The English grammar schools to 1660 : their curriculum and practice

Front matter

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The English Grammar Schools to 1660

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE, C. F. CLAY, Manager.

Preface

THE object of this book is to present an account of the development of the teaching in the English Grammar Schools from the time of the Invention of Printing up to 1660. It is a history of the practice of the schools, of their curricula, and of the differentiated subjects of instruction, in distinction from the history of the theories of educational reformers as to what ought to be taught, and how existing methods might be improved. The basis of the work is therefore bibliographical. It has been impossible, within the space at disposal, to include a statement of all the bibliographical detail, on which the generalisations are based, but, throughout, the attempt has been made to describe really representative documents and school text-books. The study of English educational history has not hitherto included much consideration of the old school text-books used in the i6th and 17th centuries. Yet this seems to be the safest way of securing a sound basis for the study of the school practice of the times. It will be evident how much use has been made of the Ludus Literarius (161 2 and 1627) of John Brinsley and the New Discovery of the Old Art of Teaching School of Charles Hoole (1660). This has been the more necessary because as yet there are no reprints of those outstanding historical documents of 17th century school work. Free use has been made also of School Statutes, which at any rate, express the vi

Preface intention of the Founders as to what was to be taught in their schools, and frequently the methods by which subjects were to be taught. In some cases these may be individual opinions, but usually, they reflect the current view of the active educational workers of their times.

It should be stated that this book has been developed on the basis of a Monograph, by the present writer, privately published by the Bibliographical Society in 1903, entitled: The Curriculum aiid Text-books of English Schools in the First Half of the Seventeenth Century. The author returns his best thanks to the Society for courteous permission to use some of the material, particularly the substance of the concluding chapter of this work, first put forward in that Monograph. Thanks are also gratefully tendered by the author to his colleague. Professor Edward Bensly, for most generous help in the revision of proof-sheets.

F. W.

Ty Dol,

Wealdstone.

September^ 1908.

Contents

Preface Introduction

CHAP.

I. The Ecclesiastical Organisation of Schools . . lo

Introduction

Viewing the Grammar School curriculum as a whole, during the two hundred years preceding 1660, it is convenient to regard it as a contrast to the curriculum of the Middle Ages. The mediaeval curriculum consisted in a general course in the Seven Liberal Arts, preparatory to specialistic training in Theology or Law. The Seven Liberal Arts were sub-divided into the Trivium, viz. Dialectic, Grammar, Rhetoric; and the Quadrivium, viz. Music, Arithmetic, Geometry and Astronomy. These seven Arts constituted the round of general knowledge, the Encyclopaedia. They were expounded in treatises, supposed to be comprehensive, in the MS. text-books of Martianus Capella, Boethius, Cassiodorus and Isidorus of Seville. In the early stage of the Renascence influence, an attempt was made to construct encyclopaedic manuals, after the fashion of the mediaeval text-books, but embodying the new knowledge. The most famous instance is the Margarita philosophica edited by Gregorius Reisch, published at Fribourg in 1503. But the enormous increase of knowledge in the Revival of Learning doomed to failure all these attempts to incorporate the new stores of knowledge within a single volume. The incoming of the Renascence spirit, therefore, marks the critical point in the breaking up of the mediaeval encyclopaedias, from the point of view of the school curriculum, and the beginning of the modern practice of the differentiation of school subjects.

In the mediaeval point of view there was, it is true, a certain aspect of knowledge as an organic w^hole, which was

w. I to some extent obscured in the developments of the i6th and 17th centuries. But the differentiation of the curriculum into separate subjects of study, by the introduction of critical methods^ and of close analysis, brought a wealth of detail before pupils, and a thoroughness of study into the study of classical language and Hterature, such as was signally lacking in mediaeval times.

