IN GRATITUDE FOR HIS HELP,

BY THE EDITOR

Notice. The Russell and De Worde of this work were issued, with Rhodes’s Boke of Nurture, to the Roxburghe Club, in 4to, in 1867. The whole of the work (except p. 361), with Rhodes, and some short poems in English, French, and Latin, was issued to the Early English Text Society, in 8vo, in 1868, with the title The Babees Book, &c. (Manners and Meals in Olden Time).

FOREWORDS.

“The naturall maister Aristotell saith that euery body be the course of nature is enclyned to here & se all that refressheth & quickeneth the spretys of man1 / wherfor I haue thus in this boke folowinge2” gathered together divers treatises touching the Manners & Meals of Englishmen in former days, & have added therto divers figures of men of old, at meat & in bed,3 to the end that, to my fellows here & to come, the home life of their forefathers may be somewhat more plain, & their own minds somewhat rejoiced.

The treatises here collected consist of a main one—John Russell’s Boke of Nurture, to which I have written a separate preface4—extracts and short books illustrating Russell, like the Booke of Demeanor and Boke of Curtasy, and certain shorter poems addressed partly to those whom Cotgrave calls “Enfans de famille, Yonkers of account, youthes

EDWARD THE FOURTH’S HENCHMEN

The persons to whom the last poems of the present collection are addressed, the

the “Bele Babees” and “swete Children,” may be likened to the “young gentylmen, Henxmen,—VI Enfauntes, or more, as it shall please the Kinge,”—at Edward the Fourth’s Court; and the authors or translators of the Bokes in this volume, somewhat to that sovereign’s Maistyr of Henxmen, whose duty it was

“to shew the schooles5 of urbanitie and nourture of Englond, to lerne them to ryde clenely and surely; to drawe them also to justes; to lerne them were theyre barneys; to haue all curtesy in wordes, dedes, and degrees; dilygently to kepe them in rules of goynges and sittinges, after they be of honour. Moreover to teche them sondry languages, and othyr lerninges vertuous, to harping, to pype, sing, daunce, and with other honest and temperate behaviour and patience; and to kepe dayly and wekely with these children dew convenity, with corrections in theyre chambres, according to suche gentylmen; and eche of them to be used to that thinge of vertue that he shall be moste apt to lerne, with remembraunce dayly of Goddes servyce accustumed. This maistyr sittith in the halle, next unto these Henxmen, at the same boarde, to have his respecte unto theyre demeanynges, howe manerly they ete and drinke, and to theyre communication and other formes curiall, after the booke of urbanitie.” (Liber Niger in Household Ordinances, p. 45.)

That these young Henxmen were gentlemen, is expressly stated,6

“These Esquiers of houshold of old [were] accustumed, wynter and sumer, in aftyrnoones and in eveninges, to drawe to lordes chambres within courte, there to kepe honest company aftyr theyre cunnynge, in talkyng of cronycles of Kings and of other polycyes, or in pypeyng or harpyng, synging, or other actes martialles, to help occupy the courte, and accompany straungers, tyll the tyme require of departing.”

But that a higher station than an Esquier’s was in store for some of these henchmen, may be known from the history of one of them. Thomas Howard, eldest son of Sir John Howard, knight (who was afterwards Duke of Norfolk, and killed at Bosworth Field), was among these henchmen or pages, ‘enfauntes’ six or more, of Edward IV.’s. He was made Duke of Norfolk for his splendid victory over the Scots at Flodden, and Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard were his granddaughters. Among the ‘othyr lerninges vertuous’ taught Ath. Cant., i. p. 29, col. 2.

RICH MEN’S EDUCATION IN EARLY ENGLAND.

The question of the social rank of these Bele Babees6a, children, and Pueri who stood at tables, opens up the whole subject of upper-class education in early times in England. It is a subject that, so far as I can find, has never yet been separately treated7, and I therefore throw together such few notices as the kindness of friends8 and my own chance grubbings have collected; these as a sort of stopgap till the appearance of Mr Anstey’s volume on early Oxford Studies in the Chronicles and Memorials, a volume which will, I trust, give us a complete account of early education in our land. If it should not, I hope that Mr Quick will carry his pedagogic researches past Henry VIII.’s time, or that one of our own members will take the subject up. It is worthy of being thoroughly worked out. For convenience’ sake, the notices I have mentioned are arranged under six heads:

1. Education in Nobles’ houses.

2. At Home and at Private Tutors’, p. xvii. (Girls, p. xxv.)

3. At English Universities, p. xxvi.

4. At Foreign Universities, p. xl.

5. At Monastic and Cathedral Schools, p. xli.

6. At Grammar Schools, p. lii.

One consideration should be premised, that manly exercises, manners and courtesy, music and singing, knowledge of the order of precedency of ranks, and ability to carve, were in early times more important than Latin and Philosophy. ‘Aylmar þe kyng’ gives these directions to Athelbrus, his steward, as to Horn’s education:

King Horn, E. E. T. Soc., 1866, ed. Lumby, p. 7.9

So in Romances and Ballads of later date, we find

Tryamore, in Bp. Percy’s Folio MS. vol. ii. ed. 1867.

Lord of Learne, Bp. Percy’s Folio MS. vol. i. p. 182, ed. 1867.

Chaucer’s Squire, as we know, at twenty years of age

Which of these accomplishments would Cambridge or Oxford teach? Music alone.10a That, as Harrison says, was one of the Quadrivials,

HOUSES OF NOBLES AND CHANCELLORS WERE SCHOOLS.

1. The chief places of education for the sons of our nobility and gentry were the houses of other nobles, and specially those of the Chancellors of our Kings, men not only able to read and write, talk Latin and French themselves, but in whose hands the Court patronage lay. As early as Henry the Second’s time (A.D. 1154-62), if not before11, this system prevailed. A friend notes that Fitz-Stephen says of Becket:

“The nobles of the realm of England and of neighbouring kingdoms used to send their sons to serve the Chancellor, whom he trained with honourable bringing-up and learning; and when they had received the knight’s belt, sent them back with honour to their fathers and kindred: some he used to keep. The king himself, his master, entrusted to him his son, the heir of the realm, to be brought up; whom he had with him, with many sons of nobles of the same age, and their proper retinue and masters and proper servants in the honour due.” —Vita S. Thomæ, pp. 189, 190, ed. Giles.

Roger de Hoveden, a Yorkshireman, who was a clerk or secretary to Henry the Second, says of Richard the Lionheart’s unpopular chancellor, Longchamps the Bishop of Ely:

“All the sons of the nobles acted as his servants, with downcast looks, nor dared they to look upward towards the heavens unless it so happened that they were addressing him; and if they attended to anything else they were pricked with a goad, which their lord held in his hand, fully mindful of his grandfather of pious memory, who, being of servile condition in the district of Beauvais, had, for his occupation, to guide the plough and whip up the oxen; and who at length, to gain his liberty, fled to the Norman territory.” (Riley’s Hoveden, ii. 232, quoted in The Cornhill Magazine, vol. xv. p. 165.)12

All Chancellors were not brutes of this kind, but we must remember that young people were subjected to rough treatment in early days. Even so late as Henry VI.’s time, Agnes Paston sends to London on the 28th of January, 1457, to pray the master of her son of 15, that if the boy “hath not done well, nor will not amend,” his master Greenfield “will truly belash him till he will amend.” And of the same lady’s treatment of her marriageable daughter, Elizabeth, Clere writes on the 29th of June, 1454,

“She (the daughter) was never in so great sorrow as she is now-a-days, for she may not speak with no man, whosoever come, ne not may see nor speak with my man, nor with servants of her mother’s, but that she beareth her on hand otherwise than she meaneth; and she hath since Easter the most part been beaten once in the week or twice, and sometimes twice on a day, and her head broken in two or three places.” (v. i. p. 50, col. 1, ed. 1840.)

The treatment of Lady Jane Grey by her parents was also very severe, as she told Ascham, though she took it meekly, as her sweet nature was:

“One of the greatest benefites that God ever gave me, is, that he sent me so sharpe and severe Parentes, and so jentle a scholemaster. For when I am in presence either of father or mother, whether I speake, kepe silence, sit, stand, or go, eate, drinke, be merie or sad, be sewyng, plaiyng, dauncing, or doing anie thing els, I must do it, as it were, in soch weight, mesure, and number, even so perfitelie as God made the world, or els I am so sharplie taunted, so cruellie threatened; yea presentlie some tymes, with pinches, nippes, and bobbes, and other waies which I will not name for the honor I beare them, so without measure misordered, that I thinke my self in hell till tyme cum that I must go to M. Elmer, who teacheth me so jentlie, so pleasantlie, with soch faire allurementes to learning, that I thinke all the tyme nothing whiles I am with him. And when I am called from him, I fall on weeping.” —The Scholemaster, ed. Mayor.

The inordinate beating13 of boys by schoolmasters—whom he 14—Ascham denounces strongly in the first book of his Scholemaster, and he contrasts their folly in beating into their scholars the hatred of learning with the practice of the wise riders who by gentle allurements breed them up in the love of riding. Indeed, the origin of his book was Sir Wm. Cecil’s saying to him “I have strange news brought me this morning, that divers scholars of Eton be run away from the school for fear of beating.”

Sir Peter Carew, says Mr Froude, being rather a troublesome boy, was chained in the Haccombe dog-kennel till he ran away from it.

