Education in England in the Middle Ages / Thesis Approved for the Degree of Doctor of Science in the University of London

by Albert William Parry

SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CHANGES.

During the period we now proceed to consider, the idea gradually developed that education was not a matter which exclusively pertained to the Church. With the rise of the universities, the control of education tended to pass out of the power of the Church; with the social and economic progress of the country, there was a growth of the idea that civic and trade and craft organisations respectively owed a duty to the community, and that this duty included the provision of facilities for education.

This idea of civic or community responsibility for education which began to manifest itself in a tentative manner, was not the outcome of any opposition to the Church, or due to a feeling that the Church had not been sufficiently alive to its responsibilities. On the contrary, the provision for education which was made was, generally speaking, entrusted to the care of the Church, and the teachers of the schools continued to be the priests of the Church. In fact, we may go so far as to assert that the consciousness of social responsibility which now developed was, to a great extent, the outgrowth of religious teaching.

At the same time that we emphasise this general statement, we must admit that there existed certain signs of a tendency to assert independence of the Church, and various symptoms began to manifest themselves which were indicative of the fact that school-keeping was ceasing to be regarded as exclusively a function of the priesthood. The tendency to independence of the Church showed itself, among other places, at Coventry, where the corporation sent a deputation to the Prior of Coventry “wyllyng hym to occupye a skole of Gramer, fyye he like to teche hys Brederon and Childerom of the aumbry, and that he wolnot gruche ne meve the contrai, but that euery mon off this Cite be at hys ffre chosse to sette hys chylde to skole to what techer off Gramer that he likyth, as reson askyth”[366]; and at Bridgenorth, where an ordinance was passed in 1503, that no priest should keep a school after a schoolmaster had come to town.[367] As illustrating the tendency to place schools under the control of organisations other than the Church may be mentioned the school founded at Farthinghoe in 1443 by John Abbot, a mercer of London, who placed the school under the control of the Mercers’ Company,[368] and the school founded by Sir Edmund Sha in 1487, which was put in mortmain “unto his felliship of the craft of goldsmythes.”[369] Two other instances are available. In 1502, Sir John Percyvale founded a “Fre Gramer Scole” at Macclesfield[370] for “gentil mennes sonnes and other good menses children in Maxfiled and the Countre thereabouts.” The government of the school was entrusted to seventeen local laymen who were to act as trustees. In 1505, Sir Bartholomew Read, who founded a school at Cromer, made the Goldsmith’s Company the governing body.[371] That school-keeping was ceasing to be regarded as the exclusive function of the priesthood is indicated by the will of the founder of Sevenoaks Grammar School in 1432, which specified that the schoolmaster was not to be a priest “in sacris ordinibus minime constitutus,”[372] and by the fact that the names of schoolmasters are to be found on the rolls of the Freemen of the city of York.[373]

The growing interest of the laity in education did not result in apathy on the part of the Church. On the contrary, the Church was stimulated to renewed activity. Not only did the great churchmen of the day, e.g. Wykeham, Chicheley, and Waynflete, found schools of enduring magnificence, but a large number of collegiate churches were established in various parts of the country, and there exists considerable evidence (which we shall consider in a subsequent chapter) to show that the majority of these collegiate churches provided special facilities for education.

The change in the attitude of the nation towards education is the direct outcome of its social and economic conditions, and if we are properly to understand the educational developments, it is necessary that we should consider briefly the changes in the economic conditions of England, and the resultant social changes, which manifested themselves in the closing centuries of the Middle Ages.

The date of the pestilence termed the Black Death will form a convenient starting point from which we may consider these changes. The factors contributory to the results, which we propose to describe, may be traced to an earlier date, but as we are concerned in this chapter with general tendencies rather than with minute economic investigations, the year 1349 will admirably serve our purpose.

The economic effects of the Black Death were particularly evident in the rural districts. The decay of the manorial system was accelerated; the system of manorial farming was thrown into confusion and new methods of land tenure became imperative; the existing system of customary regulation was no longer possible. In the towns the influence of the pestilence was not so marked. Though individual towns might suffer, yet the relative importance of towns in the life of the nation was increased, and the way was prepared for that industrial and commercial supremacy of towns which began to manifest itself in the early years of the fifteenth century.[374]

In addition to the economic effects, the Black Death had important educational effects. The mortality among the clergy was considerable, and consequently the number of men who were qualified to act as schoolmasters was appreciably diminished. The reduction in the number of priests, as a result of the Black Death, is indicated by a letter which Pope Clement V. wrote in 1349 to the Archbishop of York, and in which it is stated that “in consequence of the Plague, there are not enough priests to administer the sacraments.”[375] A statute of 1362 also refers to the fact that “the priests be become so very scant after the pestilence to the great grievance and oppression of the people.”[376]

This diminution in the number of schoolmasters, for some reason or other, seems to have continued into the following century. William Byngham, in the petition which he submitted to the king in 1439 for the purpose of obtaining permission to found a college at Cambridge for the training of teachers for grammar schools throughout the country, stated that, “on the East of the way between Hampton and Coventry and no further north than Ripon, no less than seventy grammar schools had fallen into desuetude because of the scarcity of teachers.”[377]