Two changes eventually resulting from the Renascence must be especially noticed. Firstly, the change in perspective of the curriculum as a whole. Secondly, the evolution of text-books. With regard to the change in perspective of the curriculum, the i6th and 17th centuries saw the expansion of the Quadrivium into the separate subjects of the mathematics and of the sciences. In this development, England took its fair share. In Arithmetic, Cuthbert Tunstall, Robert Recorde, John Napier, William Oughtred helped to establish modern methods. In Geometry Henry Billingsley in 1570 presented a translation of Euclid, and Leonard Digges, Thomas Hood, Henry Briggs, and the succession of Savilian Professors at Oxford and the Gresham Lecturers in London, advanced the knowledge of the subject and extended its influence. Astronomy flourished in England from the light thrown on it by students of Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Kepler, and Galileo. Algebra was differentiated from Arithmetic and started an independent career in England from the time of Thomas Harriot, till it was systematised by John Wallis. So, too. Trigonometry was introduced into England by Thomas Blundevile and developed by William Oughtred. In the sciences. Botany, Zoology, Physiology and Anatomy were differentiated and developed by classifications which marked the scientific movement away from the old Aristotelian authority in the advance towards the modern treatment. Magnetism, Mechanics, Hydrostatics, Pneumatics, Chemistry and Geology began to claim treatment separately. The old Quadrivium was broken up into a host of separate studies, each of which

Dialectic gives place to Grammar 3 included a large mass of observational and experimental phenomena, urgently calling for organised treatment. Mathematical and scientific studies were thus vigorously stimulated. But in both these directions, only the mature and professed students of the subjects were effectively influenced. In none of these subjects did the new intellectual movements reach the Grammar Schools. The new perspective of mathematical and scientific developments, founded on the breaking up and analysis of the Quadrivium, was, therefore, only a slight and indirect influence, in this period, on the schools.

It was different with the old subjects of the Trivium ; Dialectic, Grammar, Rhetoric. Here, a complete revolution can be traced in the perspective of these studies, a revolution of the first importance in its effect on the schools of the i6th and 17th centuries. In the Middle Ages, right up to the time of the Renascence, Dialectic was supreme. It swamped Grammar and Rhetoric. Or, to state the matter more accurately, Rhetoric divorced from the reading of authors was a dumbshow, whilst Grammar retained its name and little more, for it was permeated with the dialectical method. The later mediaeval grammarians, e.g. Alexander of Villedieu and Eberhard of Bethune, took Grammar out of its practical sphere and introduced into it the flights and flappings of Logic and Metaphysics. But with the Renascence, this was changed. Grammar became the first of school subjects both in order of study, as it was in the Middle Ages, and in order of importance. Grammar dethroned Logic, and in the i6th and 17th centuries we see Logic slowly and surely disappearing from the old range of the Trivium studied in the schools, as Music was lost along with the rest of the Quadrivium. Rhetoric indeed remained to the Elizabethan and Stuart schools, and, by the reading of authors, came to the highest position in the curriculum, that is, for the highest pupils. The high repute of Rhetoric, and its important place in the curriculum, is perhaps to the modern reader the most striking feature of the school work of the first half of the 17th century. But throughout the school course Grammar was the * first' of school studies. The fact, however, must not be overlooked, that Grammar, in the earlier part of the i6th century, to scholars and teachers meant something different from ^ Grammar ' as it filtered down into the school practice of the 17th century. For, in questions of education, the cry of the Renascence writers was. Back to Quintilian ! With Quintilian, Grammar was founded upon, and inclusive of, the study of humanistic literature. The enthronement of Hterature, and the minimising of formalistic Grammar, was the position taken up in England by Sir Thomas Elyot in the book called the Gouvemour (1531) and in Roger Ascham's Scholeviaster (1570). Eventually, however, in English schools in the latter part of the i6th century and in the 17th century. Grammar ordinarily became an entity in itself, of which literature was, as it were, a concrete manifestation, and a vast territory for illustration of grammatical rules. There were, however, throughout the period, scholars and schoolmasters who protested against this undue glorification of Grammar. The conflict is described in the chapter on the Grammar War, in the present work (Chapter XVII).