But to return to the training of young men in nobles’ houses. I take the following from Fiddes’s Appendix to his Life of Wolsey:

John de Athon, upon the Constitutions of Othobon, tit. 23, in respect to the Goods of such who dyed intestate, and upon the Word Barones, has the following Passage concerning Grodsted Bishop of Lincoln15 (who died 9th Oct., 1253),—

BP. GROSSETETE TAUGHT NOBLES’ SONS.

“Robert surnamed Grodsted of holy memory, late Bishop of Lincoln, when King Henry asked him, as if in wonder, where he learnt the Nurture in which he had instructed the sons of nobles (&) peers of the Realm, whom he kept about him as pages (domisellos16),—since he was not descended from a noble lineage, but from humble (parents)—is said to have answered fearlessly, ‘In the house or guest-chambers 15.”

Reyner, in his Apostol. Bened. from Saunders acquaints us, that the Sons of the Nobility were placed with Whiting Abbot of Glastenbury for their Education, who was contemporary with the Cardinal, and which Method of Education was continued for some Time afterward.

There is in the Custody of the present Earl of Stafford, a Nobleman of the greatest Humanity and Goodness, an Original of Instructions, by the Earl of Arundell, written in the Year 1620, for the Benefit of his younger Son, the Earl of Stafford’s Grandfather, under this Title;

Instructions for you my Son William, how to behave your self at Norwich.

In these Instructions is the following paragraph, “You shall in all Things reverence honour and obey my Lord Bishop of Norwich, as you would do any of your Parents, esteeminge whatsoever He shall tell or Command you, as if your Grandmother of Arundell, your Mother, or my self, should say it; and in all things esteem your self as my Lord’s Page; a breeding which youths of my house far superior to you were accustomed unto, as my Grandfather of Norfolk, and his Brother my good Uncle of Northampton were both bred as Pages with Bishopps, &c.”

Sir Thomas More, who was born in 1480, was brought up in the house of Cardinal Morton. Roper says that he was

“received into the house of the right reverend, wise, and learned prelate Cardinal Morton, where, though he was young of years, yet would he at Christmas-tide suddenly sometimes step in among the players, and never studying for the matter make a part of his own there presently among them, which made the lookers on more sport than all the players beside. In whose wit and towardness the Cardinal much delighting would say of him unto the nobles that divers times dined with him, This child here waiting at the table, Whosoever shall live to see it, will prove a marvellous man. Whereupon for his better furtherance in learning he placed him at Oxford, &c.” (Roper’s Life of More, ed. Singer, 1822, p. 3.)

Cresacre More in his Life of More (ed. 1828, p. 17) states the same thing more fully, and gives the remark of the Cardinal more accurately, thus:— “that that boy there waiting on him, whoever should live to see it, would prove a marvellous rare man.”17

YOUNG NOBLES IN WOLSEY’S HOUSEHOLD.

Through Wolsey’s household, says Professor Brewer, almost all the a mess of the young Lords, and another for gentlemen.” Among these young Lords, we learn at p. 57, was

“my Lord Percy, the son and heir of the Earl of Northumberland, [who] then attended upon the Lord Cardinal, and was also his servitor; and when it chanced the Lord Cardinal at any time to repair to the court, the Lord Percy would then resort for his pastime unto the queen’s chamber, and there would fall in dalliance among the queen’s maidens, being at the last more conversant with Mistress Anne Boleyn than with any other; so that there grew such a secret love between them that, at length they were insured together, intending to marry18.”

Among the persons daily attendant upon Wolsey in his house, down-lying and up-rising, Cavendish enumerates “of Lords nine or ten, who had each of them allowed two servants; and the Earl of Derby had allowed five men” (p. 36-7). On this Singer prints a note, which looks like a guess, signed Growe, “Those Lords that were placed in the great and privy chambers were Wards, and as such paid for their board and education.” It will be seen below that he had a particular officer called “Instructor of his Wards” (Cavendish, p. 38, l. 2). Why I suppose the note to be a guess is, because at p. 33 Cavendish has stated that Wolsey “had also a great number daily attending upon him, both of noblemen and worthy gentlemen, of great estimation and possessions,—with no small number of the tallest yeomen that he could get in all his realm; in so much that well was that nobleman and gentleman that might prefer any tall and comely yeoman unto his service.”

In the household of the Earl of Northumberland in 1511 were “..yong gentlemen at their fryndes fynding,19 in my lords house for A.D.) says of the great nobles, in his poem De diversis ordinibus hominum, the example of manners goes out from their houses, Exemplar morum domibus procedit eorum. That these houses were in some instances only the finishing schools for our well-born young men after previous teaching at home and at College is possible (though the cases of Sir Thomas More and Ascham are exactly the other way), but the Lord Percy last named had a schoolmaster in his house, “The Maister of Graimer j”, p. 254; “Lyverays for the Maister of Gramer20 in Housholde: Item Half a Loof of Houshold Breide, a Pottell of Beere, and two White Lyghts,” p. 97. “Every Scolemaister techyng Grammer in the Hous C s.” (p. 47, 51). Edward IV.’s henxmen were taught grammar; and if the Pastons are to be taken as a type of their class, our nobles and gentry at the end of the 15th century must have been able to read and write freely. Chaucer’s Squire could write, and though the custom of sealing deeds and not signing them prevailed, more or less, till Henry VIII.’s time, it is doubtful whether this implied inability of the sealers to write. Mr Chappell says that in Henry VIII.’s time half our nobility were then writing ballads. Still, the bad spelling and grammar of most of the letters up to that period, and the general ignorance of our upper classes were, says Professor Brewer, the reason why the whole government of the country was in the hands of ecclesiastics. Even in Henry the Eighth’s

KNOWLEDGE OF FRENCH.

“showed him that it seemed to them there should be some noblemen and strangers [Henry VIII. and his courtiers masked] arrived at his bridge, as ambassadors from some foreign prince. With that, quoth the Cardinal, ‘I shall desire you, because ye can speak French, to take the pains to go down into the hall to encounter and to receive them, according to their estates, and to conduct them into this chamber’ (Cavendish, p. 51). Then spake my Lord Chamberlain unto them in French, declaring my Lord Cardinal’s mind (p. 53).”

The general21 opinion of our gentry as to the study of Letters, before and about 1500 A.D., is probably well represented by the opinion of one of them stated by Pace, in his Prefatory Letter to Colet, prefixed to the former’s De Fructu22.

It remains that I now explain to you what moves me to compile and publish a treatise with this title. When, two years ago, more or less, I had returned to my native land from the city of Rome, I was present at a certain feast, a stranger to many; where, when enough had been drunk, one or other of the guests—no fool, as one might infer from his words and countenance—began to talk of educating his children well. And, first of all, he thought that he must search out a good teacher for them, and that they should at any rate attend school. There happened to be present one of those whom we call gentle-men (generosos), and who always carry some horn hanging at their backs, as though they would hunt during dinner. He, hearing letters praised, roused with sudden anger, burst out furiously with these words. “Why do you talk nonsense, friend?” he said; “A curse on those stupid letters! all learned men are beggars: even Erasmus, the most learned of all, is a beggar (as I hear), and in a certain letter of his calls τήν κατάρατον πενίαν (that is, execrable poverty) his wife, and vehemently complains that he cannot shake her off his shoulders right into βαθυκήτεα πόντον, that is, into the deep sea. I swear by God’s body I’d rather that my son should hang than study letters. For it becomes the sons of gentlemen to blow the horn nicely (apte), to hunt skilfully, and elegantly carry and train a hawk. But the study of letters should be left to the sons of rustics.” At this point I could not restrain myself from answering something to this most talkative man, in defence of good letters. “You do not seem to me, good man,” I said, “to think rightly. For if any foreigner were to come to the king, such as the ambassadors (oratores) of princes are, and an answer had to be given to him, your son, if he were educated as you wish, could only blow his horn, and the learned sons of rustics would be called to answer, and would be far preferred to your hunter or fowler son; and they, enjoying their learned liberty, would say to your face, ‘We prefer to be learned, and, thanks to our learning, no fools, than boast of our fool-like nobility.’” Then he upon this, looking round, said, “Who is this person that is talking like this? I don’t know the fellow.” And when some one whispered in his ear who I was, he muttered something or other in a low voice to himself; and finding a fool to listen to him, he then caught hold of a cup of wine. And when he

APPRENTICESHIP IN HENRY VII.’S TIME.

On the general subject it should be noted that Fleta mentions nothing about boarders or apprentices in his account of household economy; nor does the Liber Contrarotulatoris Garderobæ Edw. I^mi mention any young noblemen as part of the King’s household. That among tradesmen in later times, putting out their children in other houses, and apprenticeships, were the rule, we know from many statements and allusions in our literature, and “The Italian Relation of England” (temp. Hen. VII.) mentions that the Duke of Suffolk was boarded out to a rich old widow, who persuaded him to marry her (p. 27). It also says

The want of affection in the English is strongly manifested towards their children; for after having kept them at home till they arrive at the age of 7 or 9 years at the utmost, they put them out, both males and females, to hard service in the houses of other people, binding them generally for another 7 or 9 years. And these are called apprentices, and during that time they perform all the most menial offices; and few are born who are exempted from this fate, for every one, however rich he may be, sends away his children into the houses of others, whilst he, in return, receives those of strangers into his own. And on inquiring their reason for this severity, they answered that they did it in order that their children might learn better manners. But I, for my part, believe that they do it because they like to enjoy all their comforts themselves, and that they are better served by strangers than they would be by their own children. Besides which, the English being great epicures, and very avaricious by nature, indulge in the most delicate fare themselves and give their household the coarsest bread, and beer, and cold meat baked on Sunday for the week, which, however, they allow them in great abundance. That if they had their own children at home, they would be obliged to give them the same food they made use of for themselves. That if the English sent their children away from home to learn virtue and good manners, and took them back again when their apprenticeship was over, they might, perhaps, be excused; but they never return, for the girls are settled by their patrons, and the boys make the best marriages they can, and, assisted by their patrons, not by their fathers, they also open a house and strive diligently by this means to make some fortune for themselves; whence it proceeds that, having no hope of their paternal inheritance, that all become so A Relation of the Island of England (Camden Society, 1847), pp. 24-6.

