that the age afforded, was an essential element of the new monastic ideal.”[574]It was not, however, long before the Franciscans also found it necessary to go to the universities for additions to their ranks. Within thirty-five years of the death of their founder, the Franciscans had become as conspicuous for intellectual activity as the Dominicans, and, for the next two hundred years, the intellectual history of Europe is bound up with the divergent views of these great Orders.
In 1224 the Franciscans opened a school at Oxford, which served as a centre from which teachers went all over England; in the following year, they also opened a school at Cambridge. It is stated that, prior to the Reformation, there were sixty-seven Franciscan professors at Oxford, and seventy-three at Cambridge.[575]
Mr. A. G. Little has investigated the educational organisation of the Mendicant Friars in this country.[576]He points out that the absence of authentic materials will probably make it for ever impossible accurately to give the history of the Mendicant Orders in England. The available sources consist only of “a few chronicles, a few letters, the general constitution of the Orders, the Acts of the GeneralChapters, the registers of the general masters, and the Acts of the provincial chapters of other provinces.”[577]
The general system of education in vogue among the Mendicant Orders was developed before 1305.[578]This was established in England in 1335, when the General Chapter held at London in that year decreed that provincial priors and chapters in their respective provinces should provide “de studiis theologie, philosophie, naturalium et artium.”[579]
At the basis of the educational organisation of these Orders would be the grammar schools. Novices were not accepted unless they had attained to a certain standard of education. The Dominican statutes of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries required candidates to be examined “in moribus et scientia,” and they were rejected if they were deficient in either.[580]Consequently, the instruction to be given by the master of the novices was mainly moral.[581]
For the next grades of instruction, the convents were combined into groups. Common schools for special studies were established in one or more convents of each group.[582]
The first of these grades was the “studium artium.” At one time the study of arts was discouraged. “Students shall not study in the books of the Gentiles and philosophers though they may look into them occasionally.”[583]The statutes of 1259 and 1261 indicate a different attitude. “Quot fratres juniores et docibiles in logicalibus instruantur.”[584]No student was to be sent to a “studium artium” until he had been two years in the Order.[585]Thenext grade was the “studium naturalium.” The period of study at this stage extended over two years at least.[586]The “studia naturalium” were less numerous than the “studia artium.” There seem to be few traces of the existence of these in England, but Mr. Little has established that there was one at Lynn in 1397.[587]
The “studium theologie” was the third grade. In these schools a period of three years might be spent, but the usual stay was for two. Mr. Little raises the question where such “studia” were to be found in England and considers that they may possibly have existed at Thetford in 1395, at Lincoln in 1390, at Norwich in 1398, at Ipswich in 1397, at Newcastle-on-Tyne in 1397, at Guildford in 1397, and at London in 1475.[588]
The convents of Oxford and Cambridge stood at the head of the educational system. The statute of 1305 enacted that “No one shall be sent to a ‘studium generale,’ either in his province or out of it, unless in the order mentioned he has made sufficient progress in logic and natural philosophy, and has attended lectures on the ‘Sentences’ for two years in some ‘studium particulare’ and unless the testimony of the lector, cursor, and master of the students gives good hope that he will be fit for the office of lector.”[589]
Mr. Little also deals with the appointment and qualifications of students and lecturers, and shows that, generally speaking, their selection was in the hands of the provincial prior and the provincial chapter, who were bound to make diligent enquiry each year for promising friars.[590]In this way, the most capable and efficient members of the order attained to the positions of the greatest importance. Learning was always most highly esteemed among the Dominicans, and the prosecution of studies regarded as a religious occupation worthy of being ranked with the divine services properly so called.[591]Important privileges were allowed to students and lectors, and care was taken thatevery possible facility was available for those who were desirous of continuing their education.
Neither the history of the Mendicant Orders, nor the causes which contributed to their degeneracy, concern us here. It will be sufficient to mention two ways in which they influenced educational development. The first arises out of the connection of the friars with the universities. For a time they captured the intellectual centres of the country, and dominated its literary activities. The leading men of learning of the time were friars. Among them may be mentioned Alexander of Hales, John Peckham, Richard of Middleton, Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham. The second arises from the relationship between the friars and the secular clergy. This relationship was not a friendly one, as the seculars were jealous of the intrusion of the mendicants into their parishes. We suggest that the friar movement served to accustom the people of the country to the thought that the National Church was not the only spiritual agency, and thus incidentally contributed to the development of those forces which were causing the control of education to pass out of the power of the Church.
THE ORIGIN OF THE GREAT PUBLIC SCHOOLS.
The Chantries’ Act of 1547, which we have previously described, expressly stipulated that its provisions should not apply either to the universities, or to the cathedral churches, or to “the Colledg called St. Marye Colledg of Winchester of the foundation of Bishopp Wikeham: nor to the College of Eton.”[592]It is these two latter schools with which we are now concerned, and more particularly with the questions relating to their origin and purpose.
