Town Life in the Fifteenth Century, Volume 2. Green Alice Stopford

24

At Lynn there was in 1383 a Guild “of young scholars”; at Worcester the Guild of S. Nicholas kept “time out of mind a free school within the said city in a great hall belonging to the said Guild called the Trinity Hall.” The Guild of Palmers supported a school at Ludlow; and so did Guilds at Stratford and at Deritend. The Guild of Kalenders in Bristol had in the twelfth century kept a school of Jews, and when that business came to an end were still charged with education, public lectures, and the management of a free library. (English Guilds, 51, 205, 196, 221, 288. See Hunt’s Bristol, 112, 249, 260.) The Drapers had a school at Shrewsbury (Hibbert’s Inf. of English Guilds, 33); and the Merchant Tailors in London (Clode, 35). I learn from Mr. A. F. Leach that at Ashburton the Grammar School founded 1314 by Bishop Stapledon of Exeter (who also founded Exeter College) was entrusted to the Guild of St. Lawrence, whose chantry-priest was the schoolmaster. The school is still kept on the site of the Guild Chapel, the original tower of which forms part of the School.

25

Hunter’s Deanery of Doncaster, vol ii. 5-6.

26

Bentham’s History of Ely Cathedral, 2nd Edition, 182. Hull Grammar School Gazette, 1891, No. 8, p. 88. See Riley’s Liber Albus, xix. There was a grammar master at Ewelme Almshouse 1461 (ibid. 627), where teaching was to be free (ibid. ix. 217-8). Four new grammar schools were opened in London in 1447, and during the reign of Henry the Sixth nine were set up in London alone (Pauli’s Pictures, 452). In 1472 Prior Selling, of Christchurch, reports to the Archbishop of Canterbury that he has provided a “schoolmaster for your grammar schools in Canterbury, the which hath lately taught grammar at Winchester and at S. Antony’s in London” (Hist. MSS. Com. ix. 105). John Syre, the grammar school master in 1436, lived in Gayhow’s tenement, S. Alphege parish (ibid. 139). The Almshouse of the poor sisters in Reading was in 1486 turned into a grammar school (Coates’ Reading, 15); there was a school in Appleby taught by a chantry priest before the middle of the fifteenth century (Transactions of Cumberland and Westmoreland Arch. Soc. part ii. vol. viii.); and one in Preston whose master was made a burgess in 1415 (Memorials of Preston Guilds, 14). In Liverpool there was an endowed free school before the reformation (Picton’s Memorials, ii. 55-6). Miss Dormer Harris has learned from the town records that the expenses of the grammar school at Coventry in the fifteenth century, were paid by the Trinity Guild – in other words, by the Corporation. It is evident that when William Bingham, who founded a grammar school attached to Clare Hall, Cambridge, says that in 1439 he passed seventy deserted schools in travelling from Hampton to Ripon by way of Coventry (Boase’s Oxford, 108), we cannot infer from this any decay in education. It may have indicated a shifting of population, or more probably perhaps the results of the effort made in 1391 to prevent villeins from being put to the clerical schools in preparation for taking minor orders and so gaining emancipation from their lords. Rot. Parl. iii. 294.

27

In the royal accounts the principal artizans in each craft audit such parts of the accounts as deal with labour and sign every page (Rogers’ Agric. and Prices, iv. 502).

28

Richard the Redeless, pass. ii. 41.

29

The Will of Sir John Percivale, published by the Governors of the Macclesfield School. I am indebted to the kindness of Mr. A. F. Leach for this reference – as well as for that about Stockport, and the reference to the School Gazette and the Town Records of Hull. He informs me that the first school founded by a lay person of which we have as yet any record was at Wotton-under-Edge, and was founded by a woman, Lady Berkeley, in 1385.

30

Baines’ Hist. of the County of Lancaster, i. 296-7.

31

The author of Piers Ploughman criticizes the education given by the clerics of his day. “Grammar that ground is of all” was neglected so that no one could now either “versify fair” or construe what the poets wrote.