“This evidently refers to tradesmen.23 The note by the Editor24 however says it was the case with the children of the first nobility, and gives the terms for the Duke of Buckingham’s children with Mrs Hexstall. The document only shows that Mrs Hexstall boarded them by contract ‘during the time of absence of my Lord and my Ladie.’”

The Earl of Essex says in a letter to Lord Burleigh, 1576, printed in Murdin’s State Papers, p. 301-2.

“Neverthelesse, uppon the assured Confidence, that your love to me shall dissend to my Childrenne, and that your Lordship will declare yourself a Frend to me, both alive and dead, I have willed Mr Waterhouse to shew unto you how you may with Honor and Equity do good to my Sonne Hereford, and how to bind him with perpetual Frendship to you and your House. And to the Ende I wold have his Love towardes those which are dissended from you spring up and increase with his Yeares, I have wished his Education to be in your Household, though the same had not bene allotted to your Lordship as Master of the Wardes; and that the whole Tyme, which he shold spend in England in his Minority, might be devided in Attendance uppon my Lord Chamberlayne and you, to the End, that as he might frame himself to the Example of my Lord of Sussex in all the Actions of his Life, tending either to the Warres, or to the Institution of a Nobleman, so that he might also reverence your Lordship for your Wisdome and Gravyty, and lay up your Counsells and Advises in the Treasory of his Hart.”

GIRLS SENT OUT TO LADIES’ HOUSES.

That girls, as well as boys, were sent out to noblemen’s houses for their education, is evident from Margaret Paston’s letter of the 3rd of April, 1469, to Sir John Paston, “Also I would ye should purvey for your sister [? Margery] to be with my Lady of Oxford, or with my Lady of Bedford, or in some other worshipful place whereas ye think best, and I will help to her finding, for we be either of us weary of other.” Alice Crane’s Letter, in the Paston Letters, v. i.

“It should seeme by some that she served three in France successively; Mary of England maryed to Lewis the twelfth, an. 1514, with whome she went out of England, but Lewis dying the first of January following, and that Queene (being) to returne home, sooner than either Sir Thomas Bullen or some other of her frendes liked she should, she was preferred to Clauda, daughter to Lewis XII. and wife to Francis I. then Queene (it is likely upon the commendation of Mary the Dowager), who not long after dying, an. 1524, not yet weary of France she went to live with Marguerite, Dutchess of Alançon and Berry, a Lady much commended for her favor towards good letters, but never enough for the Protestant religion then in the infancy—from her, if I am not deceived, she first learnt the grounds of the Protestant religion; so that England may seem to owe some part of her happyness derived from that Lady.” (Twysden’s Notes quoted by Singer in his ed. of Cavendish’s Life of Wolsey, 1825, p. 57.)

As Henry VIII. fell in love with his wife’s maid of honour,—“began to kindle the brand of amours” at the light of Anne Boleyn’s beauty, “her excellent gesture and behaviour,”—so we find in later times rich young men became enamoured of poor young women staying in the same house with them. Mr Bruce sends me an instance:

“the young lady was niece, you will perceive, to a well-beneficed clergyman, and a thriving gentleman well-advanced in the public service. She had lost her mother, and her father was in debt and difficulties. She was therefore placed by the influence of her uncles in a well-known family in Wiltshire.”

State Papers. Dom. Car. I. Vol. ccclii. No. 29. Dr Matthew Nicholas, afterwards Dean of St Paul’s, to Edward Nicholas, Clerk of the Council, and afterwards Secretary of State. Dated, West Dean, April 4, 1637.

“I have spoken with Miss Evelyn since I wrote last unto you, and enquired of her the cause which moued her to displace my coson ith this addition, that she had respect in it as well unto her good as her owne convenience, for hauinge nowe noe employment for her but her needle, she founde that sittinge still at her worke made her sickly, and therefore thought she might doe better in another seruice where she might haue the orderinge of an huswifely charge, for which (she told me) she had made her very able. I expressed myselfe tender of the disgrace which would lay uppon my coson in beinge displaced in such a manner by warninge giuen, wherof whatsoeuer were the cause, it would be imagined by all that knowe it not, to be in her ill carriage, and wished she had done me that fauour as to haue acquainted me with her intents in such time as I might haue taken some course to haue disposed of her before it had bin knowne that she was to leaue her: she slubbered it ouer with a slight excuse that she had acquainted my wife ... but for my satisfaction she told me that she would be as mindfull of her when God should call her as if she were with her, and in testimony of her good likinge of her seruice she would allowe her forty shillings yearly towarde her maintainance as longe as herself should liue. I am soe well acquainted with what she hath as yet disposed to her by will, and soe little value forty shillings to my coson Hunton’s credit, as I gaue her noe thankes. Mr Downes (I heare) is sent for home by his father with an intent to keepe him with him, but I doe imagine that when my coson Hunton shall be other where disposed off, he shall returne; for my conceit is stronge that the feare of his beinge match’d to his disadvantage, who was placed with Mr Evelyn a youth to be bred for his preferment, hath caused this alteration; howsoever there be noe wordes made of it. I confess that when I have bin told of the good will that was obserued betweene my coson Hunton and Mr Downes, I did put it by with my coson Huntons protestation to the contrary, and was willinge by that neglect to have suffered it to have come to pass (if it mought have bin) because I thought it would haue bin to her aduantage, but nowe that the busines is come to this issue (as whatsoeuer be pretended I am confident this is the cause of my cosons partinge) I begin to quæstion my discretion.... Good brother, let me haue your aduise what to do.”

PRIVATE TUITION IN EARLY ENGLAND.

2. Home and Private Education. Of these, more or less must have been going on all over England, by private tutors at home, or in the houses of the latter. “In five years (after my baptism) I was handed over by my father to Siward, a noble priest, to be trained in letters, to whose mastery I was subdued during five years learning the first rudiments. But in the eleventh year of my age I was given up by my own father for the love of God, and destined to enter the service of the eternal King.” —Orderic, vol. ii. p. 301, ed. Prevost.

From Adam de Marisco’s Letters, 53, we find that Henry and Almeric, the eldest and youngest sons of the Earl of Montfort, were put under Grosseteste for tuition, he being then a Bishop. At Paris, John of Salisbury (who died in 1180) gained a living by teaching the sons of noblemen,—(instruendos susceperam, ? took them in to board). —Metalogicus, lib. 11, c. 10.

Henry of Huntingdon says, “Richard, the king’s (Henry I.’s) bastard son, was honourably brought up (festive nutritus) by our Bishop Robert (Blote of Lincoln), and duly reverenced by me and others in the same household I lived in.” —Anglia Sacra, vol. ii. p. 696. Giraldus Cambrensis speaks of beating his coætanei et conscolares terræ suæ, of being reproved for idleness by his uncle, the Bishop of St David’s, and of being constantly chaffed by two of his uncle’s chaplains, who used to decline durus and stultus to him. Also he alludes to the rod. Probably there was some sort of school at either Pembroke or St David’s24a.—De Rebus a se Gestis, lib. 1, c. 2.25

The Statutes of a Gild of young Scholars formed to burn lights in honour of some saint or other, and to help one another in sickness, old age, and to burial, will be printed for us by Mr Toulmin Smith in the Early English Text Society’s books this year.

Under this head of Private Tuition we may class the houses of Abbots, where boys of good birth were educated. In his History of English Poetry, section 36, vol. iii. p. 9, ed. 1840, Warton says:

“It appears to have been customary for the governors of the most considerable convents, especially those that were honoured with the mitre, to receive into their own private lodgings the sons of the principal families of the neighbourhood for education. About the year 1450, Thomas Bromele, abbot of the mitred monastery of Hyde near Winchester, entertained in his own abbatial house within that monastery eight young gentlemen, or gentiles pueri, who were placed there for the purpose of literary instruction, and constantly dined at the abbot’s table. I will not scruple to give the original words, which are more particular and expressive, of the obscure record which preserves this curious anecdote of monastic life. ‘Pro octo gentilibus pueris apud dominum abbatem studii causa perhendinantibus, et ad mensam domini victitantibus, cum garcionibus suis ipsos comitantibus, hoc anno, xviil. ixs. Capiendo pro26...’” This, by the way, 27” Richard Whiting, the last abbot of Glastonbury, who was cruelly executed by the king, during the course of his government educated near three hundred ingenuous youths, who constituted a part of his family; beside many others whom he liberally supported at the universities.28 Whitgift, the most excellent and learned archbishop of Canterbury in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, was educated under Robert Whitgift his uncle, abbot of the Augustine monastery of black canons at Wellhow in Lincolnshire, “who,” says Strype, “had several other young gentlemen under his care for education.” (Strype’s Whitgift, v. i. ch. i. p. 3.)

