A great deal of the current misconception of the origin and purpose of these schools may be removed if we reconstruct for ourselves the special ecclesiastical and educational features of the time. Our starting point in this connection must be the Black Death which, as we have shown,[593] caused so great a scarcity of priests and of candidates for the priesthood. William of Wykeham, desiring to give thanks to Almighty God because He had “enriched us, though unworthy, with ample honours and beyond our deserts raised us to divers degrees and dignities,”[594] founded “a perpetual college of seventy poor scholars, clerks, to study theology, canon and civil law and arts in the university of Oxford.”[595] In erecting this college, Wykeham was only following the example which was already well established at the universities, since several colleges had previously been established both at Oxford and at Cambridge. Experience soon convinced him that to found a college was one thing; to obtain a supply of students, who were qualified to profit by the proposed course was quite another; especially as, “through default of good teaching and sufficient learning in grammar, (they) often fall into the danger of failing, where they had set before themselves the desire of success.”[596]
Nor was a lack of knowledge of Latin the only difficulty. A greater obstacle was the poverty of the prospective student of the period. Wykeham refers to this, “There are and will be, hereafter, many poor scholars suffering from want of money and poverty, whose means barely suffice or will suffice in the future to allow them to continue and profit in the aforesaid art of Grammar.” Neither was this poverty a relative poverty, a mere “façon de parler,” as some would maintain. The university itself was poor, and had scarcely any funds available for general purposes.[597] “The university students of the Middle Ages were drawn from every class of society, excluding probably as a rule the very lowest, though not excluding the very poorest.”[598] We also note that poor students received from the chancellor a licence to beg.[599]
The writer of Piers Plowman illustrates the contemporary opinion of the social standing of many of those who proceeded to the priesthood.
“Now might each sowter his son setten to schole,
And each beggar’s brat in the book learne,
And worth to a writer and with a lorde dwell,
Or falsely to a frere the fiend for to serven,
So of that beggar’s brat a Bishop that worthen,
Among the peers of the land presse to sythen;
And lordes sons lowly to the lorde’s loute,
Knyghtes crooked hem to, and coucheth ful lowe,
And his sire a sowtor y-soiled with grees,
His teeth with toyling of lether battered as a sawe.”
The “Norwich Corporation Records” contain an account which, even if not typical, is certainly illustrative of the way in which the sons of many poor men found their way to the priesthood. The account to which we refer is the story of his life which was given by “Sir William Green” when undergoing examination on the charge of being a spy. He stated that he was the son of a labouring man living at Boston, Lincolnshire, and that he “lerned gramer by the space of 2 yeres.” For about five or six years he was engaged in manual occupation with his father; next, he is at school again “by the space of 2 yeres and in that time receyved benet and accolet in the freres Austen in Boston of one frere Gaunt, then beyng suffragan of the diocese of Lincoln.” Subsequently he is found at Cambridge, where he enters upon his studies, and supports himself, partly by labour, partly by “going to the colleges, and gate his mete and drynke of almes.” After an interval, he “obteyned a licence for one year of Mr. Capper, than being deputee to the Chancellor of the said univ’sitie, under his seal of office whereby ... (he) gathered toguether in Cambridgeshire releaff toward their exhibicion to scole.”[600]
We need not follow the fortunes or misfortunes of this pretended priest any further. The record gives the names of three men who were of the lowest social grade, and who were evidently unscrupulous, as they not only forged begging licences, but also forged letters of ordination. Though we do not claim that the case is typical of the social class from which students come, yet, on the other hand, it should not be regarded as entirely exceptional; in other words, the class of person who received the licence to beg as an accredited student of the university must have been a commonly recognised one. We must remember, at the same time, as Dr. Hastings Rashdall points out, that the example of the Friars had made mendicity comparatively respectable. “Many a man who would have been ashamed to dig was not ashamed to beg; and the begging scholar was invested with something like the sacredness of the begging Friar.”[601]
Realising that it was necessary that prospective priests should study grammar before they proceeded to the universities, and assuming that these embryo scholars were literally poor, and could not afford even to attend the local grammar schools, which, as we have seen, were common in medieval England, we ask what action would a man such as William of Wykeham, who was desirous of perpetuating a memorial to himself and of being of service to the Church generally, naturally take?
The answer to this question depends partly on the nature of the models available for imitation. We have previously shown that imitation has played a large part in English educational development. The first obvious model for imitation was the ordinary one of providing a master who should teach grammar freely to all boys who might care to come to him. This plan naturally commended itself at first to William of Wykeham, and was adopted by him. In 1373 he made an agreement with Master Richard Herton, Grammarian, that he “should instruct and teach faithfully and diligently in Grammar the poor scholars whom the said Father keeps and shall keep at his own expense; and shall receive no others without the licence of the said Father.”[602]
This arrangement would scarcely meet the purpose which Wykeham had in mind. He wished to provide for suitable poor youths in all parts of the country, and not only for those whose homes were in the locality of Winchester.
Again we ask, what models were available? Provision for the feeding of poor scholars had been made, two centuries previously, in connection with the Hospital of St. Cross, about a mile distant from the city of Winchester, by Bishop Henry of Blois. At this hospital thirteen poor and infirm men were lodged and boarded, and, in addition, one hundred of the poor of the city were provided with a dinner each day. Among these one hundred poor were to be included, “thirteen poor scholars of the city school,” who were to be sent there “by the Master of the High Grammar School of the city of Winchester.”