Arthur Francis Leach

“ The important thing for the schools was that the university movement made the cathedral schoolmasters devote themselves to theology and to grown-up students, to the exclusion of grammar and arts, and left the grammar school entirely for boys and youths to be instructed in classical literature, rhetoric and the elements of logic, preparatory for the university. Moreover, the movement for university colleges perhaps caused a new crop of collegiate churches to spring up, of which grammar schools formed an integral and important part. ”

“ Instruction was now in a foreign language, and grammar became prominent. Early rising, loud speaking and hard flogging were in the ascendant. Martial curses the master of a neighbouring school whose shouts and blows woke him up at cock crow. Horace assures us that he admires the old Latin poets in spite of their having been flogged into him by the pedagogus, Orbilius, whose name has become proverbial. The staple of instruction in the Roman schools was the works of the poets, Greek and Latin, Homer and Virgil, Hesiod and Aesop, Menander and Terence. ”

“ In England, at all events from this time, we always find public schools taught not by the monks, but by the secular clergy.
The notion that schools were monastic and monasteries schools is partly due to a verbal confusion, ecclesiastical and monastic having been ignorantly treated as convertible terms. Education and schools were the province of the church, they were subject to the canon law, and every one connected with them was reckoned as a clerk with the privilege of clergy. ”

“ For a true conception of the history of secondary schools it cannot be repeated too often and too emphatically that to this day the true title of the greatest English “public schools” is grammar school. Winchester and Eton are the grammar schools of the colleges of the Blessed Mary of Winchester and of Eton respectively, and Westminster is the grammar school of the collegiate church of St Peter, Westminster. ”

“ The history of medieval and modern schools has, thanks to the superior industry and research of the French and Germans, started with Charlemagne and Alcuin. Though the schools of France came straight from the Roman grammar and rhetoric schools, and the English schools, by new importation, direct from Italy, it has always been assumed that their origin was monastic and that monks were the chief educators. This is because Charlemagne, largely it would seem under Alcuin’s influence, did make a distinct effort to convert the monasteries practically into colleges and public schools. ”

“ The grammar schools in the country towns, with on the whole inferior teachers, clung more closely to the ancient ways. As the growth of commerce and manufactures brought into the ranks of the local aristocracy men mostly dissenters, the grammar schools, which refused to admit them either as governors or scholars, and which despised, if they did not, as they often did, wholly reject modern languages and modern subjects, were relegated to the free boys, who went there not for love of learning but because learning was free. ”

“ The number of school foundations credited to Queen Elizabeth or her era is very much larger than the facts justify. The greatest of all, Westminster, which during the 18th century was facile princeps in the numbers, social rank and academic and literary achievement of its scholars, had in fact never ceased after its foundation, or refoundation, as a cathedral school under Henry VIII. Though Mary had restored the monks, the school went on throughout her reign [1] and until Elizabeth formally refounded it with the restored canons. ”

“ The grammar school was a public school open to every one. It has been indeed repeatedly asserted that the cathedral schools were choristers’ schools and taught nothing but the psalter and a little elementary Latin grammar. The assertion is founded on a complete misunderstanding. It is a question whether there were any choristers in the 12th century or whether they are not a later introduction, the canons and their vicars choral or choir deputies at first doing the singing themselves. ”

“ The substitution of regulars for seculars ceased in the latter part of the 12th century, owing chiefly to the secular clergy at length, under papal pressure, accepting the rule of celibacy, and to the growth of universities. The universities were developed out of the cathedral and collegiate church schools. In the days of Alcuin, as we saw, the one schoolmaster taught all subjects from the elements of grammar to theology and philosophy. In Italy the faculties of law and medicine had early in the 12th century developed schools of their own. ”

“ Yet it had become necessary by the Lateran Council in 1179 for the canon law definitely to provide that, “to prevent the poor who could not be helped by their parents’ means from being deprived of the opportunity of learning and advancement,” every cathedral church should provide a competent benefice for a master to teach the clerks of the church and poor scholars gratis: and that in other churches if any endowment had been assigned for the purpose it should be restored, while no fees were to be exacted for licences to teach. ”

“ Ecclesiastical benefices were the chief means by which, before the Reformation, the civil servants of the crown were paid for services which, being clerical, were also ecclesiastical, and for which the settled stipends were wholly inadequate. In his accumulation of benefices Wykeham seems to have distanced all his predecessors and successors, except perhaps John Maunsell, the chancellor of Henry III., and Thomas Wolsey, the chancellor of Henry VIII., the latter being a pluralist not in canonries and livings but in bishoprics. ”

