The origin and development of the university colleges in connection with the universities of Oxford and Cambridge has been so fully dealt with by various writers that little more than a passing reference is necessary here. Dr. Hastings Rashdall describes Walter de Merton as “the true founder” of the English college system. In 1264,[627] he founded at Maldon “The House of Merton’s Scholars” “for the perpetual maintenance of twenty scholars living in the schools at Oxford, or elsewhere where a university might happen to flourish and for the maintenance of two or three ministers of the altar of Christ living in the same house.”[628] The idea of this founder, originally, was the provision of funds for the education of his nephews or the descendants of his parents, or (failing a sufficient number of these) of other “honest and capable young men.”[629] The men supported by these funds were to hire a hall and live together as a community in the university. In 1274, a new code of statutes for the control and regulation of the foundation was issued. Here, in the first of the English colleges, the monastic institutions form the model which was imitated. At the head of the institution was an official corresponding to the abbot, next come certain officials who resembled the various officers of a monastery; these include the “Vicenarii” who were placed over every twenty scholars, and the “Decani” over every ten scholars. The scholars corresponded to the monastic novices. The scheme for the control of the boys (because some of the scholars might often be only thirteen or fourteen years of age)[630] resembles in its general spirit the regulations of Lanfranc for the oblates and novices school at Canterbury.[631]
The similarity between a monastery and Merton’s foundations manifests itself still more clearly when we realise that he even provided for a class which would correspond to the oblates. He enacted that “if any little ones of the kindred aforesaid becoming orphans or otherwise through their parents poverty want maintenance while they are receiving primary instruction in the rudiments, then the warden shall have them educated in the house aforesaid.”[632]
The example set by Walter de Merton was followed by Bishop Balsham of Ely in his foundation of the first college at Cambridge in 1280. He placed some poor scholars in the Hospital of St. John “to live together and to study in the university of Cambridge according to the rule of the scholars of Oxford who are called Merton’s.”[633] The experiment did not prove a success because “in process of time from various causes, matter of dissension had often arisen between the brethren of the same house and the scholars aforesaid,”[634] as a result of which the scholars were moved outside the town “and translated to the inns by St. Peter’s Church”[635] which was appropriated to them, and in consequence the college received the name of Peterhouse by which it is still known.
We must leave here the subject of the establishment of university colleges and pass to consider the colleges of secular canons which were rapidly founded in all parts of the country. The Monasticon[636] gives a list of twenty-six establishments, described as collegiate churches, and of one hundred and sixty-five, which are described simply as colleges, exclusive of the cathedral churches. We are underestimating the number when we state that, outside the universities, there were two hundred colleges or collegiate churches in this country. The term “college” or “collegiate church” may be used indifferently; both imply an organisation of secular priests or of secular priests and scholars founded for the purpose “ad orandum et studiendum.”
One of the first of the collegiate churches to be established subsequent to the Conquest was that of Howden in Yorkshire. The church was intended at one time to form the endowment of a monastery,[637] but in 1266 Bishop Robert of Durham caused it to become a college of secular priests.[638] The remaining records of this church are meagre and relate mainly to the endowments which it gradually received.
Howden Collegiate Church serves to illustrate the difficulties in connection with tracing the educational history of this country, and also the educational significance of the collegiate churches. As we have just remarked, the records of this church are extremely meagre, and if we were dependent upon them alone we would naturally conclude that no educational interest was attached to this institution. A different interpretation is put upon the matter when we examine a Durham register of the period.[639] Here we find records of scholastic appointments to this church, e.g. to a song school in 1393, to a grammar school in the same year, to a reading and song school in 1394, to a reading and song school in 1401, to a reading and song school in 1402, to a grammar school in 1403, to a grammar and reading school in 1409, to a song and reading school in 1412, separate appointments for reading and song in 1426, whilst the last record is that of J. Armandson, B.A., who was appointed “ad informandum pueros in lectura et grammatica” during the good pleasure of the prior.
We have given these various references to the appointments because they show that the collegiate churches, as a general rule, regarded it as one of their definite functions to provide educational facilities for those who cared to avail themselves of them. For the purpose of demonstrating this statement more fully, we now proceed to give a series of examples of the establishment of collegiate churches.
In 1267 the collegiate church of St. Thomas the Martyr was founded at Glasney near Penrhyn, in Cornwall, by Bishop Bromescomb of Exeter.[640] We should not know anything about the educational work carried on at this church were it not for the return made to the commissioners under the Chantries’ Act of 1547. The Continuation Certificate stated that a school was to continue at Glasney because it had previously been kept by “one of the said vicars scolemaster ... for the which the people maketh great lamentacione and it is mete to have another lerned man, for there is muche youthe in the same Towne.”[641] This college is particularly interesting, as it is one of the few places of which records are available where provision was made for teaching the first rudiments of learning. It is stated that:—
“John Pownde, bell rynger there, of the age of 30 yeres, hathe for his salarye ther 40/-, as well for teachynge of pore mens children there ABC as for ryngynge the Bells 40/-.”[642]
Passing next to the college founded in 1337-8 at Ottery St. Mary in Devonshire by Bishop Grandison, we find the first instance of a collegiate church where the charters of the institution provide that the establishment should include “a Master of Music” and a “Master of Grammar.”[643] The chantry return stated that “Syr John Chubbe preste, beyng scholemaster ther” received an annual stipend of £10.[644]