CHAPTER IIIEDUCATION 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 theAustin 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 56s.8d.pro erudicione puerorum. In 1372-3 the master of the Almery school received 39s.3d., in addition to a gown, and 2s.for coal. John Garner, master of the grammar school, received 53s.4d.about 1430, payable at Pentecost and Martinmas. George Trewhytt, in 1500, received a stipend, as grammar schoolmaster, of 60s., together with a furred gown worth 10s.11d.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 40s.to pay for a table for the schoolmaster.
FOUNTAINS ABBEYFOUNTAINS ABBEY (Cistercian)(By kind permission of the Editor of thePhotographic News.)
FOUNTAINS ABBEY (Cistercian)(By kind permission of the Editor of thePhotographic News.)
FOUNTAINS ABBEY (Cistercian)
(By kind permission of the Editor of thePhotographic 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-knownRites 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 onepro 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 freeingfrom 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 interestingSede Vacanteregister 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 firststep 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 girlsof 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 nortelryThat sche had lerned in the nonnerye.”
“A wyf he hadde, com of noble kyne;Sche was i-fostryd in a nonnery....What for hir kindred and hir nortelryThat sche had lerned in the nonnerye.”
“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.