Of Lydgate—about 1420-30 A.D. I suppose—Prof. Morley says in his English Writers, vol. ii. Pt. I. p. 423:

“After studying at Oxford, Paris, and Padua, and after mastering with special delight the writings of such poets as Dante, Boccaccio, and Alain Chartier, Lydgate opened at his monastery of Bury St Edmund’s a school of rhetoric in which he taught young nobles literature and the art of versifying!”

Richard Pace says in his De Fructu, 1517:

“Now the learning of music too demands its place, especially from me whom it distinguished when a boy amongst boys. For Thomas Langton, bishop of Winchester (the predecessor of him who is now living), whose secretary I was, when he had marked that I was making a proficiency in music far beyond my age (as himself—perchance from his too great affection for me—would point out and repeatedly say), ‘The talent of this lad,’ he said, ‘is born for greater things,’ and a few days afterwards he sent me, to pursue the study of literature, into Italy, to the school at Padua, which then was at its greatest prime, and benevolently supplied the annual expenses, as he showed wonderful favour to all men of letters, and in his day played the part of a second Mecænas, well remembering (as he ofttimes said) that he had been advanced to the episcopal dignity on account of his learning. For he had gained, with the highest commendation, the distinctions of each law29 (as they say now-a-days). Also he so highly prized the study of Humanity30 that he had boys and youths 31

EDUCATION AT HOME AND AT TUTORS’.

Palsgrave in 1530 speaks of “maister Petrus Vallensys, scole maister to his [Charles, Duke of Suffolk’s] excellent yong sonne the Erle of Lyncolne.”

Roger Ascham, author of the Scholemaster, &c., born in 1515,

“was received at a very youthful age into the family of Sir Antony Wingfield, who furnished money for his education, and placed Roger, together with his own sons, under a tutor whose name was Bond. The boy had by nature a taste for books, and showed his good taste by reading English in preference to Latin, with wonderful eagerness. This was the more remarkable from the fact that Latin was still the language of literature, and it is not likely that the few English books written at that time were at all largely spread abroad in places far away from the Universities and Cathedral towns. In or about the year 1530, Mr Bond the domestic tutor resigned the charge of young Roger, who was now about fifteen years old, and by the advice and pecuniary aid of his kind patron Sir Antony, he was enabled to enter St John’s College, Cambridge, at that time the most famous seminary of learning in all England ... he took his bachelor’s degree in 1531, Feb. 18, in the 18th year of his age [“being a boy, new bachelor of art,” he says himself,] a time of life at which it is now more common to enter the University than to take a degree, but which, according to the modes of education

Dr Clement and his wife were brought up in Sir T. More’s house. Clement was taken from St Paul’s school, London, appointed tutor to More’s children, and afterwards to his daughter Margaret, p. 402, col. 1.

What a young nobleman learnt in Henry the Eighth’s time may be gathered from the following extracts (partly given by Mr Froude, Hist., v. i. p. 39-40) from the letters of young Gregory Cromwell’s tutor, to his father, the Earl of Essex, the King’s Chief Secretary.

“The order of his studie, as the houres lymyted for the Frenche tongue, writinge, plaienge att weapons, castinge of accomptes, pastimes of instruments, and suche others, hath bene devised and directed by the prudent wisdome of Mr Southwell; who with a ffatherly zeale and amitie muche desiringe to have hime a sonne worthy suche parents, ceasseth not aswell concerninge all other things for hime mete and necessary, as also in lerninge, t’expresse his tendre love and affection towardes hime, serchinge by all meanes possible howe he may moste proffitte, dailie heringe hime to rede sumwhatt in thenglishe tongue, and advertisenge hime of the naturell and true kynde of pronuntiacõn therof, expoundinge also and declaringe the etimologie and native signification of suche wordes as we have borowed of the Latines or Frenche menue, not evyn so comonly used in our quotidiene speche. Mr Cheney and Mr Charles in lyke wise endevoireth and emploieth themselves, accompanienge Mr Gregory in lerninge, amonge whome ther is a perpetuall contention, strife, and conflicte, and in maner of an honest envie who shall do beste, not oonlie in the ffrenche tongue (wherin Mr Vallence after a wonderesly compendious, facile, prompte, and redy waye, nott withoute painfull delegence and laborious industrie doth enstructe them) but also in writynge, playenge at weapons, and all other theire exercises, so that if continuance in this bihalf may take place, whereas the laste Diana, this shall (I truste) be consecrated to Apollo and the Muses, to theire no small profecte and your good contentation and pleasure. And thus I beseche the Lord to have you in his moste gratious tuition.

At Reisinge in Norff[olk] the last daie of Aprill. Your faithfull and most bounden servaunte

Henry Dowes.

To his right honorable maister Mr Thomas Crumwell chief Secretary vnto the King’s Maiestie.”

Ellis, Original Letters. Series I. vol. i. p. 341-3.

STUDIES OF YOUTHS, TEMP. HEN. VIII. AND ELIZABETH.

The next Letter gives further details of Gregory’s studies—

“But forcause somer was spente in the servyce of the wylde goddes, it is so moche to be regarded after what fashion yeouth is educate and browght upp, in whiche tyme that that is lerned (for the moste parte) will nott all holelie be forgotten in the older yeres, I thinke it my dutie to asserteyne yo^r Maistershippe how he spendith his tyme.... And firste, after he hath herde Masse he taketh a lecture of a Diologe of Erasmus Colloquium, called Pietas Puerilis, whereinne is described a veray picture of oone that sholde be vertuouselie brought upp; and forcause it is so necessary for hime, I do not onelie cause him to rede it over, but also to practise the preceptes of the same, and I have also translated it into Englishe, so that he may conferre theime both to-githers, whereof (as lerned men affirme) cometh no smalle profecte32 ... after that, he exerciseth his hande in writing one or two houres, and redith uppon Fabian’s Chronicle as longe; the residue of the day he doth spende uppon the lute and virginalls. When he rideth (as he doth very ofte) I tell hime by the way some historie of the Romanes or the Greekes, whiche I cause him to reherse agayn in a tale. For his recreation he useth to hawke and hunte, and shote in his long bowe, which frameth and succedeth so well with hime that he semeth to be therunto given by nature.”

Ellis, i. 343-4.

Of the course of study of ‘well-bred youths’ in the early years of Elizabeth’s reign we have an interesting account by Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper, father of the great Bacon, in a Paper by Mr J. Payne Collier in the Archæologia, vol. 36, Part 2, p. 339, Article xxxi.33 “Before he became Lord Keeper, Sir Nicholas Bacon had been Attorney of that Court” [the Court of Wards and Liveries] “a most lucrative appointment; and on the 27th May, 1561, he addressed a letter to Sir William Cecil, then recently (Jan., 1561) made Master of the Wards, followed by a paper thus entitled:—’Articles devised for the bringing up in vertue and learning of the Queenes Majesties Wardes, being heires males, and whose landes, descending in possession and coming to the Queenes Majestie, shall amount to the cleere yearly value of c. markes, or above.’” Sir Nicholas asks the new Master of Wards to reform what he justly calls most “preposterous” abuses in the department:—“That the proceeding hath bin preposterous, appeareth by this: the chiefe thinge, and most of price, in wardeship, is the wardes mynde; the next to that, his bodie; the 34 but they are to study Latin until eleven; to dine between 11 and 12; to study with the music-master from 12 till 2; from 2 to 3 they are to be with the French master; and from 3 to 5 with the Latin and Greek masters. At 5 they are to go to evening prayers; then they are to sup; to be allowed honest pastimes till 8; and, last of all, before they go to bed at 9, they are again to apply themselves to music under the instruction of the master. At and after the age of 16 they were to attend lectures upon temporal and civil law, as well as de disciplinâ militari. It is not necessary to insert farther details; but what I have stated will serve to show how well-bred youths of that period were usually brought up, and how disgracefully the duty of education as regards wards was neglected.... It may appear singular that in these articles drawn up by Sir Nicholas, so much stress is laid upon instruction in music35; but it only serves to confirm the notion that the science was then most industriously cultivated by nearly every class of society.” Pace in 1517 requires that every one should study it, but should join with it some other study, as Astrology or Astronomy. He says also that the greatest part of the art had perished by men’s negligence; “For all that our musicians do now-a-days, is almost trivial if compared with what the old ones (antiqui) did, so that now hardly one or two (unus aut alter) can be found who know what harmony is, though the word is always on their tongue.” (De Fructu, p. 54-5.) Ascham, while lamenting in 1545 (Toxophilus, p. 29) ‘that the laudable custom of

NEGLECT OF EDUCATION BY MOTHERS.

By 1577 our rich people, according to Harrison, attended properly to the education of their children. After speaking “of our women, whose beautie commonlie exceedeth the fairest of those of the maine,” he says:

“This neuerthelesse I vtterlie mislike in the poorer sort of them, for the wealthier doo sildome offend herein: that being of themselues without competent wit, they are so carelesse in the education of their children (wherein their husbands also are to be blamed,) by means whereof verie manie of them neither fearing God, neither regarding either manners or obedience, do oftentimes come to confusion, which (if anie correction or discipline had beene vsed toward them in youth) might haue prooued good members of their common-wealth & countrie, by their good seruice and industrie.” —Descr. of Britaine, Holinshed, i. 115, col. 2.