This twofold change in the perspective of the curriculum, viz. the expansion of each of the Liberal Arts into further subjects of study, in the constituents both of the Trivium and of the Quadrivium, and the change in the relative position of the subjects of the Trivium, involved a further development, viz. a progressive evolution of text-books. Any effective study of the history of the practice of teaching in the schools must be based on bibliographical material. Hitherto, in England historical research in education has concerned itself predominantly with accounts of the views of educational reformers, from whose writings only indirect evidence can be obtained as to the internal work of the schools of any period. For the prevalent school practice it is necessary to consult the actual school text-books, used by teacher and pupil in the

The Invention of Printing school work. This task has been attempted in the following pages.

It is clear that the evolution of the text-book for purposes of general instruction was enormously facilitated by the Invention of Printing, and this event furnishes, therefore, the most convenient starting-point. It fixes the coming of the text-book method of study. For, at most, in the Middle Ages the schoolmaster might possess or have recourse to MS. text-books, but in the Renascence period teacher and pupils possessed their own books, and books on all subjects were indefinitely multiphed. In 1660, Charles Hoole notes down over 300 books which ought to be within the reach of the Grammar School pupils.

The mediaeval methods had been essentially those of the Disputation ; the later methods were those of the written Latin theme, verse and oration, and the utilisation in their service of all available literature, not only for style but also for subject-matter. Within the two hundred years described in this book, the great experiment was tried of making Latin available in the first place as the standard language of communication. So far from Latin being recognised as a dead language, it was the primary object of the Grammar School to make Latin live again, and the learned man could not be better distinguished from the unlearned than by his ability to speak Latin. In the second place, the Grammar School increasingly laid stress on written Latin compositions, which should conform to classical standards, as far as style was concerned, but with an ever widening field of choice for subject-matter. The critical reading of classical authors from an aesthetic or philosophical point of view was not, and could not be, within the range of the Grammar School. In other words, the aim of the schools was not so much humanistic, in the sense of imparting a training in literature, as it was practical, in attempting to give the pupils control over the instrument of all culture of their own and preceding ages. Roman and Greek literature were studied not so much as ends in themselves as the storehouses of adequate and eloquent expression, the happy hunting-ground of the right thing to discourse about, and the right way of saying it. The real, though not always the explicitly acknowledged ideal of the Grammar School master, was the bonus orator of Quintilian, not the classical scholarship framed upon the ideals with which later ages are familiarised by the traditions of a Bentley and a Porson and a Kennedy.

This statement of the practical aim of the i6th and 17th century Grammar School must not be regarded as depreciatory of the literary aspect of the classics. The admiration of the schoolmaster for a Muretus, a Scaliger, or a Casaubon was unbounded, but such scholarship was only for intellectual giants, whilst a working knowledge of Latin for conversation and the written expression of thoughts, with the vast accumulation of apparatus of dictionaries, grammars and phrase-books, was eminently practical. The entrance to the legal, medical, and clerical professions required a ready knowledge of Latin. Travelling and communication abroad equally demanded practical knowledge of Latin. The reading of classical authors was required, but the pupil was expected to have his note-book at hand into which he transcribed all phrases and information likely to be of use for the need of conversation and of written exercises.

It is necessary to lay stress on this attitude of impelling the classical authors into serviceableness by the pupil because it modifies the impression which prevails that the post- Renascence schools followed Ascham in the insistence of Imitation of the classical authors, as the main educational discipline, to be derived from classical studies. The discipline contemplated was rather that of adaptation by the pupil of terms and phrases, sanctioned by classical usage, to the needs of communication of his ideas, either in speech or writing. A classical phrase^ which was specially neat and happy, was to be retained in mind, or at least in the note-book, for an

Phrase-books and commonplace Books occasion when it could be, to use our modern term, * turned to use.' In the earlier period of the Renascence, conversationbooks and phrase-books were founded on subjects from Terence and Cicero, but in the later part of the i6th and throughout the 17th century the phrase-books and apparatus for exercises increased their storage of subjects for exercises, and phrases to be employed in connexion with them, to meet the enormous increase in subjects of knowledge and the new sources from which knowledge could be derived.

