1524 Berkhampstead. Fr. Gr. Sch. 1526 Pocklington. Fr. Gr. Sch. 1526 Childrey, near Wantage. Fr. Sch.

bef. 1528 Cuckfield. Fr. Gr. Sch. 1528 Gloucester. Saint Mary de Crypt. Fr. Gr. Sch.

1528 Grantham. Fr. Gr. Sch. 1530 Stamford, or Stanford. Fr. Gr. Sch.

1530 Newark-upon-Trent. Fr. Gr. Sch.

[t. i. Cathedral Grammar] or College School.

1542 Canterbury. The King's School. 1542 Rochester. The King's Sch.' 1542 Findon, properly Thingdon,

near Wellingborough. Fr. Sch. 1542 Northampton. Fr. Gr. Sch. 1543 Abergavenny. Fr. Gr. Sch. 1544 Chester. [Cathedral] Gr., or

King's School. 1544 Sutton Coldfield. Gr. Sch. bef. 1545 Gloucester. Cathedral

[t. i. King's], or College School. 1545 St Mary of Ottery. Gr. Sch. bef. Reform, Norwich. Old Gr. Sch. bef. 1547 Wisbech. Gr. Sch. t. Ref. Loughborough. Fr. Gr. Sch. bef. 1549 Wellington. Gr. Sch. About 1174 A.D., Fitzstephen speaks of the London schools and scholars thus I use Pegge's translation, 1772, to which Mr Chappell referred me,

"The three principal churches in London2 are privileged by grant and ancient usage with schools, and they are all very flourishing. Often indeed through the favour and countenance of persons eminent in philosophy, more schools are permitted. On festivals, at those churches where the Feast of the Patron Saint is solemnized, the masters convene their scholars. The youth, on that occasion, dispute, some in the demonstrative way, and some logically. These produce their enthymemes, and those the more perfect syllogisms. Some, the better to shew their parts, are exercised in disputation, contending with one another, whilst others are put upon establishing some truth by way of illustration. Some sophists endeavour to apply, on feigned topics, a vast heap and flow of words, others to impose upon you with

1 'That there was a school at Rochester before Henry VIII.'s time is proved by our Statutes, which speak of the Schola Grammaticalis as being ruinosa § admodum deformis.' R. Whiston.

Pegge concludes these to have been St Paul's, Bow, and Martin's le Grand.

false conclusions. As to the orators, some with their rhetorical harangues employ all the powers of persuasion, taking care to observe the precepts of art, and to omit nothing opposite to the subject. The boys of different schools wrangle with one another in verse; contending about the principles of Grammar, or the rules of the Perfect Tenses and Supines. Others there are, who in Epigrams, or other compositions in numbers, use all that low ribaldry we read of in the Ancients; attacking their school-masters, but without mentioning names, with the old Fescennine licentiousness, and discharging their scoffs and sarcasms against them; touching the foibles of their schoolfellows, or perhaps of greater personages, with true Socratic wit, or biting them more keenly with a Theonine tooth: The audience, fully disposed to laugh,

'With curling nose ingeminate the peals.'"

Of the sports of the boys, Fitzstephen gives a long description. On Shrove-Tuesday, each boy brought his fighting cock to his master, and they had a cock-fight all morning in the school-room. After dinner, football in the fields of the suburbs, probably Smithfield. Every Sunday in Lent they had a sham-fight, some on horseback, some on foot, the King and his Court often looking on. At Easter they played at the Water-Quintain, charging a target, which if they missed, souse they went into the water. On holidays in summer the pastime of the youths is to exercise themselves in archery, in running, leaping, wrestling, casting of stones, and flinging to certain distances, and lastly with bucklers.' At moonrise the maidens danced. In the winter holidays, the boys saw boar-fights, hog-fights, bull and bear-baiting, and when ice came they slid, and skated on the legbones of some animal, punting themselves along with an iron-shod pole, and charging one another. A set of merry scenes indeed.

"In general, we are assured by the most learned man of the thirteenth century, Roger Bacon, that there never had been so great an appearance of learning, and so general an application to study, in so many different faculties, as in his time, when schools were erected in every city, town, burgh, and castle." (Henry's Hist. of England, vol. iv. p. 472-3.)

In the twenty-fifth year of Henry VI., 1447, four Grammar Schools were appointed to be opened in London for the education of

1 The custom of boys bringing cocks to masters has left a trace at Sedburgh, where the boys pay a sum every year on a particular day (Shrove-Tuesday?) as "cock-penny." Quick.

2 On the London Schools, see also Sir George Buc's short cap. 36, "Moore of

the City youth (Carlisle). But from the above lists it will be seen that Grammar Schools had not much to do with the education of our nobility and gentry before 1450 a.d.

Of Eton studies, the Paston Letters notice only Latin versifying, but they show us a young man supposed to be nineteen, still at school, having a smart pair of breeches for holy days, falling in love, eating figs and raisins, proposing to come up to London for a day or two's holiday or lark to his elder brother's, and having 8d. sent him in a letter to buy a pair of slippers with. William Paston, a younger brother of John's, when about nineteen years old, and studying at Eton, writes on Nov. 7, 1478, to thank his brother for a noble in gold, and says,

"my creanser (creditor) Master Thomas (Stevenson) heartily recommendeth him to you, and he prayeth you to send him some money for my commons, for he saith ye be twenty shillings in his debt, for a month was to pay for when he had money last; also I beseech you to send me a hose cloth, one for the holy days of some colour, and another for working days (how coarse soever it be, it maketh no matter), and a stomacher and two shirts, and a pair of slippers: and if it like you that I may come with Alweder by water"-would they take a pair-oar and pull down? (the figs and raisins came up by a barge;)" and sport me with you at London a day or two this termtime, then ye may let all this be till the time that I come, and then I will tell you when I shall be ready to come from Eton by the grace of God, who have you in his keeping." Paston Letters, modernised, vol. 2, p. 129.

