44

THE SCHOLARSHIP OF LONDON BOYS.

The Grammar School Course, circa 1180.

arguments. Sometime certaine Oratours, with Rhetoricall Orations, speake handsomly to perswade, being carefull to observe the precepts of Art, who omit no matter contingent. The Boyes of divers Schooles wrangle together in versifying, and canvase the principles of Grammar, as the rules of the Preterperfect and Future Tenses. Some after an old custome of prating, use Rimes and Epigrams: these can freely quip their fellowes, suppressing their names with a festinine and railing liberty: these cast out most abusive jests, and with Socraticall witnesses either they give a touch at the vices of Superiours, or fall upon them with a Satyricall bitternesse. The hearers prepare for laughter, and make themselves merry in the meane time1."

1 The best text of the Vita Sancti Thomae is that given in the Materials for the History of Thomas Becket, edited by the Rev. J. C. Robertson, Rolls Ed. 1877. The text used by Stow varies in some particulars from the Rolls text and omits the historically important word 'plures.' The passage of which Stow's translation has been given is section 9 of the Prologus, and appears on page 4 of Vol. II. of the Materials. It runs as follows:

"In Londonia tres principales ecclesiae scholas celebres habent de privilegio et antiqua dignitate. Plerumque tamen favore personali alicujus notorum secundum philosophiam plures ibi scholae admittuntur. Diebus festis ad ecclesias festivas magistri conventus celebrant. Disputant scholares, quidam demonstrative, dialectice alii; hii rotant enthymemata, hi perfectis melius utuntur syllogismis. Quidam ad ostentationem exercentur disputatione, quae est inter colluctantes; alii ad veritatem, ea quae est perfectionis gratia. Sophistae simulatores agmine et inundatione verborum beati judicantur; alii paralogizant. Oratores aliqui quandoque orationibus rhetoricis aliquid dicunt apposite ad persuadendum, curantes artis praecepta servare, et ex contingentibus nihil omittere. Pueri diversarum scholarum versibus inter se conrixantur; aut de principiis artis grammaticae, vel regulis praeteritorum vel supinorum, contendunt. Sunt alii qui in epigrammatibus, rhythmis et metris, utuntur vetere illa triviali dicacitate; licentia Fescennina socios suppressis nominibus liberius lacerant; loedorias jaculantur et scommata; salibus Socraticis sociorum, vel forte majorum, vitia tangunt; vel mordacius "dente rodunt Theonino" audacibus dithyrambis. Auditores, 'multum ridere parati

Ingeminant tremulos naso crispante cachinnos.'"

[Persius 111. 86—7.]

THE THREE CHIEF SCHOOLS IN LONDON.

45

From the point of view of the subjects taught, we shall have occasion to refer once more to this description of English schools at the end of the twelfth century'. It is, however, important in another way. It shows that many other schools besides those three official schools were in existence in London though they only existed by the sufferance of the Church. The three schools, according to Strype's Stow, were the school attached to the Cathedral Church of St Paul, the school belonging to the Monastery of St Peter at Westminster, and the school in connection with the Monastery of St Saviour, Southwark. This is, however, pure, and in two cases wrong, guess-work. Enough, however, is told us by Fitzstephen to show us that the education of youth was encouraged in London to the very highest point toward the end of his century. Not only were there important grammar schools occupied in training boys for the severe scholastic curriculum of the Universities, but education at other centres was encouraged. It is important to compare this fact with the position two centuries later.

London's first Grammar Schools.

By 1393 the Church had learnt to regret its liberality. Possibly the fear of Lollardy was the cause. The Crown is asked to recognize only three schools-St Paul's, the Arches, and St Martin's. It would seem most probable that these three schools are the schools mentioned by Fitzstephen, for the petitioners claimed a monopoly for them by virtue of an immemorial right of control over schoolmasters vested in them. In the Gloucester Grammar School case, which was decided in 1410, Skrene, the counsel for the plaintiffs, declared that the master of Paul's school claims that there

1 The description was written about 1185-7.

2 Book 1. p. 123 (ed. 1720).

3 This statement is based on the forged history formerly attributed to Ingulf, Abbot of Croyland, which states that Ingulf, who died in 1109, was educated at Westminster.

46

LONDON SCHOOLS LIMITED TO FIVE.

shall be no other master in the City of London competing with them." This statement is at one with the petition of 1393-4, since the school at the Arches was not within the jurisdiction of the City', and St Martin's School was within the liberty of St Martin which was likewise exempt from jurisdiction. In the same case of 1410 Mr Justice Hankeford stated that a monopoly was possible in the case of a school of ancient foundation. It would, therefore, seem almost certain that the schools of St Paul's, the Arches, and St Martin's of the fifteenth century were the great grammar and logic schools of London in the twelfth century.