This is borne out by Ascham, who says that young men up to 17 were well looked after, but after that age were turned loose to get into all the mischief they liked:

“In deede, from seven to seventene, yong jentlemen commonlie be carefullie enough brought up: But from seventene to seven and twentie (the most dangerous tyme of all a mans life, and most slipperie to stay well in) they have commonlie the rein of all licens in their owne hand, and speciallie soch as do live in the Court. And that which is most to be merveled at, commonlie the wisest and also best men be found the fondest fathers in this behalfe. And if som good father wold seek some remedie herein, yet the mother (if the household of our Lady) had rather, yea, and will to, have her sonne cunnyng and bold, in making him to lyve trimlie when he is yong, than by learning and travell to be able to serve his Prince & his countrie, both wiselie in peace, and stoutlie in warre, whan he is old.

“The fault is in your selves, ye noble mens sonnes, and therfore ye deserve the greater blame, that commonlie the meaner mens children cum to be the wisest councellours, and greatest doers, in the weightie affaires of this realme.” —Scholemaster, ed. Mayor, p. 39-40.

Note lastly, on this subject of private tuition, that Mulcaster in Elementarie, 1582, complains greatly of rich people aping the custom of princes in having private tutors for their boys, and withdrawing them from public schools where the spirit of emulation against other boys would make them work. The course he recommends is, that rich people should send their sons, with their tutors, to the public schools, and so get the advantage of both kinds of tuition.

Girls’ Home Education. The earliest notice of an English Governess that any friend has found for me is in “the 34th Letter of Osbert de Clare in Stephen’s reign, A.D. 1135-54. He mentions what seems to be a Governess of his children, ‘quædam matrona quæ liberos ejus (sc. militis, Herberti de Furcis) educare consueverat.’ She appears to be treated as one of the family: e.g. they wait for her when she goes into a chapel to pray. I think a nurse would have been ‘ancilla quæ liberos ejus nutriendos susceperat.’” Walter de Biblesworth was the tutor of the “lady Dionysia de Monchensi, a Kentish heiress, the daughter of William de Monchensi, baron of Swanescombe, and related, apparently35a, to the Valences, earls of Pembroke, and wrote his French Grammar, or rather Vocabulary36, for her. She married Hugh de Vere, the second son of Robert, fifth earl of Oxford. (Wright.) Lady Jane Grey was taught by a tutor at home, as we have seen. Palsgrave was tutor to Henry VIII.’s “most dere and most entirely beloved suster, quene Mary, douagier of France,” and no doubt wrote his Lesclaircissement de la Langue Francoise mainly for her, though also “desirous to do some humble service unto the nobilitie of this victorious realme, and universally unto all other estates of this my natyfe country.” Giles Du Guez, or as Palsgrave says to Henry VIII., “the synguler clerke, maister Gyles Dewes, somtyme instructor to your noble grace in this selfe tong, at the especiall instaunce and request of dyvers of your highe estates and noble men, hath also for his partye written in this matter.” His book is entitled “An Introductorie for to lerne to rede, to pronounce & to speke French trewly: compyled for the Right high, excellent, and most vertuous lady The Lady Mary of

UNIVERSITY EDUCATION IN EARLY ENGLAND.

3. English University Education. In early days Cambridge and Oxford must be looked on, I suppose, as mainly the great schools for boys, and the generality of scholars as poor men’s children,37 like Chaucer’s ‘poore scolares tuo that dwelten in the soler-halle of Cantebregge,’ his Clerk of Oxenford, and those students, gifts to whom are considered as one of the regular burdens on the husbandman, in “God speed the Plough.” Mr Froude says, Hist. of England, I. 37:

“The universities were well filled, by the sons of yeomen chiefly. The cost of supporting them at the colleges was little, and wealthy men took a pride in helping forward any boys of promise38, 38a (Latimer’s Sermons, p. 64). It seems clear also, as the Reformation drew nearer, while the clergy were sinking lower and lower, a marked change for the better became perceptible in a portion at least of the laity.”

But Grosseteste mentions a “noble” scholar at Oxford (Epist. 129), and Edward the Black Prince and Henry V. are said to have been students of Queen’s College, Oxford. Wolsey himself was a College tutor at Oxford, and had among his pupils the sons of the Marquess of Dorset, who afterwards gave him his first preferment, the living of Lymington. (Chappell.)

The legend runs that the first school at Oxford was founded by King Alfred39, and that Oxford was a place of study in the time of Edward the Confessor (1041-66). If one may quote a book now considered to be ‘a monkish forgery and an exploded authority,’ Ingulfus, who was Abbot of Croyland, in the Isle of Ely, under William the Conqueror, says of himself that he was educated first at Westminster, and then passed to Oxford, where he made proficiency in such books of Aristotle as were then accessible to students,40 and in the first two books of Tully’s Rhetoric.—Malden, On the Origin of Universities, 1835, p. 71.

In 1201 Oxford is called a University, and said to have contained 3000 scholars; in 1253 its first College (University) is founded. In 1244, Hen. III. grants it its first privileges as a corporate body, and confirms and extends them in 1245. In his reign, Wood says the number of scholars amounted to 30,000, a number no doubt greatly exaggerated.

In the reign of Stephen, we know that Vacarius, a Lombard by birth, who had studied the civil law at Bologna, came into England, and formed a school of law at Oxford41 ... he remained in England in the reign of Henry II. On account of the difficulty and expense of obtaining copies of the original books of the Roman law, and the poverty of his English scholars, Vacarius [ab. 1149, A.D.] compiled an abridgment of the Digests and Codex, in which their most essential parts were preserved, with some difference of arrangement, and illustrated from other law-books.... It bore on its title that it was “pauperibus presertim destinatus;” and hence the Oxford students of law obtained the name of Pauperists.—Malden, p. 72-3.

POVERTY OF UNIVERSITY SCHOLARS.

Roger Bacon (who died 124841a) speaks of a young fellow who came Opus Tertium, cap. xx. In 1214 the Commonalty of Oxford agreed to pay 52s. yearly for the use of poor scholars, and to give 100 of them a meal of bread, ale, and pottage, with one large dish of flesh or fish, every St Nicholas day.—Wood’s An. i. 185. Wood’s Annals (ed. Gutch, v. i. p. 619-20) also notes that in 1461 A.D. divers Scholars were forced to get a license under the Chancellor’s hand and seal (according to the Stat. 12 Ric. II., A.D. 1388, Ib., p. 519) to beg: and Sir Thos. More says “then may wee yet, like poor Scholars of Oxford, go a begging with our baggs & wallets, & sing salve Regina at rich mens dores.” On this point we may also compare the Statutes of Walter de Merton for his College at Oxford, A.D. 1274, ed. Halliwell, 1843, p. 19:

Cap. 13. De admissione scholarium.

Hoc etiam in eadem domo specialiter observari volo et decerno, ut circa eos, qui ad hujusmodi eleemosinæ participationem admittendi fuerint, diligenti solicitudine caveatur, ne qui præter castos, honestos, pacificos, humiles, indigentes, ad studium habiles ac proficere volentes, admittantur. Ad quorum agnitionem singulis, cum in dicta societate fuerint admittendi sustentationis gratia in eadem, ad annum unum utpote probationis causa primitus concedatur, ut sic demum si in dictis conditionibus laudabiliter se habuerint, in dictam congregationem admittantur.

See also cap. 31, against horses of scholars being kept.

Lodgings were let according to the joint valuation of 2 Magistri (scholars) and two townsmen (probi et legales homines de Villa). Wood, i. 255. An. 15 Hen. III. A.D. 1230-1.

In the beginning of the 15th century it had become the established rule that every scholar must be a member of some college or hall. The scholars who attended the public lectures of the university, without entering themselves at any college or hall, were called chamber dekyns, as in Paris they were called martinets; and frequent enactments were made against them.—Malden, p. 85, ref. to Woods Annals, 1408, -13, -22, and 1512, &c.

The following are the dates of the foundations of the different Colleges at Oxford as given in the University Calendar:—

University College, 1253-8042 Corpus Christi College 1516

Balliol College, betw. 1263 & 1268 Christ Church College 1526

Merton College, founded at Maldon, in Surrey, in 1264, removed to Oxford in Trinity College 1554

St John’s College 1555

Jesus College 1571

1274 Wadham College 1613

Exeter College 1314 Pembroke College 1624

Oriel College 1326 Worcester College 1714

The Queen’s College 1340 HALLS

New College 1386

Lincoln College 1427 St Edmund Hall 1317

All Souls College 1437 St Mary’s Hall 1333

Magdalen College 1458 New Inn Hall 1438

The King’s Hall and College of Brasenose 1509 Magdalen Hall 1487

St Alban Hall after 1547

UNDERGRADUATE’S EXPENSES AT OXFORD, 1478.

‘The Paston Letters’ do not give us much information about studies or life at Oxford, but they do give us material for estimating the cost of a student there (ii. 12443); they show us the tutor reporting to a mother her son’s progress in learning (ii. 130), and note the custom of a man, when made bachelor, giving a feast: “I was made bachelor ... on Friday was se’nnight (18 June, 1479), and I made my feast on the Monday after (21 June). I was promised venison against my feast, of my Lady Harcourt, and of another person too, but I was deceived of both; but my guests held them pleased with such meat as they had, blessed be God.” The letter as to the costs is dated May 19, 1478.