“Doctors of degree and of divinity masters

That should the seven arts conne and assoil ad quodlibet,

But they fail in philosophy, an philosophers lived

And would well examine them, wonder me thinketh!”

– Passus xviii. 107-118.

32

The “alphabet and the humanities” did not imply culture in anything like our sense of the word, nor yet Latin from the literary point of view, but the old ecclesiastical discipline, which included above all things logic, and which ultimately led, if the pupil advanced far enough, to the scholastic philosophy. Thus for example in the Epistolæ obscurorum virorum one of the (priestly) correspondents is made to protest against the introduction of the study of Vergil and other new-fangled writers.

33

Hist. MSS. Com. viii. 281-2.

34

Hist. MSS. Com. x. part 4, 425-6.

35

Nottingham Records, i. 246, 263.

36

Ordinances for Dame Agnes Meller’s School, Nott. Rec. iii. 453-6. The Mayor of Chester had the payment of the master at Farneworth, Lancashire. (Hist. MSS. Com. viii. 370.) In Coventry the corporation (i. e., the Trinity Guild) paid the master.

37

Ibid. iv. 191.

38

Nott. Rec., iv. 214.

39

Collectanea (Oxf. Hist. Soc.), ii. 334-6.

40

Paston Letters, i. 431. Hunt’s Bristol, 112.

41

Introduction by Miss Toulmin Smith to Ricart’s Calendar. Lives of the Berkeleys, i. 5, 7. Skelton was possibly a native of Norfolk, perhaps of Norwich. Skelton’s Poems, ed. Dyce, I. v. vi.

42

Caxton’s Book of Courtesy, 33-41. See Manners and Meals, lix. Skelton’s Poems (ed. Dyce), I. 75, 377-9.

43

Directions not to spare the rod were constant. Manners and Meals, 384. See the poor boy’s complaint, p. 385-6. Tusser’s lines show that the system was not confined to the lower schools.

“From Paul’s I went to Eton, sent

To learn straightways the Latin phrase;

Where fifty-three stripes given to me

At once I had,

For fault but small, or none at all,

It came to pass thus beat I was.

See, Udall, see the mercy of thee

To me, poor lad!”

Erasmus, in his Praise of Folly, singles the schoolmasters out as “a race of men the most miserable, who grow old in penury and filth in their schools —schools did I say? prisons! dungeons! I should have said – among their boys, deafened with din, poisoned by a fetid atmosphere; but thanks to their folly perfectly self-satisfied so long as they can bawl and shout to their terrified boys, and box and beat and flog them, and so indulge in all kinds of ways their cruel disposition.” One such master he tells of who to crush boys’ unruly spirits, and to subdue the wantonness of their age, never took a meal with his flock without making the comedy end in a tragedy. “So at the end of the meal one or another boy was dragged out to be flogged.” Boase’s Oxford, 76-77.

44

The Commonweal (ed. E. Lamond), 21-23, 30.

45

Manners and Meals, xxiv. Cf. ibid. xxvi. xlv.

46

See Crossthwaite. Rep. Royal Com. on Markets, 25.

47

“Feria” or Saint’s day. The place originally held by the fair is illustrated by the ancient custom in Leicester, that when merchants went to the great fairs, when the “fairs were up no plea was holden no more of them that were at home, than of them that were at the fairs;” this was altered by Crouchback’s charter of 1277, so that those who stayed at home might be tried in case of complaint. Hist. MSS. Com. viii. 423-4.

48

The Fair of Wycombe was held on the Day of S. Thomas the Martyr from time out of mind. It had begun to decline by 1527, and the Mayor and Bailiffs bitterly complained that now scarcely any one came to keep up the fair and that the shopkeepers kept their shops and stalls at home in the town as usual. A strict order was made by the Council in 1527 that “no manner of man nor woman” should keep open shop in the town on that day or show their goods in the street, but should “resort unto the Fair there as it is wont to be kept.” Parker’s Hist. of Wycombe, 29.