Two further documents must now be quoted to show how complicated the educational questions in London had become. The first is an Ordinance by King Henry VI. made in 1446, by which he sanctions the action of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London in limiting the number of grammar schools in London to five The reason given for this step was the undesirable common grammar schools that had been set up by "many and divers persons." In the next year, 1447, this monopoly was indirectly petitioned against by four City rectors: they protested strongly against the restriction of teaching to two or three persons and told the King that where there were a great number of learners and few teachers and all the learners were compelled to go to the same few teachers, the masters wax rich in money and the learners poor in knowledge. They therefore asked permission to establish grammar schools in their respective parishes. This request the king granted subject to spiritual consent.

Petition to Henry VI.

We thus see that education in London in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was a remunerative business and one that it was the policy of the Church to monopolize.

1 The church of St Mary le Bow was a Peculiar belonging to the Archbishop of Canterbury. Strype's Stow, Book III. p. 24 (ed. 1720). 2 Wheatley and Cunningham, London Past and Present, 1891.

HENRY IV.'S ORDINANCE, 1446.

47

Assertion of Church

control.

It is easy in days of general liberalism to criticise such a policy but it is difficult to suggest an alternative policy that could have been adopted at that date. The control of learning seemed essential to the existence of a national Church, and the control was asserted with unbending determination. The measure of the Church's success is difficult to estimate, but it is noteworthy that the complaint as to the existence of strange masters of grammar in 1393 was repeated in 1446-a sign that the Church had been unable to completely crush unlicensed schools. On the other hand that much harm had been done to education by the battle is fully shown by the mournful petition of the four rectors in 1447.

The first document runs thus :-"Henry by the Grace of God King of England and of France and Lord of Ireland to our Chancellor of England greeting. For as much as the right Reverend Father in God the Archbishop of Canterbury and the reverend Father in God the Bishop of London considering the great abusions that have been of long time within our City of London that many and divers persons not sufficiently instruct in Grammar presuming to hold common Grammar Schools in great deceit as well unto their scholars as unto the friends that find them to school have of their great wisdom set and ordained v schools of grammar and no more within our said city. One within the Churchyard of St Paul, another within the Collegiate Church of St Martin, the third in Bow Church, the fourth in the Church of St Dunstan in the East, the v in our hospital of St Anthony' within our said city, the which they have openly declared sufficient as

Ordinance of

1446.

1 The school connected with the Hospital of St Anthony was founded in 1441 as a free grammar school by the appropriation of the Church of St Benet Fink. See Mr A. F. Leach's English Schools at the Reformation, page 26. By the reign of Charles II. it had dwindled to a poor sort of Parochial Grammar School.' It was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666 and was not rebuilt.

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PETITION OF FOUR LONDON RECTORS, 1447.

by their letters patent thereupon made it appeareth more at large. We in consideration of the premises have thereunto granted our royal will and assent. Wherefore we will and charge you that here upon ye do make our letters patent under our great seal in due form declaring in the same our said will and assent giving furthermore in commandment by the same our letters unto all our subjects of our said city that they nor none of them trouble nor hinder the masters of the said schools in any wise in this part, but rather help and assist them inasmuch as in them is. Given under our privy seal at Guildford the third day of May the year of our reign twentyfour." This Ordinance made by King Henry VI. in 1446, which added two new schools to the efficient schools of London, is set out in Excerpta Historica (page 5) published in 1831.

The petition of the four rectors paints in very pitiful but possibly exaggerated language the condition of education in England in the middle of the fifteenth century. It is addressed1 to King Henry VI. in the 25th year (1447) of his reign by the rectors of the parishes of Allhallows, St Andrew's, Holborn, St Peter's, Cornhill, and Colchirche. A portion of the petition runs as follows:-"Please it unto the full wyse and discrete Comunes in this present Parliament assemblid to considre, the grete nombre of gramer Scoles, that somtyme were in divers parties of this Realme, beside tho that were in London, and howe fewe ben in thise dayes, and the grete hurt that is caused of this, not oonly in the Spirituell partie of the Chirche, where often tymes it apperith to openly in som persones, with grete shame, but also in the Temporell partie, to whom also it is full expedient to have compotent congruite for many causes, as to youre wisedoms apperith. And for asmuche as to the Citee of London is the commune concours of this lond, wherin is grete multitude

The disappearance of Grammar Schools.

15 Rot. Parl. 137.