We may also note that the necessity for the recognition of qualified teachers was imperative not only in the interests of the scholars, but also in the interests of the Church itself, as it had become customary to require that priests who were in charge of parishes, and who were discovered at episcopal or archidiaconal visitations not to be sufficiently learned, should return to their cathedral city in order to pursue a further course of study.[212] Such priests would certainly require more individual attention than they would secure at the ordinary school of theology.
In course of time, apparently, some chancellors saw in this granting of licences to teach to approved teachers an opportunity of exacting fees. The Church opposed this practice. In 1160 Canon Law prescribed that “For licence to teach nothing shall be exacted or promised; and anything exacted shall be restored and the promise released.”[213] Pope Alexander III.[214] wrote to the Bishop of Winchester requiring him “strictly to prohibit for the future any exaction or promise of anything from anyone in your diocese.”[215] This was again repeated in 1170 by the Canon Law of that year.
The duty of the Chancellor in the granting of licences was defined more rigidly by the Fourth Lateran Council of 1179. At that Council it was enacted that the Chancellor should grant, without fee of any kind, a licence to teach to every and any person who was qualified to act as a teacher. The decree laid down that “the seller of a licence to teach or preventer of a fit person from teaching is to be deprived of his benefice.”[216]
The Chancellor is consequently the head of the educational work of the diocese. He is required to prepare all clerks who desire to offer themselves for ordination, to supervise the studies of all incumbents whose education has been found to be defective, and he has also the responsibility of passing judgment upon the abilities of these who are desirous of acting as teachers and of granting certificates to teach to those of whom he approves.
We have seen in a previous chapter that it had been the custom of the Church from the earliest times to establish schools in connection with the various churches. Just as in course of time schools of theology which had previously been customary, were made the subject of express ecclesiastical enactment, so, too, the holding of Grammar Schools was also definitely prescribed. Thus in 1215, Innocent III. decreed that in connection with “every cathedral or other church of sufficient means” masters were to be appointed who were to be able to teach theology and Latin respectively.[217] These masters were to be remunerated out of the common fund of the cathedral church. If, however, the revenues of the Church did not permit of this, then provision was to be made for the remuneration of the grammarian out of the funds of some other church of the city or diocese.[218] At the risk of exposing ourselves to the charge of repetition, we must reiterate that this enactment did not indicate a new departure on the part of the Church or constitute a decree for the establishment of schools. The provision of facilities for education in any locality practically dates from the foundation of a church in that locality. The value of this enactment is twofold: it indicates the considered mind of the Church towards education, illustrating still further, that the Church realised the importance of education and recognised it as her duty to make provision for it; and in the second place it would act as a stimulant to those dioceses or centres in which the ecclesiastical authorities had not been sufficiently alert to their responsibilities and duties. The Lateran Council of 1179 had not only decreed that “in every cathedral church a competent benefice shall be bestowed upon a master who shall teach the clerks of the same church and poor scholars freely,” but it had also enacted that it was the duty of the Church to provide free education “in order that the poor, who cannot be assisted by their parents’ means, may not be deprived of the opportunity of reading and proficiency.”[219]
Since then the immemorial custom of the Church and Canon Law alike required that schools should be established in connection with the various churches, we have next to consider a narrower problem, to what extent was this requisite complied with in this country.
In this connection we must first of all note the difficulty of finding the necessary evidence. The schools were not a separate foundation but an integral part of the work of the Church. All that can possibly be done is to collect references which will justify us in the inference that schools were carried on in connection with the different churches. Complete evidence for the whole of the educational work of the Church will never be forthcoming. We can only hope to obtain representative evidence and then to submit that this was typical of the general work of the Church, and consequently to maintain that wherever a church, or at any rate a collegiate church, was found, there a master of grammar would also be found.
There is abundant evidence that schools existed in the cathedral cities of England practically from the date of the foundation of these cathedrals.[220] Turning next to collegiate and parochial churches we note that prior to the close of the thirteenth century, schools have also been traced in connection with the church at Bury St. Edmunds,[221] Waltham,[222] Warwick,[223] Pontefract,[224] Hastings,[225] Christ Church, Hants,[226] Beverley,[227] St. Albans,[228] Thetford,[229] Huntingdon,[230] Dunstable,[231] Reading,[232] Bristol,[233] Derby,[234] Bedford,[235] Northampton,[236] Marlborough,[237] Newark,[238] Southwell,[239] Kinoulton.[240] In addition to these instances, we learn quite by accident, as it were, of six schools in the diocese of Lincoln, viz. Barton, Partney, Grimsby, Horncastle, Boston, and Grantham.[241]
The cumulative effect of all this evidence, we venture to think, is that it establishes the suggestion that the Church of England was not negligent of the custom of the Catholic Church and made the requisite provision for the establishment of schools in connection with her churches.