Later, the custom of sending young noblemen and gentlemen to Italy—to travel, not to take a degree—was introduced, and Ascham’s condemnation of it, when no tutor accompanied the youths, is too well known to need quoting. The Italians’ saying, Inglese Italianato è un diabolo incarnato, sums it up.[59]
MONASTIC AND CATHEDRAL SCHOOLS.
[5.] Monastic and Cathedral Schools. Herbert Losing, Bp. of [Thetford], afterwards Norwich, between 1091 and 1119, in his 37th Letter restores his schools at Thetford to Dean Bund, and directs that no other schools be opened there.
Tanner (Not. Mon. p. xx. ed. Nasmith), when mentioning “the use and advantage of these Religious houses”—under which term
“are comprehended, cathedral and collegiate churches, abbies, priories, colleges, hospitals, preceptories (Knights Templars’ houses), and frieries”—says,
“Secondly, They were schools of learning & education; for every convent had one person or more appointed for this purpose; and all the neighbours that desired it, might have their children taught grammar and church musick without any expence to them.[60]
In the nunneries also young women were taught to work, and to read English, and sometimes Latin also. So that not only the lower rank of people, who could not pay for their learning, but most of the noblemen and gentlemen’s daughters were educated in those places.”[61]
LYDGATE’S TRICKS AT SCHOOL.
As Lydgate (born at Lydgate in Suffolk, six or seven miles from Newmarket) was ordained subdeacon in the Benedictine monastery of Bury St Edmunds in 1389[62], he was probably sent as a boy to a monastic school. At any rate, as he sketches his early escapades—apple-stealing, playing truant, &c.,—for us in his Testament[63], I shall quote the youth’s bit of the poem here:—
Harleian MS. 2255, fol. 60.