A great deal of the current misconception of the origin and purpose of these schools may be removed if we reconstruct for ourselves the special ecclesiastical and educational features of the time. Our starting point in this connection must be the Black Death which, as we have shown,[593]caused so great a scarcity of priests and of candidates for the priesthood. William of Wykeham, desiring to give thanks to Almighty God because He had “enriched us, though unworthy, with ample honours and beyond our deserts raised us to divers degrees and dignities,”[594]founded “a perpetual college of seventy poor scholars, clerks, to study theology, canon and civil law and arts in the university of Oxford.”[595]In erecting this college, Wykeham was only following the example which was already wellestablished at the universities, since several colleges had previously been established both at Oxford and at Cambridge. Experience soon convinced him that to found a college was one thing; to obtain a supply of students, who were qualified to profit by the proposed course was quite another; especially as, “through default of good teaching and sufficient learning in grammar, (they) often fall into the danger of failing, where they had set before themselves the desire of success.”[596]
Nor was a lack of knowledge of Latin the only difficulty. A greater obstacle was the poverty of the prospective student of the period. Wykeham refers to this, “There are and will be, hereafter, many poor scholars suffering from want of money and poverty, whose means barely suffice or will suffice in the future to allow them to continue and profit in the aforesaid art of Grammar.” Neither was this poverty a relative poverty, a mere “façon de parler,” as some would maintain. The university itself was poor, and had scarcely any funds available for general purposes.[597]“The university students of the Middle Ages were drawn from every class of society, excluding probably as a rule the very lowest, though not excluding the very poorest.”[598]We also note that poor students received from the chancellor a licence to beg.[599]
The writer ofPiers Plowmanillustrates the contemporary opinion of the social standing of many of those who proceeded to the priesthood.
“Now might each sowter his son setten to schole,And each beggar’s brat in the book learne,And worth to a writer and with a lorde dwell,Or falsely to a frere the fiend for to serven,So of that beggar’s brat a Bishop that worthen,Among the peers of the land presse to sythen;And lordes sons lowly to the lorde’s loute,Knyghtes crooked hem to, and coucheth ful lowe,And his sire a sowtor y-soiled with grees,His teeth with toyling of lether battered as a sawe.”
The “Norwich Corporation Records” contain an account which, even if not typical, is certainly illustrative of the way in which the sons of many poor men found their way to the priesthood. The account to which we refer is the story of his life which was given by “Sir William Green” when undergoing examination on the charge of being a spy. He stated that he was the son of a labouring man living at Boston, Lincolnshire, and that he “lerned gramer by the space of 2 yeres.” For about five or six years he was engaged in manual occupation with his father; next, he is at school again “by the space of 2 yeres and in that time receyved benet and accolet in the freres Austen in Boston of one frere Gaunt, then beyng suffragan of the diocese of Lincoln.” Subsequently he is found at Cambridge, where he enters upon his studies, and supports himself, partly by labour, partly by “going to the colleges, and gate his mete and drynke of almes.” After an interval, he “obteyned a licence for one year of Mr. Capper, than being deputee to the Chancellor of the said univ’sitie, under his seal of office whereby ... (he) gathered toguether in Cambridgeshire releaff toward their exhibicion to scole.”[600]
We need not follow the fortunes or misfortunes of this pretended priest any further. The record gives the names of three men who were of the lowest social grade, and who were evidently unscrupulous, as they not only forged begging licences, but also forged letters of ordination. Though we do not claim that the case is typical of the social class from which students come, yet, on the other hand, it should not be regarded as entirely exceptional; in other words, the class of person who received the licence to beg as an accredited student of the university must have been a commonly recognised one. We must remember, at the same time, as Dr. Hastings Rashdall points out, that the example of the Friars had made mendicity comparatively respectable. “Many a man who would have been ashamed to dig was not ashamed to beg; and the begging scholarwas invested with something like the sacredness of the begging Friar.”[601]
Realising that it was necessary that prospective priests should study grammar before they proceeded to the universities, and assuming that these embryo scholars were literally poor, and could not afford even to attend the local grammar schools, which, as we have seen, were common in medieval England, we ask what action would a man such as William of Wykeham, who was desirous of perpetuating a memorial to himself and of being of service to the Church generally, naturally take?
The answer to this question depends partly on the nature of the models available for imitation. We have previously shown that imitation has played a large part in English educational development. The first obvious model for imitation was the ordinary one of providing a master who should teach grammar freely to all boys who might care to come to him. This plan naturally commended itself at first to William of Wykeham, and was adopted by him. In 1373 he made an agreement with Master Richard Herton, Grammarian, that he “should instruct and teach faithfully and diligently in Grammar the poor scholars whom the said Father keeps and shall keep at his own expense; and shall receive no others without the licence of the said Father.”[602]
This arrangement would scarcely meet the purpose which Wykeham had in mind. He wished to provide for suitable poor youths in all parts of the country, and not only for those whose homes were in the locality of Winchester.