It has been somewhat too rashly assumed, since * Imitation ' was the essential point of composition in Latin and in Greek, that the school training of the i6th and 17 th centuries was chiefly devoted to memory work and the passive side of the pupil's mind. But this estimate overlooks the important place taken in the school by the pupil's series of note-books and commonplace books. If due stress be laid on this equipment, it is clear that the system of requiring the pupil to choose out passages and phrases which interested him and enter them in a commonplace book for future use in his composition, was a method intended to exercise his judgment and to train his taste. It was the method whereby Erasmus and Melanchthon and scholars generally had disciplined themselves in their classical studies, and the result was shown in the countless books of apophthegms, adages, epithets, emblems, phrase-books, anthologies, together with compends and epitomes. Eventually the analytical process reached the * particle,' settling ort's business and determining the enclitic 8e. These scholarly pursuits were, in their measure, introduced in the school, and a genuine effort was made to induce in the school pupil the attitude of active research by which the scholars had obtained their results. The subjective method of learning on the part of scholars became the objective method of teaching the pupils. The humanistic method of imparting the classics was adopted, for the most part, only by those classical schoolmasters such as Home, Farnaby, and Hoole, who knew their business exceptionally well. The text-books show that the aim of the Grammar School teachers of the i6th and 17th centuries was mainly that the pupil should acquire power of classifying the contents of books read, of analysing the paragraphs, sentences, phrases, words, so as to bring them into comparison with those of other authors. The pupil was expected to show active initiation in gaining control over the material of reading and to register his observations in his note-books and commonplace books so as to use the material from his own independent standpoint of free composition and fluent speech.

Moreover the numerous printed phrase-books and treasuries of passages, arranged according to subjects, included quotations from modern writers (in Latin) containing references to histories and events, contemporaneous and recent, as well as mediaeval and ancient; to illustrations from recent books on science, mathematics and other studies. It is to sources such as these in the old school text-books that we must look for the origins of the inclusion within the notice of the Grammar Schools of the subjects which we call modern, e.g. history, science, and even the vernacular.

The English Restoration, 1660, has been chosen as the limit of the survey, because from that time onwards there was the marked competition of modern subjects with the old undivided sway of classical material in the teaching of the Grammar School, This is typified by the incoming of the French influence. Under the Commonwealth, a Latin secretary was employed for official correspondence. After the Restoration, French became the diplomatic language. Or, apart from general influences, we may observe the change in the establishment of mathematical schools, navigation schools, commercial schools, the attachment of writing schools to the Grammar School, and by the end of the 17th century English departments (which were substantially elementary schools for those whose education ended at about 14 or 15 years of age)

The Religious Basis of Classical Schools 9 and in the charity schools. Further, inside some of the Grammar Schools themselves the widening of the curriculum took place so as to include the vernacular literature, arithmetic and music. Up to the end of the Commonwealth, the Grammar Schools of England may be regarded as apparently exclusively classical in the material of instruction, with the exception — a most important exception — as we shall see, that under mediaeval Catholicism, and afterwards under i6th and 17th century Puritanism, they were, in intention and largely in practice, permeated with moral, religious, and pietistic instruction.

Chapter I. The Ecclesiastical Organisation Of Schools

Momentous issues were involved in the proclamation which Charlemagne sent in 787 a.d. to the bishops as well as abbots, since Theodulf, Bishop of Orleans, carrying into effect the spirit of the proclamation, required the clergy in his diocese to receive all children who should be sent by their parents for that purpose to be taught in each parish and no fees were to be exacted. Charlemagne's proclamation has been called the first general charter of education for the Middle Ages. He himself founded the great palace schools for the children of courtiers, nobles, and others, and thus established court education in a permanent and recognised institution, and his proclamation gave rise to the schools of the dioceses or cathedral and church schools. From Charlemagne began the organisation of education outside of the monasteries. The monasteries after his time may be regarded as chiefly the training schools of orders of monks. Before the universities were established, the monasteries were the store-houses of learning, and to their educational work is due the force of Cardinal Newman's dictum, ' Not a man in Europe who talks bravely against the Church but owes it to the Church that he can talk at all ! ' There were no non-Church schools. The Church had the monopoly of learning and of teaching. The palace schools as well as monastery schools were under ecclesiastical influence. But neither the monastery schools nor the palace schools were the people's schools. In so far

Cathedral and Chantry Schools 1 1 as the people generally were educated in the Middle Ages it is to the cathedral or diocesan schools and their offshoots that we must look, those institutions which arose in continuation of the behest of the pioneer Theodulf, that the clergy of the diocese must receive for tuition all those who claimed it.