“ When he dropped the title of schoolmaster, the chancellor ceased himself to teach any school except the theological school, in which he continued to lecture until the Reformation, but he always remained the educational officer of the chapter. Thus at York in 1307 he was bound to be a master in theology, i.e. D.D., and “to him belongs the collation to grammar schools; but the school of York, he ought to give to a regent in arts” (i.e. an M.A. who has not taken his degree more than two years) “to hold for three years, and not longer, except by grace for four years.” ”

“ Hitherto after every attempt fees have crept back under some guise or other, as the endowments provided to ensure freedom were often inadequate to start with, and anyhow became inadequate by change in the value of money, while the inveterate habit of the rich in giving “tips” to secure special attention forced contributions on others. The movement began under the Roman Empire, Pliny founding a practically free school at Como, while successive emperors from Vespasian onwards extended the area and pay of public schools at the state expense, both of rhetoric and grammar. ”

“ Save for that short period, alike in England and on the continent general education and public schools were the exclusive duty and privilege of the secular clergy from the days of Augustine to the days of Laud. The monks from first to last were never public schoolmasters or educators, they never acted as teachers, and the monasteries never kept schools, except for their own novices, and they never, except incidentally as lords of manors or trustees, or transferees of the spiritual rights of secular colleges, even controlled schools. ”

“ For we hear of Socrates, when he was grown up, repairing to a lyre-school to learn music, because he thought his education was not complete without it. Roughly, the age for the grammar-school and song-school was 7 to 14, for the gymnastic school 12 to 18. A certain amount of literature was imparted, as, especially in the song-school, Homer and other early poets, the very Bibles of Hellas, were learnt by heart. ”

“ Tobias, who died bishop of Rochester in 726, is also described as “a most learned man, for he was a pupil of Theodore and Hadrian, and so, together with a knowledge of literature ecclesiastical and general, Greek and Latin were as familiar to him as his native tongue.” We may therefore credit Rochester with its school at least as early as Toby’s episcopate. ”

“ Another and less fortunate feature may be observed in the frequent attempt to make the grammar schools do double work, and supply the loss caused by the suppression of the song schools, by doing duty also as elementary schools to teach the three R’s. It is an attempt which is being continually renewed and always results in failure; generally ending in degrading the secondary school while not making the elementary school efficient. ”

“ No dissenter, however, could be a member of a governing body or master of an endowed school, and if a dissenter went as a scholar he had to go to church and learn the church catechism. The church was therefore left in sole control of the endowed schools, with the result that at the end of the 18th century the schools were in a more decrepit condition than they were at any time in their long history. Only those which had great possessions and attracted the aristocracy flourished. ”

“ They also learned to write, so that before they were of an age to practise manly arts, namely hunting and such pursuits as befit gentlemen (nobilibus) , they became studious and clever in the liberal arts.” This passage so entirely coincides with the description of York school given by Alcuin in its evidence that the grammar school was frequented by laymen as well as clerics, and it is so improbable that “Asser” borrowed from Alcuin, that we may take it to be the normal thing that young Englishmen of good birth were brought up in the public grammar schools then as now. ”

“ SCHOOLS. As is the case with so many of the institutions of modern civilization, so with schools; the name, the thing, the matter, the method have been derived from Greece through Rome. A strange fortune has converted the Greek word σχολή, which originally meant leisure, particularly the “retired leisure that in trim gardens takes his pleasure” of men, into the proper term for the modern school. ”

“ The 15th century saw a reaction against the logic, which, valuable as it was, was begun much too early and was strongly re probated by Wayneflete, who at Magdalen School insisted that his “demyes,” or scholars, should not go on to logic till perfect in grammar. The wide knowledge of the classics shown by Chaucer, who no doubt, like Becket before him and Milton after him, went to St Paul's school, indicates what the average laymen and cleric learnt in the average grammar school. ”

“ As the model must be older than the copy, Canterbury school must be allowed the primacy over Dunwich. Being spoken of as an existing institution, with no suggestion that it was then newly established, we need not doubt that it was founded by St Augustine as part of the cathedral establishment of Christ Church, Canterbury. This church was not then monastic, but like all other cathedrals, a college of priests, the monks being placed apart, outside the city walls in the abbey, first called St Paul’s, afterwards known as St Augustine’s. ”

“ At St Paul’s they were only eight until the 15th century, at York only seven in the 14th. So far from the grammar school being a school solely or even chiefly for choristers, there are several cases in which contests arose whether they had any right of admission to the grammar school. Thus the 14th century register of the almoner or almsgiver of St Paul’s, who about 1180 was given a house for the poor, in which later the choristers were boarded, records that the grammar schoolmaster claimed five shillings a year for teaching them grammar. ”