Again we ask, what models were available? Provision for the feeding of poor scholars had been made, two centuries previously, in connection with the Hospital of St. Cross, about a mile distant from the city of Winchester, by Bishop Henry of Blois. At this hospital thirteen poor and infirm men were lodged and boarded, and, in addition, one hundred of the poor of the city were provided witha dinner each day. Among these one hundred poor were to be included, “thirteen poor scholars of the city school,” who were to be sent there “by the Master of the High Grammar School of the city of Winchester.”
A similar custom had prevailed “from time immemorial” at the Hospital of St. Nicholas where forty loaves were to be provided each week for the scholars who attended Pontefract School.[603]
Then too, the provision of a house for the lodging of scholars was a form of charity whose origin could be traced back to the twelfth century at least. About 1150, Walchelin, the moneyer of Derby, and Goda, his wife, bequeathed certain property to the abbey of Derby “on this trust that the hall shall be for a school of clerks and the chambers shall be for the house of a master and clerks for ever.”[604]
A more immediate example for Wykeham in his desire to make provision for the maintenance and education of “pauperes et indigentes clericii” was Bishop Stapledon of Exeter. He wished to provide for the “maintenance of boys studying grammar and receiving instruction in morals and life” in connection with the Hospital of St. John at Exeter. The accomplishment of this purpose was prevented by his death, but Bishop Grandisson, his successor, arranged in 1332 that the master and brethren of the hospital were to provide accommodation and all other necessaries for a master of grammar and fourteen boys. Prior to admission, the boys were to know their psalter and to be familiar with plain song.[605]
Several similar instances may be quoted. Thus, about the close of the twelfth century, the Archdeacon of Durham, of the time, provided an endowment for the purpose of supplying three scholars of Durham School with food and lodging at the almonry.[606]In 1262 Bishop Giles of Salisbury founded a hostel in that city “for the perpetualreception and maintenance of a warden, two chaplains and twenty poor, needy, well-behaved and teachable scholars.”[607]In 1364, Walter de Merton, Chancellor of England, gave certain manors “for the perpetual maintenance of twenty scholars living in the schools at Oxford or elsewhere.”[608]About 1387, Bishop Burghersh of Lincoln provided that the chantry founded by him should maintain six poor boys who were “professing the art of Grammar.”
In addition to these models, there existed the models furnished by the collegiate churches and the monasteries. The collegiate churches were under the control of a dean or provost and a small number of officials; generally speaking, a master of grammar was also attached to the Church. These colleges were non-resident. The priests attached to the church lived in their own homes. A monastery was presided over by an abbot or prior, the monks were resident, and a small number of choir boys were also attached.
It does not require any great stretch of the imagination to conceive of William of Wykeham pondering over all these possibilities. In the end, the monastic idea seems to have triumphed with this important distinction that, for the adult monks, were substituted “scholares pauperes et indigentes.”
A study of an illustration of Winchester School serves to support this conception. The most prominent feature of the college buildings was the church. Divine worship was to be effectively rendered daily. Grouped round the church were the cloisters and the chambers, the dwelling places for the poor scholar clerks. The more closely the building is examined, the more clearly is its relation to the monastic ideal realised.
The influence of the monastic ideal is even more evident in connection with the foundation of Eton College, the second of our great public schools in respect of date of origin. The foundation charter of this school was sealed on October 11th, 1440. In this charter, Henry VI., the founder of the college, who was then eighteen years of age,declared his intention to establish a college[609]“in the honour and for the support of our great and most holy mother in the parish church of Eton by Windsor, which is not far removed from the place of our birth.”[610]
This college, as originally planned, was to consist of a “provost and ten priests, four clerks, and six chorister boys whose duty it shall be to serve divine worship there daily, and twenty-five poor and needy scholars whose duty it shall be to learn grammar and moreover twenty-five poor and weakly men whose duty it shall be always to pray in the same place for our good estate while we live and for our soul when we have passed from this light ... also of a master or teacher in grammar, whose duty it shall be to teach the said needy scholars and all others whatsoever and whencesoever of our realm of England coming to the said college, the rudiments of grammar gratis without exacting money or anything else.”[611]
The monastic conception is brought out prominently. At the head of the institution were the provost and ten priests, corresponding to the abbot and the obedientaries of a convent, next we find the chorister boys who correspond to the boys of the almonry school who assisted in divine worship, next comes the support of poor and weakly men, a common feature of many monasteries, finally there are the “poor and needy scholars” to take the place ordinarily occupied by monks.
In 1441 Henry VI. founded a college in Cambridge University by the name of King’s College of St. Nicholas. At first, there was no connection between Eton and King’s College, but in 1443, new statutes were made which enlarged the number of students who could be admitted there and also arranged for the admission of “commensales” who were to pay for their board. The addition of “commensales” accentuates still further the influence of the monastic model. From early times, it had been customary for theheads of monasteries to receive a kind of “parlour boarder” and it would be particularly fitting that, in an institution which was primarily educational and not merely devotional, arrangements should be made for the reception of those scholars who were able and willing to pay.
