He was too young, however, to understand the meaning of the words, though, be it observed, his elder schoolfellows were more erudite than himself:—
Nought wist he what this Latin was to say,
For he so yong and tender was of age,
But on a day his felow gan to pray,
To expounden him this song in his langage,
Or tell him why this song was in usage.
And when “his felow which elder was than he,” had expounded the sense of the words, and made him understand that it was sung in reverence of Christ’s Mother, the little scholar makes known his resolve to do his diligence to con it all by Christmas, in honour of Our Lady.
In these parochial schools, as we have elsewhere seen, children of the lower orders, even from St Dunstan’s time, were taught grammar and church music gratuitously. It has been very constantly affirmed that the education here spoken of was exclusively given to those intended for the monastic and ecclesiastical states. But there is direct evidence, that the parochial schools were frequented by the children of the peasantry indiscriminately, and by those of the very lowest and poorest condition. The proof of this is to be found in the statutes of the realm. About the year 1406 a law was passed, wherein, after complaint being made that in opposition to certain ancient statutes, a vast number of the children of husbandmen, who laboured with cart and plough and had no lands, were apprenticed to handicraft trades, and thereby induced a great scarcity of husbandmen and labourers in many parts of the country, it was enacted that henceforth no one should be allowed so to apprentice his child to any trade, unless he rented land to the annual value of twenty shillings. The object of this blundering and tyrannical piece of legislation was, of course, to keep down the lower orders from endeavouring to raise themselves in the scale of society, and to oppose that upward movement which had been one of the results of the enfranchisement of so large a number of feudal serfs in the reign of Edward III. But whilst decreeing that day-labourers with the cart and plough should thus be kept back from advancing, or helping their children to advance, in point of station and wealth, the very same statute encourages them to send their children to school. “Every man or woman, of whatever state or condition they be, shall be at liberty to send their son or daughter to take learning in any kind of school that pleaseth them within the realm.” This clause seems to have had reference to a petition which had been presented to parliament by certain lords in the reign of Richard II., to the effect that children of serfs and the lower sort might not be sent to school, and particularly to the schools of monasteries, wherein many were trained as ecclesiastics, and thence rose to dignities in the State. The statute aimed at appeasing the jealous pride of the nobles, who regarded with dismay the prospect of bondsmen and husbandmen emerging from their state of servitude; whilst at the same time, the influence of the ecclesiastical body was strong enough to preserve for the lower classes their hitherto undisputed right of receiving such education as circumstances placed within their reach. I need not pause to comment on the light which such a passage of history sheds on the supposed solicitude of monks and clergy to check the spread of learning for the furtherance of selfish ends. But it is clear that the permission formally granted by this statute would have been a simple mockery, unless schools existed adapted to the class in question; and it may satisfy us of the fact that village schools, in Chaucer’s time, were really frequented by much the same class of scholars as in our own; and that not merely in special and more populated localities, but in remote rural districts. William Caxton, who was born about the time of the passing of this statute, tells us that he learned his English in the Weald of Kent, a tract of country which, fertile as it now is, was, even a century later than Caxton’s time, a waste wilderness, thinly inhabited, save by herds of deer and hogs, and a few adventurous men who undertook to clear the forest and break up the land with the plough.[287] Yet in this wild country Caxton learnt his English, “a broad and rude English, as is anywhere spoken in England.” And in after-life, apologising to his readers for the plain unadorned style which his “simple cunning” uses, he speaks of his early education, “whereof I humbly and heartily thank God, and am bounden to pray for my father’s and mother’s souls, who in my youth sent me to school.” His education, we know, was carried on in London at a later date, but it must have been begun in some very primitive parochial school of Kent, where his companions could only have been rustics. The teaching in such schools was, doubtless, simple enough, but however small may have been the amount of secular learning acquired by the scholars, all received instruction in Christian doctrine, and learnt their prayers; the duty of providing such instruction for the poorer members of their flocks being earnestly pressed on the parish priests in the visitation articles and synodal decrees of John of Peckham and other English prelates.
Prayers and instructions, both secular and religious, were often taught to those who could not read, in a versified form, as had been the custom in Saxon times. Thus there is a curious poem of this period addressed to “Those who gete their lyvynge by the onest craft of masonry,” in which the young mason is instructed, rather minutely, how to behave himself when he comes to the house of God. Wherever he works, he is to come to Mass when he hears the bell. Before entering church he must take holy water, and is to understand that in doing so devoutly, he quenches venial sin. Then he must put back his hood, that is, uncover his head, and as he enters the church, look to the great Rood, and kneeling down on both knees “pull up his herte to Christe anon!” He must stand and bless himself at the Gospel, and avoid carelessly leaning against the wall; and when he hears the bell ring for the “holy sakerynge,”—
Knele ye most both ynge and olde,