“I marvel sore that you sent me no word of the letter which I sent to you by Master William Brown at Easter. I sent you word that time that I should send you mine expenses particularly; but as at this time the bearer hereof had a letter suddenly that he should come home, & therefore I could have no leisure to send them to you on that wise, & therefore I shall write to you in this letter the whole sum of my expenses since I was with you till Easter last past, and

£s.d.

The whole sum of receipts is 5176

And the whole sum of expenses is 655¾

And that [= what] cometh over my receipts & my expenses I have borrowed of Master Edmund, & it draweth to 80

and yet I reckon none expenses since Easter; but as for them, they be not great.”

On this account Fenn says,

“he (Wm. Paston) had expended £6 5s. 5¾d. from the time he left his mother to Easter last, which this year fell on the 22nd March, from which time it was now two months, & of the expenses ‘since incurred’ he says ‘they be not great.’ We may therefore conclude the former account was from the Michaelmas preceding, and a moderate one; if so, we may fairly estimate his university education at £100 a-year of our present money. I mean that £12 10s. 11½d. would then procure as many necessaries and comforts as £100 will at this day.”

What was the basis of Fenn’s calculation he does not say. In 1468, the estimates for the Duke of Clarence’s household expenses give these prices, among others:

s. d. £s. d.

Wheat, a quarter 6 0 now, say 30 0

Ale, a gallon 1½ „ 1 0

Beves, less hide and tallow, each 10 0 „ 150 0*

Muttons „ „ 1 4 „ 210 0*

Velys „ „ 2 6 „ 40 0*

Porkes „ „ 2 0 „ 50 0

Rice, a pound 3 „ 5

Sugar „ 6 „ 6

Holland, an ell (6d., 8d., 16d.) 10 „ 1 3

Diapre „ 4 6 „ 3 0

Towelles „ 1 8 „ 1 6

Napkyns, a dozen, 12s., £1, £2, 17 4 „ 20 0

£27 0½ £3117 8

This sum would make the things named nearly 14 times as dear now as in 1468, and raise Fenn’s £100 to about £180; but no reliance can be placed on this estimate because we know nothing of the condition of the beves, muttons, veles, and porkys, then, as contrasted History of Prices 1250-1400 A.D., and he says:

“In the year to which you refer (1478) bread was very dear, 50 per cent. above the average. But on the whole, wheat prices in the 15th century were lower than in the 14th. Fenn’s calculation, a little below the mark for wheat, is still less below it in most of the second necessaries of life. The multiple of wheat is about 9, that of meat at least 24, those of butter and cheese nearly as much. But that of clothing is not more than 6, that of linen from 4 to 5. Taking however one thing with another, 12 is a safe general multiplier.”

This would make the cost of young Paston’s university education £150 11s. 6d. a year.

Mr Whiston would raise Fenn’s estimate of £100 to £200. He says that the rent of land in Kent in 1540 was a shilling or eighteenpence an acre,—see Valor Ecclesiasticus,—and that the tithes and glebes of the Dean and Chapter of Rochester, which were worth about £480 a-year in 1542, are now worth £19,000.

The remaining Oxford letter in the Paston volumes seems to allude to the students bearing part of the expenses of the degree, or the feast at it, of a person related to royal family.

“I supposed, when that I sent my letter to my brother John, that the Queen’s brother should have proceeded at Midsummer, and therefore I beseeched her to send me some money, for it will be some cost to me, but not much.”

The first school at Cambridge is said to have been founded by Edward the Elder, the son of Alfred, but on no good authority. In 1223 the term University was applied to the place. The dates of the foundations of its Colleges, as given in its Calendar, are:

St Peter’s 1257 St Catherine’s Hall 1473

(date of charter, 1264) Jesus 1496

Clare Hall 1326 Christ’s 1505

Pembroke 1347 St John’s 1511

Caius 1349 Magdalene 1519

Trinity Hall 1350 Trinity 1546

Corpus Christi 1351 Emmanuel 1584

King’s 1441 Sidney 1598

Queen’s 1446 Downing 1800

(refounded 1465)

FEW NOBLEMEN AT CAMBRIDGE.

Lord Henry Brandon, son of the Duke of Suffolk, died of the Ath. Cant., i. 105, 541). Of them Ascham says, ‘two noble Primeroses of Nobilitie, the yong Duke of Suffolke and Lord H. Matrevers were soch two examples to the Courte for learnyng, as our tyme may rather wishe, than look for agayne.’—Scholemaster, ed. Mayor, p. 62. Besides these two young noblemen, the first 104 pages of Cooper’s Athenæ Cantabrigienses disclose only one other, Lord Derby’s son, and the following names of sons of knights:44

CAMBRIDGE MEN.

1443 Thomas Rotherham, Fellow of King’s, son of Sir Thomas Rotherham, knight, and Alice his wife.

1494 Reginald Bray, high-steward of the university of Oxford, son of Sir Richard Bray, knight, and the lady Joan his second wife.

Humphrey Fitzwilliam, of Pembroke Hall, Vice-Chancellor, appears to have been the son of Sir Richard Fitzwilliam of Ecclesfield, and Elizabeth his wife.

ab. 1468 Richard Redman, son of Sir Richard Redman and Elizabeth [Aldburgh] his wife; made Bp. of St Asaph.

1492 Thomas Savage, son of Sir John Savage, knight, Bp. of Rochester. Was LL.D. ? educated at Cambridge.

1485 James Stanley, younger son of Thomas Earl of Derby, educated at both universities, graduated at Cambridge, and became prebendary of Holywell in 1485, Bp. of Ely in 1506.

1497 William Coningsby, son of Sir Humphrey Coningsby, elected from Eton to King’s.

1507 Thomas Elyot, son of Sir Richard Elyot, made M.A.

ab. 1520 George Blagge, son of Sir Robert Blagge.

Queen Elizabeth’s favourite, Lord Essex, was at Trinity College, Cambridge. See his letter of May 13, from there, in Ellis, series II. v. iii. p. 73; the furniture of his room, and his expenses, in the note p. 73-4; and his Tutor’s letter asking for new clothes for ‘my Lord,’ or else ‘he shall not onely be thrid bare, but ragged.’

Archbp. Whitgift45, when B.D. at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, A.D. 1563, “bestowed some of his time and abilities in the instruction of ingenious youth, sent to the college for education, in good learning and Christian manners. And among such his pupils, were two noblemen’s sons, viz. the Lord Herbert, son and heir to the Earl of Pembroke; and John, son and heir to the Lord North.” (Life, by Strype, ed. 1822, vol. i. p. 14.)

While Whitgift was Master of Trinity, Strype says he had bred up under him not only several Bishops, but also “the Earls of Worcester and Cumberland, the Lord Zouch, the Lord Dunboy of Ireland, Sir Nicolas and Sir Francis Bacon. To which I may add one more, namely, the son of Sir Nicolas White, Master of the Rolls in Ireland, who married a Devereux.” (Life, i. 157, ed. 1822.)

NOBLES AND GENTLEMEN AT OXFORD.

A search through the whole of the first volume of Wood’s Athenæ Oxonienses, comprising a period of nearly 100 years, has resulted in the following meagre list of men of noble or knightly birth who distinguished themselves. There are besides many men of “genteel

1478 Edmund Dudley, son of John Dudley, Esq., 2nd son of John Lord Dudley, of Dudley Castle in Staffordshire.

ab. 1483 John Colet, the eldest son of Sir Henry Colet, twice lord mayor of London ... was educated in grammaticals, partly in London or Westminster.

„ Nicholas Vaux, son of Sir Will. Vaux of Harwedon in Northamptonshire (not the Poet, Lord Vaux).

end of Edw. IV. John Bourchier, Lord Berners, eldest son of Sir John Bourchier, knight, Lord Berners of Hertfordshire ... was instructed in several sorts of learning in the university in the latter end of K. Edw. IV.; in whose reign, and before, were the sons of divers of the English nobility educated in academical literature in Baliol Coll.,46 wherein, as ’tis probable, this our author was instructed also.

1497 Thomas More, son of Sir John More, knight. (The Sir Thomas More.)

? ab. 1510 George Bulleyn, son and heir of Sir Tho. Bullen, and brother of Anne Bulleyn.

? „ Henry Parker, son of Sir William Parker, knight.

1515 Christopher Seintgerman, son of Sir Henry Seintgerman, knight.

? ab. 1520 Thomas Wyatt, son of Henry Wyatt of Alington Castle in Kent, knight and baronet, migrated from St John’s, Cambridge.47

153848 John Heron, a Kentish man born, near of kin to Sir John Heron, knight.

? ab. 1520 Edward Seymoure, son of Sir John Seymoure, or St Maure of Wolf-hall in Wilts, knight, was educated in trivials, and partly in quadrivials for some time in this university. He was Jane Seymour’s brother, and afterwards Duke of Somerset, and was beheaded on Jan. 22, 1552-3.

1534 John Philpot, son of Sir Pet. Philpot, knight of the Bath. Fellow of New Coll.

ab. 15— Henry Lord Stafford (author of the Mirror for Magistrates), the only son of Edward, Duke of Bucks, ‘received

1515 Reynold Pole (the Cardinal), a younger son of Sir Rich. Pole.

? ab. 1530 Anthony Browne, son of Sir Weston Browne, of Abbesroding and of Langenhoo in Essex, knight.

ab. 1574 Patrick Plunket, baron of Dunsary in Ireland, son of Rob. Plunket, baron of the same place.

ab. 1570 Philip Sidney (the poet), son of Sir Henry Sidney.