Henry showed his interest in the school by his issue of a warrant in 1446, in which, after reciting that he had founded a college at Eton for “seventy scholars whose duty it is to learn the science of grammar and sixteen choristers whose duty likewise it shall be, when they have been sufficiently instructed in singing, to learn grammar, also a master teacher in grammar and an usher to teach the aforesaid boys, scholars and choristers,”[612]he proceeded to declare that “it shall not be lawful for anyone, of whatever authority he may be, at any time to presume to keep, set up, or found any such public grammar school in the town of Windsor or elsewhere within the space of ten English miles from our said Royal College.”[613]
This warrant is specially significant in two respects. One is, that it shows that the institution, founded by Henry VI., was not intended to differ in any essential respect from the other local grammar schools which existed in various parts of the country. On the contrary, steps were taken to prevent opposition. There was a real danger that the gratuitous character of the instruction given at Eton might tempt masters to open fee paying schools, with the inevitable result that the social prestige of the school would be lowered. The other significant fact arises from the use of the phrase “public grammar school.” This is the first use of the term in this sense which we have been able to trace, and it is probable that we have here the first occasion on which the word is employed as an alternative for “free,” which denotes, as we have explained, that the school was open to all comers.
It is not necessary that we should consider any further the history of the public schools. This subject has already been fully treated by others, notably by Mr. Leach in hisHistory of Winchester College, and by Sir H. C. Maxwell Lyte in hisHistory of Eton College.
We may, however, note three respects in which Winchester first, and subsequently Eton differed from the scholastic institutions, which had previously been established.
1. The scale on which Winchester College was carried out, clearly differentiates it from all earlier foundations. The number of scholars for whom Wykeham provided, and the value of the endowments attached to the school, mark a considerable advance on what had been attempted previously.
2. It was a new idea to associate a school in a district remote from a university centre with a college at Oxford. Rashdall points out that Robert Egglesfield, the founder of Queen’s College, had hoped to have had at Oxford a school of boys in connection with his college. This proposal was not carried out. That which Egglesfield simply proposed for Oxford, Wykeham actually accomplished at Winchester.[614]
3. Winchester College is the first example of a boarding school, pure and simple. Collegiate churches had previously provided for the gratuitous instruction of scholars, but the real object of the establishment of a collegiate church was that divine worship should be rendered in an effective and dignified manner. Endowments had previously been provided for the feeding and lodging of scholars, but this was to be effected in connection with an existing charitable institution. At Winchester, for the first time, an institution was established for the combined purpose of teaching and of maintaining scholars, and for those purposes alone. “The really important new departure was taken, a real step in advance made, when Wykeham made his school a separate and distinct foundation.... The corporate name of ‘Warden and scholars, clerks’ stamped the school and the schoolboys as the aim and object of the foundation.”[615]
One other question must be considered. The great public schools to-day are attended by the sons of wealthyparents: were these schools founded originally for children of the social grade who now attend them? The foundation deeds state explicitly that they were established for “pauperes et indigentes scolares.”
Mr. Leach writes vehemently on the subject. “A great deal of discussion has taken place, and much excellent eloquence run to waste on the qualification of ‘poor and needy.’ It was alleged ... that there had been a robbery of the poor in the matter of endowed schools; that the persons entitled, under the founder’s statutes, to the benefits of Winchester College, were the poor in the sense of the poor law, the destitute poor, the gutter poor, or, at least, the poor labouring classes. There is not, I believe, a title or a shred of justification for any such allegation in the case of any public or endowed grammar school founded before 1627.”[616]
The following arguments are advanced by Mr. Leach in support of the views he enunciates:—
(1) He urges that the test of poverty from the school point of view, was the oath which every scholar had to take on reaching fifteen years of age: “I have nothing whereby I know I can spend beyond five marks a year.”[617]Now, as there were at this date sixty-seven livings in the diocese of Winchester below this value, and as £1 6s. 8d. was the pay of a skilled artisan of that date, Mr. Leach maintains that the possession of £3 6s. 8d. was a very considerable income for a boy.
In reply it may be pointed out that the oath would provide for extreme cases only. In this connection, it may be mentioned that it was proposed, towards the close of the reign of Henry VIII., to establish a free grammar school in connection with Exeter Cathedral. Forty of the scholars of this school were to be admitted without making any payment for their instruction and, in addition, they were to receive a shilling a week for the purpose of paying for “their commons within the citie.” Now, the test of poverty to qualify the candidates for this position was, that their parents were not to be in receipt of a higherincome than £300 a year, possibly equal to £5,000 to-day.[618]If we assume that the money payments of the opening years of the twentieth century were forty times the value of such payments in the fourteenth century, even then the extreme limit of the income of a candidate for admission to Winchester was £133 6s. 8d. of modern money. It is, therefore, obvious that the class of boy for which Winchester College was intended must have been of a lower social scale than that for which the proposed cathedral grammar school at Exeter was to be established.
(2) By a clause which forms a postscript to Rubric XVI., it was provided that “sons of noble and powerful persons ... to the number of tenmightbe instructed and informed in grammar within the college, without charge to the college.” This clause Mr. Leach describes as containing the “germ” of the public school system, and he claims that he has traced among the early commoners of the college “young noblemen, scions of county families and relations of judges and chancery officials.”