These schools grew, and though taking their start from an imperial proclamation some claimed Papal noticed If we are to understand the history of the schools after the Reformation we must realise that in the Middle Ages learning and teaching were functions of the Church, and it was only with the growing stores of knowledge and consequently of teaching material that the need of differentiation was felt. It was with the expanding needs of the body politic^ in many directions, that schools became in any degree separated from the Church, extremely slowly before the Reformation, and even only gradually after the Reformation.

It was from the cathedral schools, in all probability, that the idea arose of having the teaching of schools connected with the various important churches of the towns and villages. This was done by the institution of schools in the various chantries which were established in the larger churches throughout the country.

Mr Arthur F. Leach did an inestimable service to the history of education in showing with such a wealth of illustration the importance of the chantry schools in English education of the pre-Reformation times. 'The great bulk of the chantries,' he says, in England, ' seem to have been founded in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, and their number increased with the spread of wealth, right up to the Reforma-

^ In 826 at a synod of Pope Eugenius II a decree was issued that in all episcopal sees^ and all other places where it is necessary^ masters and doctors are to be provided for, to teach ' letters ' and the liberal arts. Thus had Charlemagne's enthusiasm for schools passed into the hands of the Pope and his synod. All education was tightly bound within the ecclesiastical clasp.

tion.' The chantry priest was, in the first place, appointed to pray for the soul of an individual, his family, and friends. Eventually other functions fell to his lot, one of the most common duties enjoined in the later Middle Ages being that of teaching poor boys. We use the term chantry of the chapel, altar or part of the church endowed by the founder of a * chantry.' The chantry, however, was the endowment itself for the maintenance of a special priest, whose duties usually included the teaching of poor boys. As there were chantries in connexion with most, if not all, of the important churches of the country, the requirement, by the bequeather of a chantry, of the teaching of children by the chantry priest was analogous to the institution by the Church of a prebend in the cathedral churches for the Scholasticus.

The chantry schools, Mr Leach shows excellent reasons for believing, were the most numerous schools in England before the Reformation. The Chantries Acts of 1546 and 1548, though specifically stating good-will towards schools and schoolmasters, offered no exemption from confiscation for song-schools and schools of an elementary type, or for Grammar Schools which were not so by the first foundation \ Though the intention of these Acts may not have been antagonistic to education, Mr Leach shows that the effect of the administration of them was drastic, almost to the point of constituting an educational cataclysm. He offers substantial evidence to sustain the position that the ecclesiastical organisation of the Middle Ages had established a school system both on the secondary and elementary planes of a far more extensive kind than historians have ordinarily supposed'^. The records^ as far as accessible, of the commissioners under the Chantries

^ Leach, English Schools of the Reformation^ p. 70.

2 Remarks which point to the same conclusion could be cited from Mulcaster (1581) and Christopher Wase in his Considerations concerning Free Schools^ 1678, but the Protestant bias of writers seems on this point to have excluded serious research.

Mediaeval Gi^a^iintar Schools

Acts, have been included in Mr Leach's book. These commissioners accomplished skilfully their task of describing the details of the endowments of the chantries. Unfortunately for education, the Commission for the continuance of schools did not perform their task so creditably. Want of money for other purposes took precedence of educational needs, and the school endowments of the chantries were diverted.