This is the first letter; the second one about the figs, raisins, and love-making (dated 23 Feb. 1478-9) is given at vol. ii. p. 122-3. Tusser, who was seized as a Singing boy for the King's Chapel, lets us know that he got well birched at Eton.

"From Paul's I went to Eton sent

To learn straightways the Latin phrase
When fifty-three stripes given to me
At once I had :

other Schooles in London," in his Third Vniuersitie of England (t. i. London). He notices the old schools of the monasteries, &c., in whose stead there be some few founded lately by good men' as the Merchant Taylors, and Thomas Sutton, founder of the great new Hospitall in the Charter house, [who] hath translated the Tenis court to a Grammar Schoole. . for 30 schollers, poore mens children . . There be also other Triuiall Schooles for the bringing up of youth in good literature, viz., in S. Magnus, in S. Michaels, in S. Thomas, and others.

I was rather surprised to find no mention of any Eton men in the first vol. of Wood's Athena Oxonienses (ed. Bliss) except two, who had first taken degrees at Cambridge, Robert Aldrich and William Alley, the latter admitted at Cambridge 1528 (Wood, p. 375, col. 2). Plenty of London men are named in Wood, vol. 1. No doubt in early times the Eton men went to their own foundation, King's (or other Colleges at) Cambridge, while the Winchester men went to their foundation, New College, or elsewhere at Oxford In the first volume of Bliss's edition of Wood, the following Winchester men are noticed :

p. 30, col. 2, William Grocyn, educated in grammaticals in Wykeham's school near Winchester.

p. 78, col. 2, William Horman, made fellow of New Coll. in 1477. Author of the Vulgaria Puerorum, &c. (See also Andrew Borde, p. xxxiv, above, note.)

p. 379, col. 2, John Boxall, Fellow of New Coll. 1542.

That the post-Reformation Grammar Schools did not at first educate as many boys as the old monastic schools is well known. Strype says,

"On the 15th of January, 1562, Thomas Williams, of the Inner Temple, esq. being chosen speaker to the lower house, was presented to the queen and in his speech to her. . took notice of the want of schools; that at least an hundred were wanting in England which before this time had been, [being destroyed (I suppose he meant) by the dissolution of monasteries and religious houses, fraternities and colleges.] He would have had England continually flourishing with ten thousand scholars, which the schools in this nation formerly brought up. That from the want of these good schoolmasters sprang up ignorance and covetousness got the livings by impropriations; which was a decay, he said, of learning, and by it the tree of know

1 Udall became Master of Eton about 1534.

ledge grew downward, not upward; which grew greatly to the dishonour, both of God and the commonwealth. He mentioned likewise the decay of the universities; and how that great market-towns were without schools or preachers: and that the poor vicar had but 201. [or some such poor allowance,] and the rest, being no small sum, was . impropriated. And so thereby, no preacher there; but the people, being trained up and led in blindness for want of instruction, became obstinate and therefore advised that this should be seen to, and impropriations redressed, notwithstanding the laws already made [which favoured them].-Strype, Annals of the Reformation, vol. i. p. 437.

Of the Grammar Schools in his time (A.D. 1577) Harrison says:

Besides these universities, also there are a great number of Grammer Schooles throughout the realme, and those verie liberallie endued for the better relief of pore scholers, so that there are not manie corporate townes, now under the queene's dominion that have not one Gramer Schole at the least, with a sufficient living for a master and usher appointed to the same.

There are in like manner divers collegiat churches, as Windsor, Wincester, Eaton, Westminster (in which I was sometime an unprofitable Grammarian under the reverend father, master Nowell, now dean of Paules) and in those a great number of pore scholers, dailie maintained by the liberality of the founders, with meat, bookes, and apparell; from whence after they have been well entered in the knowledge of the Latine and Greek tongs, and rules of versifying (the triall whereof is made by certain apposers, yearlie appointed to examine them), they are sent to certain especiall houses in each universitie', where they are received & trained up in the points of higher knowledge in their privat halls till they be adjudged meet to show their faces in the schooles, as I have said alreadie.

Greek was first taught at a public school in England by Lillye soon after the year 1500. This was at St Paul's School in London, then newly established by Dean Colet, and to which Erasmus alluded as the best of its time in 1514, when he said that he had in three years taught a youth more Latin than he could have acquired in any school in England, ne Liliana quidem excepta, not even Lillye's excepted. (Warton, iii. 1.) The first schoolmaster who stood up for the study of English was, I believe, Richard Mulcaster, of King's College, Cambridge, and Christ Church, Oxford. In 1561 he was appointed the first head-master of Merchant-Taylors School in London, then just founded as a feeder or pro-seminary for St John's

1 The perversion of these elections by bribery is noticed by Harrison in the former extract from him on the Universities.