We contend that this does not apply to the case at all, inasmuch as “parlour boarders,” as Mr. Leach himself points out,[619]had frequently been received in monastic houses. Even apart from the fact that the details which he gives are meagre, and that his conclusions are by no means demonstrated, it may be maintained that the presence of wealthy boys at school, under special circumstances, does not invalidate the contention that the boys normally found there were the “poor and needy.” Thus Dr. Hastings Rashdall, in speaking of the students at the university, states that “there was the scion of the princely or noble house who lived in the style to which he was accustomed at home, in a hostel of his own with a numerous ‘familia’ including poorer but well born youths who dressed like him.... At the other end of the social ladder there was the poor scholar, reduced to beg for his living, or to become the servitor of a college, or of a master or well-to-do student.”[620]If the poor, in the sense of thosewho had to beg for a living or earn it, whilst they were at college, by manual labour, were not excluded from the university, why should it be assumed that they did not rank among the “pauperes et indigentes scolares” for whom Winchester College was expressly founded?
We may also point out that it was not customary, at this time, for boys of good family, or even the sons of wealthy and prosperous merchants and tradesmen, to be educated by being sent to school. The instances which may be given are few and inconclusive. The usual practice adopted for the education of these young people, as we have shown, was either by sending them to a great household or, at a later date, by having a private tutor in the house. Evidence may also be adduced to show that youths of good social standing rarely proceeded to the universities at this time. Thus Dr. Furnivall points out that, up to the close of the sixteenth century, only three names of noblemen and nine of sons of knights are mentioned in Cooper’sAthenae Cantabrigiensesand only nineteen men of noble or knightly birth in Wood’sAthenae Oxonienses.[621]
We may next pass to consider the evidence for the contention which we advance, that, when Wykeham built his college, he intended it for those who were too poor to pay for an education, irrespective of their social position, and that the term “poor” did not exclude the children of men who were members of the labouring classes of the community.
(1) As we have reiterated so frequently, the actual term used in the foundation deed is “pauperes et indigentes.” Mr. Leach maintains that this simply means the “relatively poor,” the poor relations of the nobility, or the children of prosperous merchants. His contention seems to be an unwarranted extension of the meaning of the phrase, and it will not be possible to quote from any charter or document of the time in which this special meaning is assigned to the term.
(2) Even sixty years later, at the foundation of Eton College, when the character of Winchester School would be definitely fixed, when King Henry VI. desired to establish a foundation which should exceed that of Wykeham, he associated with the school an almshouse for “twenty-five poor and weakly men.” The associating of an almshouse with the school marks the purpose of the school as a charitable endowment for the lower classes of the community.
(3) The middle class of the fifteenth century was a wealthy class. In the eleventh century, there were only two social grades in England, the nobility and the various classes of tenants. The middle class, which gradually grew up, won its way through its wealth. Wealthy and prosperous merchants would seek to emulate the nobility of the land, and send their sons to the houses of nobles for their education or—at the least—to provide them with a tutor. It may also be added that the clergy of the period, who were practically the professional class, were celibates.
(4) Mr. Leach himself, undesignedly, applies examples to show that the sons of serfs attended schools. He instances that in 1295, Walter, the son of Reginald the carpenter, “was licensed to attend school” subject to the payment of a fine.[622]Similarly, in 1344, a villein at Coggeshall in Essex was fined for sending his son to school without license. At Harrow in 1384, a villein was deprived of his horse for sending his son to school without license. Mr. Leach continues “the fourteenth century manor rolls all over the country are dotted with fines for sending boys, ‘ad scolas clericales,’ to schools to become clerks.”[623]Now, it would appear to us obvious, that if some serfs sent their sons to schools after paying a license, others would attempt to do so without payment and would probably succeed in doing so. But the point which is established, without doubt, is that it was customary for children of parents of the lowest social grade to attend school.
When these arguments are fairly considered, it is claimed that the institutions of Eton and Winchester were originally intended for boys whose parents were “poor and needy”—and not simply for scions of the nobility or the sons of prosperous merchants. The only condition of admission, practically, was that these boys would subsequently proceed to the universities, in order that their course of preparation for the priesthood might be completed.
UNIVERSITY COLLEGES, COLLEGES AND COLLEGIATE CHURCHES IN THE LATER MIDDLE AGES.
In the early chapters of this work, we have shown that the work of evangelising England was simultaneously the work of the regular and of the secular clergy. The regular clergy were those who had taken certain vows and who shared a common institutional life. The secular clergy fall into one or other of two classes. In the one class, we place those who worked in the various parishes of which they were placed in charge; in the other class, were certain bodies of clergy who were organised into communities, termed colleges, and who served a church in common.
