Meiden’s clenhed, Modere’s flour,
Dilie mine sennen, reyne in min mod,
Bring me to winne wit the selfe God.[247]
To understand whence St. Godric derived his poetical inspiration, we must briefly glance at his history. He lived in the reigns of Stephen and Henry II., and began life as a Norfolk pedlar, getting his living by travelling about the country and selling smallwares in the villages through which he passed. We may fancy him such a one as Wordsworth’s Wanderer, concealing under a humble speech and garb a sublime philosophy. Wanderers of the twelfth century, however, had one advantage over our modern pedlars; they visited not only fairs and cities, but holy shrines and places of pilgrimage; nay, generally speaking, the fairs which they attended were assembled round some holy spot, and took their origin in the devout celebration of a martyr’s or a founder’s festival. Godric, as he plodded on through the north country on his way from Scotland, whither he had gone by sea on a trading expedition, visited Lindisfarne and Durham, and the Isle of Farne, made sacred by the hermit-life of St. Cuthbert. These pilgrimages awoke his soul to a new life, and abandoning his trade, he repaired to Jerusalem, and on his way back visited the holy shrine of Compostella.
Returning to England, he took service in the family of a Suffolk gentleman, but disgusted with the profligacy of his fellow-servants, once more left his country and went to visit the holy places of Rome. Nevertheless, the scenes where first his heart had been touched by God drew him back to them by a sweet, irresistible attraction; and after some years more spent in these devout wanderings, Godric felt himself moved to return to the north of England, and there seek out some solitude where he might lead the life of an anchorite. He entered Durham, therefore, a way worn, ragged pilgrim, and desiring, before he utterly retired from the world, to acquire a knowledge of such psalms and devotions as might enable him to sing the praises of God in his cell, he repaired for that purpose to the school which, as was often the case, was held, in default of a schoolhouse, within the church of St. Mary’s.[248] In this school, says Reginald of Durham, children were taught the first elements of letters, and here Godric learnt many things of which he was before ignorant, but which he now acquired “by hearing, reading, and chanting them.” And those things which he heard the children frequently repeat became tenaciously fixed in his memory. In a very brief space of time, therefore, he learnt as many psalms, hymns, and prayers as sufficed for his purpose, and retired to a lonesome wilderness north of Carlisle, which he afterwards exchanged for that of Finchdale, where he died, about the year 1170. William of Newbridge, who often visited him, describes him as one whose body seemed already dead, but whose tongue was ever repeating the names of the Three Divine Persons. The similarity of some of the expressions occurring in St. Godric’s hymn, to productions of the same kind in popular use in the following centuries, leads us to believe that it may have been one of the school hymns he had learnt at Durham, unless indeed we accept as literally true the legend which represents it as having been taught him by Our Lady herself. The whole notice of this Durham school is exceedingly interesting, and not only confirms what has been said as to the teaching of the Church chant and office, but shows us that the poor children likewise learnt their letters, and were taught to read—a fact greatly at variance with the vulgar notion of mediæval ignorance. For that this was only a poor school is certain, from the fact of the ragged and penniless vagrant being able to find admission into it. And having begun to speak of the Durham poor schools, I may take this opportunity of remarking that the city of St. Cuthbert was remarkably well supplied with them. For besides her parochial schools, she possessed an excellent monastic poor school, which continued to flourish down to the time of the Reformation. The usages of monastic bodies underwent so little alteration in the lapse of centuries that the description of this school, as it existed at the time of its suppression, probably gives us a sufficiently accurate notion of its condition in far earlier times. “There were certain poor children, called the children of the almery, who were educated in learning, and relieved with the alms and benevolence of the whole house, having their meat and drink in a loft on the north side of the abbey gates. This loft had a long slated porch over the stairhead, and at each side of the porch were stairs to go up to the loft, with a stable underneath.... The children went to school at the Infirmary School, without the abbey gates, which was founded by the priors of the abbey at the charge of the house. The meat and drink that the children had was what the monks and novices had left. It was carried in at a door adjoining the great kitchen window, into a little vault at the west end of the Frater House, like a pantry, called the covie, kept by a man. Within it was a window, at which some of the children received the meat from the said man (who was called the clerk of the covie) out of the covie window, and carried it to the loft. This clerk waited on them at every meal to preserve order.” The description given of the Song school attached to Durham monastery, which, according to the same authority, was built “many years without memory of man, before the suppression of the house,” is worth quoting, as showing that the material comfort of the pupils was not uncared for. It was “very finely boarded round about, a man’s height about the walls, and had a long desk from one end of the school to the other for the books to lie on; and all the floor was boarded under foot for warmness, and long forms set in the ground for the children to sit on. And the place where the master sat and taught was all close boarded both behind and on either side, for warmness.”[249]
Similar schools for poor scholars were attached to all the great abbeys, and were of a higher order with respect to learning than the parochial schools. The pupils reared in them, though of the humblest origin, often rose to high dignities in Church and State. John of Peckham, Archbishop of Canterbury, born of a peasant’s family, received his early education in the poor school of the Cluniac monks of Lewes, where, many years later, Dudley, the son of a poor travelling carpenter, was also received, and sent to Oxford by his charitable patrons, who little foresaw the kind of renown which their protégé would achieve, or the evil which his descendants would bring upon the Church. Alexander of Hales, “the Irrefragable Doctor,” as he was called, was in like manner a pupil of the Cistercians, who, says his biographer, “had the heroic charity to teach youth;” and it is well known that the facilities afforded by the religious houses to poor scholars were so great as to be regarded with much jealousy by the feudal lords, whose pride revolted at the promotion to ecclesiastical dignities of men who had risen from the lowest grades.
There will be occasion to examine our English poor schools more closely in a future chapter, but at present we must return to Oxford, where the collegiate system was gradually developing in its grandest form, and the influx of the mendicant orders was introducing a splendid era for the schools.