? John Smythe, son of Sir Clem. Smythe.

(Peter Levens or Levins, our Manipulus or Rhyming-Dictionary man, became a student in the university, an. 1552, was elected probationer-fellow of Mag. Coll. into a Yorkshire place, 18 Jan. 1557, being then bach. of arts, and on the 19th Jan. 1559 was admitted true and perpetual fellow. In 1560 he left his fellowship. Ath. Ox. p. 547, col. 2.)

? ab. 1570 Reynolde Scot, a younger son of Sir John Scot of Scotshall, near to Smeeth in Kent.

1590 Hayward Townshend, eldest son of Sir Henry Townshend, knight.

ab. 1587 Francis Tresham (of Gunpowder Plot notoriety), son of Sir Thomas Tresham, knight.

The number of friars and monks at the Universities before the Reformation, and especially at Oxford, must have been large. Tanner says,

In our universities ... were taught divinity and canon law (then, t. Hen. III., much in vogue), and the friers resorting thither in great numbers and applying themselves closely to their studies, outdid the monks in all fashionable knowledge. But the monks quickly perceived it, and went also to the universities and studied hard, that they might not be run down by the friers.49 And as the 50 for the education of their novices, where they were for some years instructed in grammar, philosophy, and school divinity, and then returning home, improved their knowledge by their private studies, to the service of God and the credit of their respective societies. So that a little before the Reformation, the greatest part of the proceeders in divinity at Oxford were monks and Regular canons.

FAVOURITISM OF THE RICH IN THE UNIVERSITIES.

By Harrison’s time, A.D. 157751, rich men’s sons had not only pressed into the Universities, but were scrooging poor men’s sons out of the endowments meant only for the poor, learning the lessons that Mr Whiston so well shows our Cathedral dignitaries have carried out Les gros poissons mangent les menus. Pro. Poore men are (easily) supplanted by the rich, the weake by the strong, the meane by the mighty.”52 (Cotgrave, u. manger.) The law of “natural selection” prevails. Who shall say nay in a Christian land professing the principles of the great “Inventor of Philanthropy”? Whitgift for one, see his Life of Strype, Bk. I. chap. xiii. p. 148-50, ed. 1822. In 1589 an act 31 Eliz. c. 6, was passed to endeavour to prevent the abuse, but, like modern Election-bribery Acts with their abuse, did not do it.

“at this present, of one sort & other, there are about three thousand students nourished in them both (as by a late serveie it manifestlie appeared). They [the Colleges at our Universities] were created by their founders at the first, onelie for pore men’s sons, whose parents were not able to bring them up unto learning: but now they have the least benefit of them, by reason the rich do so incroch upon them. And so farre hath this inconvenence spread itself, that it is in my time an hard matter for a pore man’s child to come by a fellowship (though he be neuer so good a scholer & worthie of that roome.) Such packing also is used at elections, that not he which best deserveth, but he that hath most friends, though he be the worst scholer, is alwaies surest to speed; which will turne in the end to the overthrow of learning. That some gentlemen also, whose friends have been in times past benefactors to certeine of those houses, doe intrude into the disposition of their estates, without all respect of order or statutes devised by the founders, onelie thereby to place whome they think good (and not without some hope of gaine) the case is too too evident, and their attempt would soone take place, if their superiors did not provide to bridle their indevors. In some grammar schooles likewise, which send scholers to these universities, it is lamentable to see what briberie is used; BAD EXAMPLE OF RICH MEN AT COLLEGE. for yer the scholer can be preferred, such briberye is made, that pore men’s children are commonly shut out, and the richer sort received (who in times past thought it dishonour to live as it were upon almes) and yet being placed, most of them studie little other than histories, tables, dice & trifles, as men that make not the living by their studie the end of their purposes; which is a lamentable bearing. Besides this, being for the most part either gentlemen, or rich men’s sonnes, they oft bring the universities into much slander.53 For

“Everie one of these colleges haue in like manner their professors or readers of the tongs and severall sciences, as they call them, which dailie trade up the youth there abiding privatlie in their halles, to the end they may be able afterwards (when their turne commeth about, which is after twelve termes) to show themselves abroad, by going from thence into the common schooles and publike disputations (as it were In aream) there to trie their skilles, and declare how they have profited since their coming thither.

“Moreover in the publike schooles of both the universities, there are found at the prince’s charge (and that verie largelie) five professors & readers, that is to saie, of divinitie, of the civill law, physicke, the Hebrew and the Greek tongues. And for the other lectures, as of philosophie, logike, rhetorike and the quadriuials, although the latter (I mean, arithmetike, musike, geometrie and astronomie, and with them all skill in the perspectives are now smallie regarded in either of them) the universities themselves do allowe competent stipends to such as reade the same, whereby they are sufficiently provided for, touching the maintenance of their estates, and no less encouraged to be diligent in their functions.”

On the introduction of the study of Greek into the Universities, Dr S. Knight says in his Life of Colet:

“As for Oxford, its own History and Antiquities sufficiently confess, that nothing was known there but Latin, and that in the most School-men. Cornelius Vitellius, an Italian, was the first who taught Greek in that University54; and from him the famous Grocyne learned the first Elements thereof.

“In Cambridge, Erasmus was the first who taught the Greek Grammar. And so very low was the State of Learning in that University, that (as he tells a Friend) about the Year 1485, the Beginning of Hen. VII. Reign, there was nothing taught in that publick Seminary besides Alexander’s Parva Logicalia, (as they called them) the old Axioms of Aristotle, and the Questions of John Scotus, till in Process of time good Letters were brought in, and some Knowledge of the Mathematicks; as also Aristotle in a new Dress, and some Skill in the Greek Tongue; and, by Degrees, a Multitude of Authors, whose Names before had not been heard of.55

“It is certain that even Erasmus himself did little understand Greek, when he came first into England, in 1497 (13 Hen. VII.), and that our Countryman Linacer taught it him, being just returned from Italy with great Skill in that Language: Which Linacer and William Grocyne were the two only Tutors that were able to teach it.” Saml. Knight, Life of Dr John Colet, pp. 17, 18.

The age at which boys went up to the University seems to have varied greatly. When Oxford students were forbidden to play marbles they could not have been very old. But in “The Mirror of the Periods of Man’s Life” (? ab. 1430 A.D.), in the Society’s Hymns to the Virgin and Christ of this year, we find the going-up age put at twenty:

This is confirmed by young Paston’s being at Eton at nineteen (see below, p. lvi). In 1612, Brinsley (Grammar Schoole, p. 307) puts the age at fifteen, and says,

“such onely should be sent to the Vniuersities, who proue most ingenuous and towardly, and who, in a loue of learning, will begin to

“Such as haue good discretion how to gouerne themselues there, and to moderate their expenses; which is seldome times before 15 yeeres of age; which is also the youngest age admitted by the statutes of the Vniuersity, as I take it.”

FOREIGN UNIVERSITY EDUCATION.

4. Foreign University Education. That some of our nobles sent their sons to be educated in the French universities (whence they sometimes imported foreign vices into England57) is witnessed by some verses in a Latin Poem “in MS. Digby, No. 4 (Bodleian Library) of the end of the 13th or beginning of the 14th century,” printed by Mr Thomas Wright in his Anecdota Literaria, p. 38.

An English nation or set of students of the Faculty of Arts at Paris existed in 1169; after 1430 the name was changed to the German nation. Besides the students from the French provinces subject to the English, as Poictou, Guienne, &c, it included the English, Scottish, Irish, Poles, Germans, &c. —Encyc. Brit. John of Salisbury (born 1110) says that he was twelve years studying at Paris on his own account. Thomas a Becket, as a young man, studied at Paris. Giraldus Cambrensis (born 1147) went to Paris for education; so did Alexander Neckham (died 1227). Henry says,

“The English, in particular, were so numerous, that they occupied several schools or colleges; and made so distinguished a figure by their genius and learning, as well as by their generous manner of living, that they attracted the notice of all strangers. This appears from the following verses, describing the behaviour of a stranger on A.D. 1170:—

Montpelier was another University whither Englishmen resorted, and is to be remembered by us if only for the memory of Andrew Borde, M.D., some bits of whose quaintness are in the notes to Russell in the present volume.

Padua is to be noted for Pace’s sake. He is supposed to have been born in 1482.

Later, the custom of sending young noblemen and gentlemen to Italy—to travel, not to take a degree—was introduced, and Ascham’s condemnation of it, when no tutor accompanied the youths, is too well known to need quoting. The Italians’ saying, Inglese Italianato è un diabolo incarnato, sums it up.59

MONASTIC AND CATHEDRAL SCHOOLS.

5. Monastic and Cathedral Schools. Herbert Losing, Bp. of Thetford, afterwards Norwich, between 1091 and 1119, in his 37th Letter restores his schools at Thetford to Dean Bund, and directs that no other schools be opened there.

Tanner (Not. Mon. p. xx. ed. Nasmith), when mentioning “the use and advantage of these Religious houses”—under which term

“Secondly, They were schools of learning & education; for every convent had one person or more appointed for this purpose; and all the neighbours that desired it, might have their children taught grammar and church musick without any expence to them.60

In the nunneries also young women were taught to work, and to read English, and sometimes Latin also. So that not only the lower rank of people, who could not pay for their learning, but most of the noblemen and gentlemen’s daughters were educated in those places.”61

LYDGATE’S TRICKS AT SCHOOL.

