“The three principal churches in London[75] are privileged by grant and ancient usage with schools, and they are all very flourishing. Often indeed through the favour and countenance of persons eminent in philosophy, more schools are permitted. On festivals, at those churches where the Feast of the Patron Saint is solemnized, the masters convene their scholars. The youth, on that occasion, dispute, some in the demonstrative way, and some logically. These produce their enthymemes, and those the more perfect syllogisms. Some, the better to shew their parts, are exercised in disputation, contending with one another, whilst others are put upon establishing some truth by way of illustration. Some sophists endeavour to apply, on feigned topics, a vast heap and flow of words, others to impose upon you with
false conclusions. As to the orators, some with their rhetorical harangues employ all the powers of persuasion, taking care to observe the precepts of art, and to omit nothing opposite to the subject. The boys of different schools wrangle with one another in verse; contending about the principles of Grammar, or the rules of the Perfect Tenses and Supines. Others there are, who in Epigrams, or other compositions in numbers, use all that low ribaldry we read of in the Ancients; attacking their school-masters, but without mentioning names, with the old Fescennine licentiousness, and discharging their scoffs and sarcasms against them; touching the foibles of their school-fellows, or perhaps of greater personages, with true Socratic wit, or biting them more keenly with a Theonine tooth: The audience, fully disposed to laugh,
‘With curling nose ingeminate the peals.’”
Of the sports of the boys, Fitzstephen gives a long description. On Shrove-Tuesday, each boy brought his fighting cock to his master, and they had a cock-fight all morning in the school-room.[76] After dinner, football in the fields of the suburbs, probably Smithfield. Every Sunday in Lent they had a sham-fight, some on horseback, some on foot, the King and his Court often looking on. At Easter they played at the Water-Quintain, charging a target, which if they missed, souse they went into the water. ‘On holidays in summer the pastime of the youths is to exercise themselves in archery, in running, leaping, wrestling, casting of stones, and flinging to certain distances, and lastly with bucklers.’ At moonrise the maidens danced. In the winter holidays, the boys saw boar-fights, hog-fights, bull and bear-baiting, and when ice came they slid, and skated on the leg-bones of some animal, punting themselves along with an iron-shod pole, and charging one another. A set of merry scenes indeed.
“In general, we are assured by the most learned man of the thirteenth century, Roger Bacon, that there never had been so great an appearance of learning, and so general an application to study, in so many different faculties, as in his time, when schools were erected in every city, town, burgh, and castle.” (Henry’s Hist. of England, vol. iv. p. 472-3.)
In the twenty-fifth year of Henry VI., 1447, four Grammar schools were appointed to be opened in London[77] for the education of
the City youth (Carlisle). But from the above lists it will be seen that Grammar Schools had not much to do with the education of our nobility and gentry before 1450 A.D.
AN ETON BOY IN A.D. 1478.
Of Eton studies, the Paston Letters notice only Latin versifying, but they show us a young man supposed to be nineteen, still at school, having a smart pair of breeches for holy days, falling in love, eating figs and raisins, proposing to come up to London for a day or two’s holiday or lark to his elder brother’s, and having 8d. sent him in a letter to buy a pair of slippers with. William Paston, a younger brother of John’s, when about nineteen years old, and studying at Eton, writes on Nov. 7, 1478, to thank his brother for a noble in gold, and says,
“my creanser (creditor) Master Thomas (Stevenson) heartily recommendeth him to you, and he prayeth you to send him some money for my commons, for he saith ye be twenty shillings in his debt, for a month was to pay for when he had money last; also I beseech you to send me a hose cloth, one for the holy days of some colour, and another for working days (how coarse soever it be, it maketh no matter), and a stomacher and two shirts, and a pair of slippers: and if it like you that I may come with Alweder by water”—would they take a pair-oar and pull down? (the figs and raisins came up by a barge;)—“and sport me with you at London a day or two this term-time, then ye may let all this be till the time that I come, and then I will tell you when I shall be ready to come from Eton by the grace of God, who have you in his keeping.” Paston Letters, modernised, vol. 2, p. 129.