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

A similar custom had prevailed “from time immemorial” at the Hospital of St. Nicholas where forty loaves were to be provided each week for the scholars who attended Pontefract School.[603]

Then too, the provision of a house for the lodging of scholars was a form of charity whose origin could be traced back to the twelfth century at least. About 1150, Walchelin, the moneyer of Derby, and Goda, his wife, bequeathed certain property to the abbey of Derby “on this trust that the hall shall be for a school of clerks and the chambers shall be for the house of a master and clerks for ever.”[604]

A more immediate example for Wykeham in his desire to make provision for the maintenance and education of “pauperes et indigentes clericii” was Bishop Stapledon of Exeter. He wished to provide for the “maintenance of boys studying grammar and receiving instruction in morals and life” in connection with the Hospital of St. John at Exeter. The accomplishment of this purpose was prevented by his death, but Bishop Grandisson, his successor, arranged in 1332 that the master and brethren of the hospital were to provide accommodation and all other necessaries for a master of grammar and fourteen boys. Prior to admission, the boys were to know their psalter and to be familiar with plain song.[605]

Several similar instances may be quoted. Thus, about the close of the twelfth century, the Archdeacon of Durham, of the time, provided an endowment for the purpose of supplying three scholars of Durham School with food and lodging at the almonry.[606] In 1262 Bishop Giles of Salisbury founded a hostel in that city “for the perpetual reception and maintenance of a warden, two chaplains and twenty poor, needy, well-behaved and teachable scholars.”[607] In 1364, Walter de Merton, Chancellor of England, gave certain manors “for the perpetual maintenance of twenty scholars living in the schools at Oxford or elsewhere.”[608] About 1387, Bishop Burghersh of Lincoln provided that the chantry founded by him should maintain six poor boys who were “professing the art of Grammar.”

In addition to these models, there existed the models furnished by the collegiate churches and the monasteries. The collegiate churches were under the control of a dean or provost and a small number of officials; generally speaking, a master of grammar was also attached to the Church. These colleges were non-resident. The priests attached to the church lived in their own homes. A monastery was presided over by an abbot or prior, the monks were resident, and a small number of choir boys were also attached.

It does not require any great stretch of the imagination to conceive of William of Wykeham pondering over all these possibilities. In the end, the monastic idea seems to have triumphed with this important distinction that, for the adult monks, were substituted “scholares pauperes et indigentes.”

A study of an illustration of Winchester School serves to support this conception. The most prominent feature of the college buildings was the church. Divine worship was to be effectively rendered daily. Grouped round the church were the cloisters and the chambers, the dwelling places for the poor scholar clerks. The more closely the building is examined, the more clearly is its relation to the monastic ideal realised.

The influence of the monastic ideal is even more evident in connection with the foundation of Eton College, the second of our great public schools in respect of date of origin. The foundation charter of this school was sealed on October 11th, 1440. In this charter, Henry VI., the founder of the college, who was then eighteen years of age, declared his intention to establish a college[609] “in the honour and for the support of our great and most holy mother in the parish church of Eton by Windsor, which is not far removed from the place of our birth.”[610]

This college, as originally planned, was to consist of a “provost and ten priests, four clerks, and six chorister boys whose duty it shall be to serve divine worship there daily, and twenty-five poor and needy scholars whose duty it shall be to learn grammar and moreover twenty-five poor and weakly men whose duty it shall be always to pray in the same place for our good estate while we live and for our soul when we have passed from this light ... also of a master or teacher in grammar, whose duty it shall be to teach the said needy scholars and all others whatsoever and whencesoever of our realm of England coming to the said college, the rudiments of grammar gratis without exacting money or anything else.”[611]

The monastic conception is brought out prominently. At the head of the institution were the provost and ten priests, corresponding to the abbot and the obedientaries of a convent, next we find the chorister boys who correspond to the boys of the almonry school who assisted in divine worship, next comes the support of poor and weakly men, a common feature of many monasteries, finally there are the “poor and needy scholars” to take the place ordinarily occupied by monks.