When Robert Aske, in 1536, was endeavouring to justify his rebellion against the action of Henry VIII. in suppressing the monasteries, he stated as one of the good works of these institutions that “in nunneries their daughters (were) brought up in virtue.”[535] The education of girls of the higher classes was one of the duties undertaken by some of the convents, but it is difficult to estimate the extent to which this was done. The available references to the education of girls at convents may be readily summarised: at the time of the dissolution, there were from thirty to forty girls being educated at Pollesworth Nunnery, who were described as “gentylmen’s children”[536]; at St. Mary’s Nunnery, Winchester, there were twenty-six girls who are similarly described.[537] A claim has also been made[538] that girls were educated at Carrow Abbey, Norfolk, but Mr. Coulton shows that “among all the 280 persons who are recorded to have boarded with the nuns of Carrow during forty-six years (an average of six a year), not one can be clearly shown to be a schoolgirl.”[539] The point that needs to be emphasised is that the question of a nunnery school, as Mr. Coulton indicates, was at bottom a financial one. Convents which were not well endowed found it necessary to have recourse to some means of increasing their revenues, and teaching was one of the possible means of doing so. The early references to schoolgirls in episcopal registers show that an effort was made either to restrict or prohibit the practice. The reason of this episcopal opposition was the fear that the institution of a school would break down the discipline of the convent, and distract the attention of the nuns. Thus, at Elstow in 1359, Bishop Gynwell would only allow girls under ten and boys under six to remain there, because, “by the living together of secular women and nuns, the contemplation of religion is withdrawn and scandal is engendered.”[540] Very few other references to the education of girls in monasteries have been traced so far. Dr. Abram tells us that “In the Chancery Proceedings it is recorded that ‘Lawrens Knyght, gentleman,’ arranged that the Prioress of Cornworthy, Devon, should have his two daughters, aged respectively seven and ten, ‘to scole’ and he agreed to pay her twenty pence weekly for their meat and drink.”[541] In English literature, the only instance we have been able to discover is the well-known reference of Chaucer to the Miller’s wife.
IV. The Education of the Novices.
Abbot Gasquet has written a careful and interesting account of the life of a novice in a claustral school of the fifteenth century.[542] Dealing with St. Peter’s Abbey, Westminster, he says, “The western walk was sacred to the novices, whose master took the first place, with the youngest nearest to him. Their method of sitting was peculiar: they were placed one behind the other, so that the face of one looked on the back of his neighbour. And this was always the case, except when there was general conversation in the cloister. The only fixed seats were those of the abbot, prior, and master of novices; the rest were placed according to the disposition of the prior, sub-prior, or novice-master, to whom the care and due order of the cloister were specially committed. There, in the morning after the chapter, and at other intervals during the day, the novices attended to their tasks, and one by one took their books to their master, who either heard their reading himself, or sent them to some other senior for help or instruction.”[543]
The “Rites of Durham”[544] also gives us a description of a novices’ school. It is there stated that the school was held both in the morning and in the afternoon in the “weast ally” of the cloisters. Boys began to attend these schools when they were seven years of age, and the eldest learned monk acted as their tutor. The novices were fed, clothed, and educated gratuitously. If they were “apt to lernynge ... and had a pregnant wyt withall” they were afterwards sent to Oxford to study divinity; otherwise, they were kept at their books till they could understand their service and the scriptures, and then became candidates for ordination to the priesthood.
Incidental references to the school of the novices occur in various monastic records. Thus, we learn that when Richard II. held his first parliament in 1378, at Gloucester, he and his court were lodged in the abbey, with the result that the monks were obliged to have their meals “in the schoolhouse.”[545] The same chronicler also laments the destruction of turf in the cloisters, which “was so worn by the exercises of the wrestlers and ball players there that no traces of green were left on it.”[546]
The Benedictine Statutes of 1334 emphasised the importance of study, and in order that monks might subsequently be fitted to proceed to the universities, it was decreed and ordained that “in all monastic cathedral churches, priories or other conventual and solemn places of sufficient means belonging to such order or vows, there shall henceforth be kept a master to teach the monks such elementary sciences, viz. grammar, logic and philosophy.”[547] If, however, a competent teaching monk could not be found in the monastery, a secular priest was to be appointed for the purpose who, in addition to his residence, food and clothing, was to receive £20 a year—a large salary for the time.[548]
Some records are still available of agreements to teach between the prior of a monastery and a secular priest. As an example may be quoted the one made between the prior of Durham and a priest who covenanted to teach “the monks of Durham and eight secular boys.” He was especially to teach “plain song, accompanied song, singing plain prick note, faburdon, discant square note and counterpoint,” and to play on the organ at the monastic services.[549]
Enquiry was also made from time to time to ascertain whether sufficient attention was being paid to the education of the novices. Thus, at the visitation of the priory of St. Peter’s, Ipswich, in 1514, the complaint was made that there was no schoolmaster at the monastery;[550] in 1526, the monastery was required to provide a master to teach the novices grammar.[551]
Similarly, among the defects noted by William Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury, at his visitation of the monastery in 1511, was the lack of a “skilled teacher of grammar ... to teach the novices and other youths grammar.” The archbishop emphasised his point by stating that “in default of such instruction it happens that most of the monks celebrating mass and performing other divine service are wholly ignorant of what they read, to the great scandal and disgrace both of religion in general and the monastery in particular.”[552] It is interesting to note that a statement is appended to this criticism, intimating that “one of the brethren is deputed to that work and has already begun to do it, and teaches the younger monks daily.”[553]
V. The Monks and the Universities.