LONDON SCHOOLS (1598).
During the Middle Ages there was little provision for education; the monasteries and the Universities kept alive such learning as existed, and it was not until the sixteenth century that the revival of learning affected England and brought about a widespread interest in education and the pursuit of knowledge. It is well known that Wolsey and Henry VIII. at first proposed to divert some of the wealth of the monasteries to educational purposes, such as the endowment of schools and colleges in the Universities; and although this intention was not fully carried out, the cause of education in London was advanced by some of the City Companies and by private benefactions. The following passage from Stow gives an entertaining description of the educational methods of his day.
But touching schools more lately advanced in this City, I read that King Henry the fifth having suppressed the priories aliens whereof some were about London, namely one Hospital, called Our Lady of Rouncivall by Charing Cross: one other Hospital in Oldborne [Holborn]: one other without Cripplegate: and the fourth without Aldersgate, besides other that are now worn out of memory, and whereof there is no monument remaining more than Rouncivall converted to a brotherhood, which continued till the reign of Henry the 8. or Edward the 6., this I say, and their schools being broken up and ceased: King Henry the sixth in the 24. of his reign, by patent appointed that there should be in London, Grammar schools, besides St. Paul's, at St. Martin's le Grand, S. Mary le Bow in Cheap, S. Dunstans in the west and S. Anthony's. And in the next year, to wit, 1394, the said King ordained by Parliament that four other grammar schools should be erected, to wit, in the parishes of Saint Andrew in Holborn, All Hallows the great inThames Street, S. Peters upon Cornhill, and in the Hospital of S. Thomas of Acons in west Cheap, since the which time as divers schools by suppressing of religious houses, whereof they were members, in the reign of Henry the 8. have been decayed, so again have some others been newly erected, and founded for them: as namely Paul's school, in place of an old ruined house, was built in most ample manner, and largely endowed in the year 1512 by John Collet Doctor of Divinity, Dean of Pauls, for 153 poor mens children: for which there was ordained a master, surmaster, or usher, and a chaplain. Again in the year 1553 after the erection of Christ's Hospital in the late dissolved house of the Grey Friars, a great number of poor children being taken in, a school was also ordained there, at the Citizens charges. Also in the year 1561 the Merchant Tailors of London founded one notable free Grammar-School in the Parish of St. Laurence Poulteney by Candlewick street, Richard Hills late master of that Company, having given £500 toward the purchase of an house, called the Manor of the Rose, sometime the Duke of Buckingham's, wherein the school is kept. As for the meeting of the Schoolmasters, on festival days, at festival Churches, and the disputing of their Scholars logically, etc., whereof I have before spoken, the same was long since discontinued: but the arguing of the school boys about the principles of grammar, hath been continued even till our time: for I my self in my youth have yearly seen on the Eve of S. Bartholomew the Apostle, the scholars of divers grammar schools repair unto the Churchyard of S. Bartholomew, the Priory in Smithfield, where upon a bank boarded about under a tree, some one scholar hath stepped up, and there hath opposed and answered, till he were by some better scholar overcome and put down: and then the overcomer taking the place, did like as the first: and in the end the best opposers and answerers had rewards, which I observed not but it made both good schoolmasters, and also good scholars, diligently against such times to prepare themselves for the obtaining of this garland. I remember there repaired to these exercises amongst others the masters and scholars of the free schools of SaintPauls in London: of Saint Peters at Westminster: of Saint Thomas Acons Hospital: and of Saint Anthony's Hospital: whereof the last named commonly presented the best scholars, and had the prize in those days.