Note 16 — BOOK III THE COMPANIES

Leach, Journal of Education (1909), 506, cites the Registrum Elemosinariae (ed. M. Hacket from Harl. MS. 1080), ‘If the almoner does not keep a clerk to teach the choristers grammar, the schoolmaster of St. Paul’s claims 5s. a year for teaching them, though he ought to demand nothing for them, because he keeps the school for them, as the Treasurer of St. Paul’s once alleged before the Dean and Chapter is to be found in ancient deeds’. Mr. Leach adds, ‘It is to be feared the Treasurer invented or misrepresented the ancient deed’. William de Tolleshunt, almoner, appears from his will of 1329 in the same register to have taught his boys himself (Archaeologia, lxii. 1. 220), ‘Item lego pueris ecclesiae quos ego educavi senioribus in Elemosinaria existentibus cuilibet xijd et iunioribus cuilibet vjd’. He also left his grammar books ‘et omnes quaternos sermonum de Festo Sanctorum Innocencium, quos tempore meo solebant Episcopi Puerorum pronuntiare, ad remanendum in Elemosinaria praedicta imperpetuum, ad usum fructum puerorum in eadem degencium’. His logic and physic books are to be lent out ‘pueris aptis ad scolatizandum, cum ab elemosinaria recesserint’.