The Chantry School sometimes was very small. On the other hand, sometimes they ran up to 80, 120, 140, or even 160 pupils. The work done in them varied. Out of 259 schools in the records of the Commission under the Chantries Act, *93 were Grammar Schools, 140 are so called... 23 are Song-Schools, and 22 may perhaps be regarded simply as Elementary Schools \' Grammar Schools are therefore an old institution in England, and are not to be regarded as having their origin with the Reformation. They are of pre-Reformation ecclesiastical origin. Probably Mr Leach does not sufficiently emphasise the influence of the monasteries on education. Mr Thorold Rogers, going to the other extreme, was convinced that Grammar Schools were attached to ' every monastery'-^.' Mr Rashdall states that the Grammar Schools belonging to the monasteries were ' secular schools taught by secular masters and quite distinct from the schools of the monksl' Mr Rashdall quotes the case of the school founded by Abbot Samson at Bury St Edmunds, and shows that ^no one was allowed to teach within the liberty of St Edmund without the permission of the Abbot and the Magister Scholarum at Buryl'

The Foundation Deed of Bruton School makes over a certain manor in Dorset to the Abbot of Bruton for the

^ Leach, p. 91.

^ Six Centiij'ies of Work and Wages ^ I. p. 165.

^ Universities of Europe^ II. p. 600.

purpose of establishing a Grammar School, under his guidance at Bruton\

Without however attempting to determine the relative numbers of the different classes of schools, the evidence is clear that the number of schools was great in the later Middle Ages. Mr Hastings RashdalP says on this point: * It may be stated with some confidence that at least in the later Middle Age the smallest towns and even the larger villages possessed schools where a boy might learn to read and acquire the first rudiments of ecclesiastical Latin : while, except in very remote and thinly populated regions he would never have had to go very far from home to find a regular Grammar School. That the means of education in reading, writing, and the elements of Latin were far more widely diffused in mediaeval times than has sometimes been supposed is coming to be generally recognised by students of mediaeval life. The knowledge of reading and writing and of the elements of Latin was by no means confined to the clergy : " the bailiff of every manor kept his accounts in Latinl"' A Grammar Master often formed part of the establishment of a great noble or prelate'* who had pages of gentle family residing in his house for education. In other cases a boy of a well-to-do family no doubt received his earliest education from a chaplain or * clerk' of his father, or from a private tutor or neighbouring priest employed for the purpose ^

It helps us to realise how entirely ecclesiastical was the I education of mediaeval times when we recognise the fact that both the students as well as the authorities were ecclesiastical

1 Notes and Queries for Somerset and Dorset, iii. p. 241.

2 Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, ii. p. 602. ^ Stubbs' Constitutio7ial Hist. ii. p. 345.

^ Furnivall, Mannei's and Meals in Olden Time, E.E.T.S., Forewords, p. vi.

^ Rashdall, il. p. 603.

The Church and the School in outlook. Mr Hastings Rashdall-" says, in speaking of the colleges in the Universities (he is treating of Cambridge) : *A11 the Colleges were designed for ecclesiastics, whether they were required to take holy orders while in the College or not.'

A fact interesting to note in this connexion is mentioned by Abbot Gasquet, viz. that the degree courses in the University were parallel to the ecclesiastical advance of the student. The course of education of the cleric was : at seven years of age a boy might receive the tonsure ; between seven and fourteen whilst at school, he would help the priest * to serve mass ' and receive the minor orders of * door-keeper,' * lector,' 'exorcist' and * acolyte.' From fourteen to eighteen at the University he could qualify for the degree of Bachelor of Arts, and at eighteen he could become sub-deacon in the Church. When Bachelor of Arts, he must take seven years to qualify as Bachelor of Divinity. Simultaneously at twenty five years of age he could take that degree and become a priest. The University degrees, therefore, fitted into the ecclesiastical course of the clerical student.

The students in the English Church before the Reformation found posts in connexion with the ecclesiastical organisation of the time. The students were educated with a view to ecclesiastical preferment and found a place in the ecclesiastical system. The smallness of the number of students after the Reformation shows that the Chantry Acts and the dissolution of the monasteries had closed up the sources of supply and employment of students. In his Positions (1581) Mulcaster bases his argument for the restriction of secondary education on the fact that the Reformation had Hmited the number of openings in posts connected with the Church, so as to make it undesirable to educate so many pupils as had been done in the past.

The superior provision for educational needs in pre-Reformation times, compared with that of the early Elizabethan ^ Universities of Europe^ ii. p. 564, note.