About the beginning of the twelfth century, there was in this country a general movement towards monasticism. Some of the existing secular cathedrals and collegiate churches were made monastic, and, in addition, there was a great increase in the number of monasteries. This practice continued until about the middle of the thirteenth century, when the beginning of the collegiate system at the universities manifested itself. The tendency to build new monasteries gradually ceased. Henceforth, we read of the establishment of colleges and collegiate churches.
One of the earliest instances of the building of a university college is that of the “College de Dix-huit” which was established at Paris, in 1180, by Joisey of London onhis way home from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. His sole object was that of making some provision for the scholar clerks who were studying at Paris.[624]
In England, the earliest instance of a university college was the one established at Salisbury by Bishop Giles of Bridport. Ever since 1209, there had been a university at Salisbury, which was augmented by a migration from Oxford in 1238.[625]In connection with this university, Bishop Giles, in 1262, set up a hostel for “the perpetual reception and maintenance of a warden, for the time being, two chaplains and twenty poor, needy, well behaved and teachable scholars serving God and the Blessed Nicholas there, and there living, studying and becoming proficient in the Holy Scriptures and the liberal arts.”[626]
The origin and development of the university colleges in connection with the universities of Oxford and Cambridge has been so fully dealt with by various writers that little more than a passing reference is necessary here. Dr. Hastings Rashdall describes Walter de Merton as “the true founder” of the English college system. In 1264,[627]he founded at Maldon “The House of Merton’s Scholars” “for the perpetual maintenance of twenty scholars living in the schools at Oxford, or elsewhere where a university might happen to flourish and for the maintenance of two or three ministers of the altar of Christ living in the same house.”[628]The idea of this founder, originally, was the provision of funds for the education of his nephews or the descendants of his parents, or (failing a sufficient number of these) of other “honest and capable young men.”[629]The men supported by these funds were to hire a hall and live together as a community in the university. In 1274, a new code of statutes for the control and regulation of the foundation was issued. Here, in the first of the English colleges, the monastic institutions form the model whichwas imitated. At the head of the institution was an official corresponding to the abbot, next come certain officials who resembled the various officers of a monastery; these include the “Vicenarii” who were placed over every twenty scholars, and the “Decani” over every ten scholars. The scholars corresponded to the monastic novices. The scheme for the control of the boys (because some of the scholars might often be only thirteen or fourteen years of age)[630]resembles in its general spirit the regulations of Lanfranc for the oblates and novices school at Canterbury.[631]
The similarity between a monastery and Merton’s foundations manifests itself still more clearly when we realise that he even provided for a class which would correspond to the oblates. He enacted that “if any little ones of the kindred aforesaid becoming orphans or otherwise through their parents poverty want maintenance while they are receiving primary instruction in the rudiments, then the warden shall have them educated in the house aforesaid.”[632]
The example set by Walter de Merton was followed by Bishop Balsham of Ely in his foundation of the first college at Cambridge in 1280. He placed some poor scholars in the Hospital of St. John “to live together and to study in the university of Cambridge according to the rule of the scholars of Oxford who are called Merton’s.”[633]The experiment did not prove a success because “in process of time from various causes, matter of dissension had often arisen between the brethren of the same house and the scholars aforesaid,”[634]as a result of which the scholars were moved outside the town “and translated to the inns by St. Peter’s Church”[635]which was appropriated to them, and in consequence the college received the name of Peterhouse by which it is still known.
We must leave here the subject of the establishment of university colleges and pass to consider the colleges of secular canons which were rapidly founded in all partsof the country. TheMonasticon[636]gives a list of twenty-six establishments, described as collegiate churches, and of one hundred and sixty-five, which are described simply as colleges, exclusive of the cathedral churches. We are underestimating the number when we state that, outside the universities, there were two hundred colleges or collegiate churches in this country. The term “college” or “collegiate church” may be used indifferently; both imply an organisation of secular priests or of secular priests and scholars founded for the purpose “ad orandum et studiendum.”
One of the first of the collegiate churches to be established subsequent to the Conquest was that of Howden in Yorkshire. The church was intended at one time to form the endowment of a monastery,[637]but in 1266 Bishop Robert of Durham caused it to become a college of secular priests.[638]The remaining records of this church are meagre and relate mainly to the endowments which it gradually received.
Howden Collegiate Church serves to illustrate the difficulties in connection with tracing the educational history of this country, and also the educational significance of the collegiate churches. As we have just remarked, the records of this church are extremely meagre, and if we were dependent upon them alone we would naturally conclude that no educational interest was attached to this institution. A different interpretation is put upon the matter when we examine a Durham register of the period.[639]Here we find records of scholastic appointments to this church,e.g.to a song school in 1393, to a grammar school in the same year, to a reading and song school in 1394, to a reading and song school in 1401, to a reading and song school in 1402, to a grammar school in 1403, to a grammar and reading school in 1409, to a song and reading school in 1412, separate appointments for reading and song in1426, whilst the last record is that of J. Armandson, B.A., who was appointed “ad informandum pueros in lectura et grammatica” during the good pleasure of the prior.
