II. Knight, in his Life of Dean Colet, enumerates several of the schools which were founded shortly before the Reformation. “This noble impulse of Christian charity,” says he, “in the founding of grammar schools, was one of the providential ways and means for bringing about the blessed reformation; and it is therefore observable, that, within thirty years before it, there were more grammar schools erected and endowed in England than had been in three hundred years preceding: one at Chichester by Dr. Edward Scory, bishop of that see, who left a farther benefaction to it by his last will, dated 8th December, 1502: another at Manchester by Hugh Oldham, Bishop of Exeter, who died 1519: another at Binton in Somersetshire, by Dr. Fitzjames, Bishop of London, and his brother, Sir John Fitzjames, lord chief justice of England: a fourth at Cirencester in Gloucestershire, by Thomas Ruthall, Bishop of Durham: a fifth at Roulston in Staffordshire, by Dr. Robert Sherborne, bishop of St. David’s, predecessor to Dr. Colet in the deanery of St. Paul’s: a sixth at Kingston-upon-Hull, by John Alcock, Bishop of Ely: a seventh at Sutton Colfield in Warwickshire, by Dr. Simon Harman (alias Veysey), bishop of Exeter: an eighth at Farnworth in Lancashire, by Dr. William Smith, Bishop of Lincoln, born there: a ninth at Appleby in Westmoreland, by Stephen Langton, bishop of Winchester: a tenth at Ipswich in Suffolk by cardinal Wolsey: another at Wymbourn in Dorsetshire, by Margaret, countess of Richmond: another at Wolverhampton in Staffordshire, by Sir Stephen Jennings, mayor of London: another at Macclesfield, by Sir John Percival, mayor of London: as also another by the lady Thomasine his wife at St. Mary Wike in Devonshire, where she was born: and another at Walthamstow in Essex by George Monnox, mayor of London, 1515: besides several other schools in other parts of the kingdom.”
Knight concludes by saying that “the piety and charity of Protestants ran so fast in this channel, that in the next age there wanted rather a regulation of grammar schools than an increase of them.”
George Lily, son of the grammarian and schoolmaster, and canon of St. Paul’s, refers doubtless to these benefactions when, in his Chronicle, he speaks of the encouragement of learning by the princes and nobility of England, and goes on to say that their good example was followed by Dr. John Colet, ... “who about this time (1510) erected a public school in London of an elegant structure, and endowed it with a large estate, for teaching gratis the sons of his fellow-citizens for ever.”
The foundation was for one hundred and seventy-three scholars—a number selected in remembrance of the miracle of the fishes.
III. Colet drew up, or had drawn up, for the regulation of his new school the subjoined Rules and Orders, to be read to the parents before their children were admitted, and to be accepted by them:—
“If youre chylde can rede and wryte Latyn and Englyshe suffycyently, so that he be able to rede and wryte his own lessons, then he shal be admitted into the schole for a scholar.
“If youre chylde, after reasonable reason proved, be founde here unapte and unable to lernynge, than ye warned therof shal take hym awaye, that he occupye not oure rowme in vayne.
“If he be apt to lerne, ye shal be contente that he continue here tyl he have competent literature.
“If he absente vi dayes, and in that mean seeson ye shew not cause reasonable, (resonable cause is only sekenes) than his rowme to be voyde, without he be admitted agayne, and pay iiijd.
“Also after cause shewed, if he contenewe to absente tyl the weke of admyssion in the next quarter, and then ye shew not the contenuance of the sekenes, then his rowme to be voyde, and he none of the schole tyl he be admytted agayne, and paye iiijd. for wryting his name.