Part 4 learning, lollardy, and literature (XIV century)

Pre-reading tasks:

1. What was education like?

2. What were the lollards preaching?

3. What was the role of Oxford in the spiritual life of Britain?

When Chaucer's ‘litel clergeon, seven yeer of age’ first went to school, it was as a matter of course that he learned—

Swich mancre doctrine as men used there,

This is to seyn, to syngen and to rede,

As smale children doon in hire childhede,

for reading and chanting were the foundations of a clerkly education. At a more advanced stage, in the schools intended primarily for choristers, though some grammar was a necessary adjunct, the study of plainsong and the psalter naturally took first place: and the same was probably true of the almonry schools which emerge in the later Middle Ages as adjuncts to some of the monasteries. A school of this type is found at Ely in 1314, another at St. Albans about 1330. But the expansion of the universities in the thirteenth century and the multiplication of chantries in the fourteenth, stimulated the development of a different type of school - the grammar school, where grammar (or Latin) was the principal subject of study. All schools were under the control of the Church. None might be opened in any diocese without the consent of the cathedral chancellor and almost every cathedral and some collegiate churches assumed direct responsibility for the maintenance of both a grammar school and a song school. Other grammar schools were normally under the control of the archdeacons; they might be kept by the parish clergy or by schoolmasters whom the clergy were en­couraged to admit to their houses. In London we find schools in charge of masters attached, not only to St. Paul's, but also to great parish churches, like St. Martin-le-Grand and St. Mary-le-Bow. Founders of chantries, whether they were individuals, like Sir John Mounteney of Chelmsford, or gilds, like that of St. Lawrence at Ashburton in Devon, often made provis: mass-priest to teach a grammar school. In the university towns grammar schools took root easily; and although at Cambridge the magister glomeriae, who was in charge of them, long remained subject to the archdeacon, at Oxford control passed to the uni­versity, in the person of two regent masters, early in the four­teenth century. Walter de Merton had attached a grammar school to his college and his example was followed by the founder of Queen's (1341) who provided for the maintenance of poor boys. Their principal function was to serve as choristers but they were also to receive a careful training in grammar and logic and were to dispute with the fellows of the college, as they sat at meals at high table. Only twelve boys were provided in the original foundation and Eglesfield's plan for an expansion of these numbers up to seventy-two, the number of disciples, never was realized. In founding the hall that was to become Exeter College, Bishop Stapledon had also projected a grammar school in connexion with it, though not in Oxford; the bishop's school was to be attached to the hospital of St. John the Baptist by the east gate of his cathedral city of Exeter. Wil­liam of Wykeham had these precedents to guide him when came to found Winchester in 1383; and, like the founders of Merton, Exeter, and Queen's, the bishop intended h serve as a nursery for his college. But in three respects the foun­dation of the college at Winchester marked a departure from precedent. It was by far the largest venture of its kind so far executed, its total complement of ninety-six scholars, choristers, and commoners being about eight times as big as the schools of Merton and Queen's; entry to the sister college at Oxford (New College) was confined to its members; and its status as a self governing independent body was far superior to that enjoyed by any other existing school. Wykcham's foundation, which was later to afford a model for the royal foundation at Eton, may thus fairly be said to mark an epoch in the development of English education. A few of the pupils from the grammar schools might pass on, as did Chaucer, to service in a royal or noble household; others to study in the schools of common law concentrated in and around the London Temple; others into the world of trade and industry; but the majority were destined for the Church. Of these, some might receive further education at one of the inter­nal schools maintained by monks, canons, and friars for those intending to enter their orders; some might assist the parish clergy as acolytes, or obtain minor secretarial posts in large households until they were ripe for further orders. A few of the bishops, notably Grandisson at Exeter (1327-69) and Ralph of Shrewsbury at Wells (1329-63), were insisting that their cathe­dral chancellors should fulfil their proper function of lecturing and teaching and a boy might pursue his studies beyond the grammar-school level at one or other of these cathedral schools. But if he were ambitious and intelligent, it was likely, by this date, that he would seek to enter one or other of the universities.