As Lydgate (born at Lydgate in Suffolk, six or seven miles from Newmarket) was ordained subdeacon in the Benedictine monastery of Bury St Edmunds in 138962, he was probably sent as a boy to a monastic school. At any rate, as he sketches his early escapades—apple-stealing, playing truant, &c.,—for us in his Testament63, I shall quote the youth’s bit of the poem here:—

Harleian MS. 2255, fol. 60.

At these monastic schools, I suppose, were educated mainly the boys whom the monks hoped would become monks, cleric or secular; mostly the poor, the Plowman’s brother who was to be the Parson, not often the ploughman himself. Once, though, made a scholar and monk there, and sent by the Monastery to the University, the workman’s, if not the ploughman’s, son, might rule nobles and poor parents63a, was sent to be brought up in the “religious house of the Canons of Merton.”

In 1392 the writer of Piers Plowman’s Crede sketches the then state of things thus:

Here I might stop the quotation, but I go on, for justice has never yet been done66 to this noble Crede and William’s Vision as pictures of the life of their times,—chiefly from the profound ignorance of us English of our own language; partly from the grace, the freshness, and the brilliance of Chaucer’s easier and inimitable verse:—

EDUCATION OF FIELD LABOURERS.

There is one side of the picture, the workman’s son turned monk, and clerk to a lord. Let us turn to the other side, the ploughman’s son who didn’t turn monk, whose head was ‘shet’ in the straw, who delved and ditched, and dunged the earth, eat bread of corn and bran, worts fleshless (vegetables, but no meat), drank water, and went miserably (Crede, l. 1565-71). What education did he get? To whom could he be apprenticed? What was his chance in life? Let the Statute-Book answer:—

A.D. 1388. 12º Rich. II., Cap. v.

Item. It is ordained & assented, That he or she which used to labour at the Plough and Cart, or other Labour or Service of Husbandry till they be of the Age of Twelve Years, that from thenceforth they shall abide at the same Labour, without being put to any Mystery or Handicraft; and if any Covenant or Bond of Apprentie (so) be from henceforth made to the Contrary, the same shall be holden for none.

A.D. 1405-6. 7º Henri IV., Cap. xvii.

. . . . . And Whereas in the Statutes made at Canterbury among other Articles it is contained That he or she that useth to labour at the Plough or Cart, or other Labour or Service of Husbandry, till he be of the age of Twelve Years, that from the same time forth he shall abide at the same Labour, without being put to any Mystery or Handicraft; and if any Covenant or Bond be made from that time forth to the contrary, it shall be holden for none: Notwithstanding which Article, and the good Statutes afore made through all parts of the Realm, the Infants born within the Towns and Seignories of Upland, whose Fathers & Mothers have no Land nor Rent nor other Living, but only their Service or Mystery, be put by their said Fathers and Mothers and other their Friends to serve, and bound Apprentices, to divers Crafts within the Cities and Boroughs of the said Realm sometime at the Age of Twelve Years, sometime within the said Age, and that for the Pride of Clothing and other evil Customs that Servants do use in the same; so that there is so great Scarcity of Labourers and other Servants of Husbandry that the Gentlemen and other People of the Realm be greatly impoverished for the Cause aforesaid: Our Sovereign Lord the King considering the said Mischief, and willing thereupon to provide Remedy, by the advice & assent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and at the request of the said Commons, hath ordained and stablished, That no Man nor Woman, of what Estate or Condition they be, shall put their Son or Daughter, of whatsoever Age he or she be, to Serve as Apprentice to no Craft nor other Labour within any City or Borough in the Realm, except he have Land or Rent to the Value of Twenty Shillings by the Year at

A most gracious saving clause truly, for those children who were used to labour at the plough and cart till they were twelve years old67. Let us hope that some got the benefit of it!

These Acts I came across when hunting for the Statutes referred to by the Boke of Curtasye as fixing the hire of horses for carriage at fourpence a piece, and they caused me some surprise. They made me wonder less at the energy with which some people now are striving to erect “barriers against democracy” to prevent the return match for the old game coming off.—However improving, and however justly retributive, future legislation for the rich by the poor in the spirit of past legislation for the poor by the rich might be, it could hardly be considered pleasant, and is surely worth putting up the true barrier against, one of education in each poor man’s mind. (He who americanizes us thus far will be the greatest benefactor England has had for some ages.)—These Statutes also made me think how the old spirit still lingers in England, how a friend of my own was curate in a Surrey village where the kind-hearted squire would allow none of the R’s but Reading to be taught in his school; how another clergyman lately reported his Farmers’ meeting on the school question: Reading and Writing might be taught, but Arithmetic not; the boys would be getting to know too

NO BONDSMAN’S SON TO BE AN APPRENTICE.

The early practice of the Freemasons, and other crafts, refusing to let any member take a bondsman’s son as an apprentice, was founded on the reasonable apprehension that his lord would or might afterwards claim the lad, make him disclose the trade-secrets, and carry on his art for the lord’s benefit. The fourth of the ‘Fyftene artyculus or fyftene poyntus’ of the Freemasons, printed by Mr Halliwell (p. 16), is on this subject.

Articulus quartus (MS. Bibl. Reg. 17 A, Art. I., fol. 3, &c.)

I should like to see the evidence of a lord’s son having become a working mason, and dwelling seven years with his master ‘hys craft to lurne.’

In the following section, the attribution of quotes is sometimes obscure. The text layout has been kept as close as possible to the original.

POST-REFORMATION CATHEDRAL SCHOOLS.

Cathedral Schools. About the pre-Reformation Schools I can find only the extract from Tanner given above, p. xlii. On the post-Reformation Schools I refer readers to Mr Whiston’s Cathedral Trusts, 1850. He says:

“The Cathedrals of England are of two kinds, those of the old and those of the new foundation: of the latter, Canterbury (the old archiepiscopal see) and Carlisle, Durham, Ely, Norwich, Rochester, and Worcester, old episcopal sees, were A.D. 1541-2 refounded, or rather reformed, by Henry VIII. ... Besides these, he created five other cathedral churches or colleges, in connexion with the five new episcopal sees of Bristol, Chester, Gloucester, Oxford, and Peterborough. He further created the see of Westminster, which was ... subsequently (A.D. 1560) converted to a deanery collegiate by Queen Elizabeth ... (p. 6). The preamble of the Act 31 Henry VIII. c. 9, for founding the new cathedrals, preserved in Henry’s own handwriting, recites that they were established ‘To the intente that Gods worde myght the better be sett forthe, cyldren broght up in lernynge, clerces nuryshyd in the universities, olde servantes decayed, to have lyfing, allmes housys for pour folke to be sustayned in, Reders of grece, ebrew, and latyne to have good stypende, dayly almes to be mynistrate, mending of hyght wayes, and exhybision for mynisters of the chyrche.’”

“A general idea of the scope and nature of the cathedral establishments, as originally planned and settled by Henry VIII., may be formed from the first chapter of the old statutes of Canterbury, which is almost identical with the corresponding chapter of the statutes of all the other cathedrals of the new foundation. It is as follows:

“On68 the entire number of those who have their sustentation (qui sustentantur) in the cathedral and metropolitical church of Canterbury:

“First of all we ordain and direct that there be for ever in our aforesaid church, one dean, twelve canons, six preachers, twelve minor canons, one deacon, one subdeacon, twelve lay-clerks, one master of the choristers, ten choristers, two teachers of the boys in grammar, one of whom is to be the head master, the other, second master, fifty boys to be instructed in grammar,69 twelve poor men to be maintained at the costs and charges of the said church, two vergers, two subsacrists (i.e., sextons), four servants in the church to ring the bells, and arrange all the rest, two porters, who shall also be barber-tonsors, one caterer,70 one butler, and one under butler, one cook, and one under-cook, who, indeed, in the number prescribed, are to serve in our church every one of them in his own order, according to our statutes and ordinances.”

In the Durham statutes, as settled in the first year of Philip and Mary, the corresponding chapter is as follows:

On71 the total number of those who have their sustentation (qui sustentantur) in the cathedral church of Durham.

“We direct and ordain that there be for ever in the said church, one dean, twelve prebendaries, twelve minor canons, one deacon, one sub-deacon, ten clerks, (who may be either clerks or laymen,) one master of the choristers, ten choristers, two teachers of the boys in grammar, eighteen boys to be instructed in grammar, eight poor men to be maintained at the costs of the said church, two subsacrists, two vergers, two porters, one of whom shall also be barber-tonsor, one butler, one under-butler, one cook, and one under-cook.”

“The monastic or collegiate character of the bodies thus constituted, is indicated by the names and offices of the inferior ministers above specified, who were intended to form a part of the establishment of the Common Hall, in which most of the subordinate members, including the boys to be instructed in grammar, were to take their meals. There was also another point in which the cathedrals were meant to resemble and supply the place of the old religious houses, i.e., in the maintenance of a certain number of students at the universities.”

R^t. Whiston, Cathedral Trusts and their Fulfilment, p. 2–4.

“The nature of these schools, and the desire to perpetuate and improve them, may be inferred from ‘certein articles noted for the reformation of the cathedral churche of Excestr’, submitted by the commissioners of Henry VIII., unto the correction of the Kynges Majestie,’ as follows: