The following arguments are advanced by Mr. Leach in support of the views he enunciates:—
(1) He urges that the test of poverty from the school point of view, was the oath which every scholar had to take on reaching fifteen years of age: “I have nothing whereby I know I can spend beyond five marks a year.”[617] Now, as there were at this date sixty-seven livings in the diocese of Winchester below this value, and as £1 6s. 8d. was the pay of a skilled artisan of that date, Mr. Leach maintains that the possession of £3 6s. 8d. was a very considerable income for a boy.
In reply it may be pointed out that the oath would provide for extreme cases only. In this connection, it may be mentioned that it was proposed, towards the close of the reign of Henry VIII., to establish a free grammar school in connection with Exeter Cathedral. Forty of the scholars of this school were to be admitted without making any payment for their instruction and, in addition, they were to receive a shilling a week for the purpose of paying for “their commons within the citie.” Now, the test of poverty to qualify the candidates for this position was, that their parents were not to be in receipt of a higher income than £300 a year, possibly equal to £5,000 to-day.[618] If we assume that the money payments of the opening years of the twentieth century were forty times the value of such payments in the fourteenth century, even then the extreme limit of the income of a candidate for admission to Winchester was £133 6s. 8d. of modern money. It is, therefore, obvious that the class of boy for which Winchester College was intended must have been of a lower social scale than that for which the proposed cathedral grammar school at Exeter was to be established.
(2) By a clause which forms a postscript to Rubric XVI., it was provided that “sons of noble and powerful persons ... to the number of ten might be instructed and informed in grammar within the college, without charge to the college.” This clause Mr. Leach describes as containing the “germ” of the public school system, and he claims that he has traced among the early commoners of the college “young noblemen, scions of county families and relations of judges and chancery officials.”
We contend that this does not apply to the case at all, inasmuch as “parlour boarders,” as Mr. Leach himself points out,[619] had frequently been received in monastic houses. Even apart from the fact that the details which he gives are meagre, and that his conclusions are by no means demonstrated, it may be maintained that the presence of wealthy boys at school, under special circumstances, does not invalidate the contention that the boys normally found there were the “poor and needy.” Thus Dr. Hastings Rashdall, in speaking of the students at the university, states that “there was the scion of the princely or noble house who lived in the style to which he was accustomed at home, in a hostel of his own with a numerous ‘familia’ including poorer but well born youths who dressed like him.... At the other end of the social ladder there was the poor scholar, reduced to beg for his living, or to become the servitor of a college, or of a master or well-to-do student.”[620] If the poor, in the sense of those who had to beg for a living or earn it, whilst they were at college, by manual labour, were not excluded from the university, why should it be assumed that they did not rank among the “pauperes et indigentes scolares” for whom Winchester College was expressly founded?
We may also point out that it was not customary, at this time, for boys of good family, or even the sons of wealthy and prosperous merchants and tradesmen, to be educated by being sent to school. The instances which may be given are few and inconclusive. The usual practice adopted for the education of these young people, as we have shown, was either by sending them to a great household or, at a later date, by having a private tutor in the house. Evidence may also be adduced to show that youths of good social standing rarely proceeded to the universities at this time. Thus Dr. Furnivall points out that, up to the close of the sixteenth century, only three names of noblemen and nine of sons of knights are mentioned in Cooper’s Athenae Cantabrigienses and only nineteen men of noble or knightly birth in Wood’s Athenae Oxonienses.[621]
We may next pass to consider the evidence for the contention which we advance, that, when Wykeham built his college, he intended it for those who were too poor to pay for an education, irrespective of their social position, and that the term “poor” did not exclude the children of men who were members of the labouring classes of the community.
(1) As we have reiterated so frequently, the actual term used in the foundation deed is “pauperes et indigentes.” Mr. Leach maintains that this simply means the “relatively poor,” the poor relations of the nobility, or the children of prosperous merchants. His contention seems to be an unwarranted extension of the meaning of the phrase, and it will not be possible to quote from any charter or document of the time in which this special meaning is assigned to the term.
(2) Even sixty years later, at the foundation of Eton College, when the character of Winchester School would be definitely fixed, when King Henry VI. desired to establish a foundation which should exceed that of Wykeham, he associated with the school an almshouse for “twenty-five poor and weakly men.” The associating of an almshouse with the school marks the purpose of the school as a charitable endowment for the lower classes of the community.
(3) The middle class of the fifteenth century was a wealthy class. In the eleventh century, there were only two social grades in England, the nobility and the various classes of tenants. The middle class, which gradually grew up, won its way through its wealth. Wealthy and prosperous merchants would seek to emulate the nobility of the land, and send their sons to the houses of nobles for their education or—at the least—to provide them with a tutor. It may also be added that the clergy of the period, who were practically the professional class, were celibates.