Gradually other schools sprang up, outside the monasteries and cathedrals, which were not meant for monks or priests, though they were at first connected with monasteries, colleges, and cathedrals. For instance, in Norman times, not very long after the Conquest, there were grammar-schools at Derby, St. Alban's, and Bury St. Edmund's.
When we think of these schools we must not picture to ourselves great buildings to hold two or three hundred boys, such as we see now; nor must we suppose that there was a great rush of pupils to them. Boys did not go to school from nine till twelve, and from two till four, with plenty of time for cricket, football, and sports of all descriptions. School work was very hard, and was regarded as a serious business. There was a great deal of learning by heart to be done. You see, books were few and costly, and a man's best reference library was his own well-stored memory. No doubt this hard work helped to train the memory, and was good discipline for the scholar.
In the monasteries and colleges, where boys were trained to sing in the choir, they had to learn their services by heart; for books were not provided for them—a book was much too valuable in days when they were all written by hand, and when printing first came into use they were still far too costly for ordinary monks and choir-boys to have one apiece, or even enough for several to "look over". In the ordinary services there were long psalms and passages of Scripture attached to them which differed for every day, and the boys had to know these perfectly in Latin. For hours and hours every day the little fellows were drilled in the services till they were word-perfect. There were something like seven services to be learned for each of the three hundred and sixty-five days of the year.
We talk of Latin nowadays as a dead language, but it was anything but a dead language in the Middle Ages. School was held all day long from quite early in the morning; and during school-hours woe betide the lads if they talked in any other language but Latin.
Choir-boys had to be taught in the song-school as well, how to sing their services, and the music was just as difficult as the words and had also to be learned by heart.
In the parish churches the priest and the parish clerk had boys whom they trained to help in the services. The services were much simpler and shorter than those in the monasteries; but they were in Latin, and had to be known by heart.
In the grammar and other schools the boys were drilled in the works of old Latin scholars in much the same way, and in some cases in Greek authors as well, with a certain amount of arithmetic and science.
A School, Fourteenth Century