We have given these various references to the appointments because they show that the collegiate churches, as a general rule, regarded it as one of their definite functions to provide educational facilities for those who cared to avail themselves of them. For the purpose of demonstrating this statement more fully, we now proceed to give a series of examples of the establishment of collegiate churches.
In 1267 the collegiate church of St. Thomas the Martyr was founded at Glasney near Penrhyn, in Cornwall, by Bishop Bromescomb of Exeter.[640]We should not know anything about the educational work carried on at this church were it not for the return made to the commissioners under the Chantries’ Act of 1547. The Continuation Certificate stated that a school was to continue at Glasney because it had previously been kept by “one of the said vicars scolemaster ... for the which the people maketh great lamentacione and it is mete to have another lerned man, for there is muche youthe in the same Towne.”[641]This college is particularly interesting, as it is one of the few places of which records are available where provision was made for teaching the first rudiments of learning. It is stated that:—
“John Pownde, bell rynger there, of the age of 30 yeres, hathe for his salarye ther 40/-, as well for teachynge of pore mens children there ABC as for ryngynge the Bells 40/-.”[642]
Passing next to the college founded in 1337-8 at Ottery St. Mary in Devonshire by Bishop Grandison, we find the first instance of a collegiate church where the charters of the institution provide that the establishment should include “a Master of Music” and a “Master of Grammar.”[643]The chantry return stated that “Syr John Chubbe preste,beyng scholemaster ther” received an annual stipend of £10.[644]
A college of secular priests was founded at Raveningham in Norfolk in 1350; this was moved to Mettingham Castle in 1382. This college also made the usual provision for education.[645]For a time the boys associated with this college seem to have attended the grammar school at Beccles.[646]
A foundation, which was quasi-collegiate, but which may be considered as the precursor of the non-residential grammar schools which subsequently became common, dates from 1384. It was founded at Wotton-under-Edge by Katherine, Lady Berkeley, who gave certain lands for the provision of a schoolhouse and the maintenance of “a master and two poor scholars clerks living college-wise therein.”[647]The priest-schoolmaster was to act as chaplain at the Manor house of the foundress, and to celebrate “for the healthy estate of us ... and for our souls when we shall have passed from this light.”[648]Arrangements were made for the appointment of the master of the school as vacancies arose. It was also required that the master “shall kindly receive all scholars whatsoever, howsoever and whencesoever coming for instructions in the said art of grammar, and duly instruct them in the said art, without exacting, claiming or taking from them any advantage for their labour in the name of stipend or salary, so that the masters aforesaid could not be accused of solicitation.”[649]The regulations relating to the scholars provide that they “shall not be set by the master for the time being to do any office or service, but shall be compelled continually to devote their time to learning and study.”[650]
Another similar small college was that of Bredgar in Kent which was founded in 1393 by eight persons, chief among whom was Robert de Bredgar. The licence to found the college,[651]merely states the usual purpose of praying for the good estate of the founders while living,and for their souls, when they have passed from this light, and also for the souls “omnium fidelium defunctorum.” We obtain further knowledge of the intentions of the founders from a study of the “Statuta et Ordinationes pro meliori Gubernatione ejusdem.”[652]It is not necessary for us to consider these statutes in detail here, though they emphasise considerably the educational aspect of the foundation. One of these statutes runs:—
“Volo et ordino, quod nullus capellanus ad capellanium dicti collegi admittatur nisi tunc sciat bene legere, bene construere, et bene cantare; nullus praeficiatur clericus scolaris dicti collegii, nisi tempore praesentationis hujusmodi bene legere et competenter cantare sciat.”
The same year in which Bredgar College was founded witnessed the establishment of a college at Pleshy, in Essex, by Thomas, Duke of Gloucester. The foundation was to consist of a master, eight secular priests, two clerks, and two choristers.[653]The licences for the foundation of the college do not, as usual, mention anything about teaching, but the return to the chantry commissioners, 1547-8, states that a priest, who kept a free grammar school, was attached to the college.[654]William Courtney, Archbishop of Canterbury, founded in 1396 a college of secular priests on a large scale at Maidstone in Kent. A hospital, which had been founded in 1260 by a previous Archbishop of Canterbury, was taken to form the nucleus of the new college. The parish church was utilised as the collegiate church. The various licences, which authorised the foundation of the college,[655]do not refer to education, but we know that provision for teaching was made because at the dissolution of the college, the town council bought from Edward VI. the right to keep school.[656]
The church of Hemmingborough, in Yorkshire, was made collegiate in 1426, with a provost or warden, threeprebendaries, six vicars choral and six clerks.[657]The king’s licence for the foundation gives the usual reason for its establishment stating that there was to be in the church “quoddam collegium de uno praeposito sive custode et caeteris prebendaris, vicariis, clericis, et ministris, qui divina in dicta ecclesia celebrent, pro salubri statu nostro, dum vivimus, et pro anima nostra, cum ab hac luce subtracti fuerimus.”[658]There is a record of the prior of Durham appointing a master to the school in 1394,[659]so that in all probability educational facilities were provided by the college.
A college which calls for special mention is that of Tonge in Shropshire, which was founded in 1410 by the widow of Sir Fulk Penbridge.[660]The complete foundation consisted of a warden, four secular priests as chaplains, two clerks, and an almshouse for thirteen persons.[661]We are fortunate in possessing the “Statuta et Ordinationes pro Gubernatione ejusdem,”[662]as these make it clear that these colleges commonly conceived it their duty to provide for education. The clause runs, “Statuimus etiam et ordinamus, quod unus e capellanis praedictis, vel alius clericus dicti collegii, si capellanus in hac parte habere non poterit in lectura, cantu, et grammatica competenter instructus, qui pro dispositione custodis, et sanioris partis dicti collegii, clericos et alios ministros collegii, et ultra eosdem pauperes juvenes ejusdem villae, seu de vicinis villis, teneatur diligenter instruere.”[663]
It is important to note that a collegiate foundation provided for education even in such a small place as Tonge.
In 1415, the College of Stoke-next-Clare was founded by Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March. There had existed here previously an alien priory, which was afterwards converted into a college of secular priests. The Earl of March augmented its revenues, so as to provide for a dean, six prebendaries, eight vicars, four clerks, six choristers,officers and servants.[664]From the statutes and ordinances for the government of this college,[665]we learn that a schoolmaster was to be appointed to teach the boys of the college reading, plain song, and descant.[666]
“A noble college”[667]was founded at Fotheringhay in 1412 by Edward, Duke of York. The college consisted of a master, twelve chaplains or fellows, eight clerks, and thirteen choristers. The statutes of the college were largely based on those of Winchester and New College, and provided for the appointment of one master to teach grammar, and of another to teach song to the choristers.[668]
Henry Chicheley, Archbishop of Canterbury, founded a college at Higham Ferrers, his birthplace, in the last year of King Henry V., for a master, six secular chaplains, four clerks, and six choristers; of these, “unus eorundem capellanorum sive clericorum ad grammaticam, et alius capellanus sive clericus de eisdem capellanis sive clericis ad cantum instruendum et docendum ibidem deputetur et assignetur.”[669]The act of Chicheley in making his schoolmasters an integral part of the foundation marks an advance on Wykeham, who made them stipendiary officers only.[670]
An institution, which was of the nature of a hospital rather than a college, was founded in 1432, at Ewelme, by the Earl of Suffolk. It consisted of an almshouse for two chaplains and thirteen poor men,[671]and to the almshouse a grammar school was attached. The school statutes provide that the schoolmaster was to be “a well disposed man, apte and able to techyng of grammar to whose office it shall long and perteyne diligently to teche and inform chylder in the faculte of gramer, provyded that all the chylder of our chapelle, of the tenauntes of our lordshyp of Ewelme and of the lordshypes perteyning to the said Almesse Howse,now present and at alle tymes to com, frely be tawt without exaccion of any scole-hir.”[672]
In 1432, John Kempe, at that time Archbishop of York and afterwards Cardinal, obtained a licence from Henry VI., to establish a college for celebrating divine service and for the education of the youth in the parish of Wye.[673]The college was to consist of “a maister and six priests, two clerks and two queristers and over that a maister of grammar that shal frely teche withoutyn anything takyng of hem al thos that wol come to his techyng.”[674]
At Tattershall, in Lincolnshire, a college was founded and endowed by Sir Ralph Cromwell, in 1439. It consisted of a warden, six priests, six clerks, six choristers, and an almshouse for thirteen poor persons. The existence at this college of a master of grammar and of a master of the choristers can be traced.[675]
We now pass to consider the two chief colleges which were founded prior to the Act of 1547 which brought about their dissolution—Acaster College and Rotherham College.
The original documents of the foundations of Acaster College do not appear to be extant. No reference to the college is made in theMonasticon. A private Act of Parliament passed in 1483 for the purpose of settling a dispute relating to a question of enclosure, which had arisen, recites that the college was founded[676]by Stillington, Bishop of Bath and Wells, and that this foundation included “three dyvers Maisters and Informatours in the faculteies underwritten; that is to witt; oon of theym to teche Gramer, another to teche Musyk and Song, and the third to teche to Write, and all suche thing as belonged to Scrivener Craft, to all maner of persons of whatsoever Cuntre they be within the Reame of Englond ... openly, and freely without exaction of money or other thyngs of any of their suche Scholars and Disciples.”[677]
The chantry certificate relating to this college stated that:—
“There ys a provost and three fellows being all preistes whereof one dothe kepe a free scole of grammar according to the foundacion.”[678]
Full information is available of the foundation of a college at Rotherham, by Thomas Rotherham, Archbishop of York, under licence of Jan. 22nd, 1483.[679]
In the college statutes[680]the founder stated that he would have grown up “unlearned, unlettered, and rude,” if by chance a “vir in gramatica doctus” had not come to the neighbourhood and thus made it possible for those who were desirous of doing so, to learn the elements of grammar. In order, therefore, to provide for the youth of the future, he had established a college to consist of a provost, three fellows, and six scholar-choristers.