Augusta Theodosia Drane

THE RED AND WHITE ROSES.

A.D. 1386 TO 1494.

The close of the fourteenth century witnessed the establishment in England of two new schools, the importance of which caused them to be regarded as models for all subsequent foundations of a similar kind in this country. These were William of Wykeham’s twin colleges at Oxford and Winchester the first of which, opened in 1386, may be said to have perfected the collegiate system of our universities, while the second, which was not completed till seven years later, laid the foundation of another system, more peculiarly national—that of our English public schools. The object of these two institutions was to furnish a complete course of free education to two hundred scholars, who were to be led from the lowest class of grammatical learning, to the highest degrees of the various faculties. And at the same time that their intellectual training was thus amply provided for, they were subjected to a strict rule of discipline, and the religious element of education was given a much larger development than it had received in any collegiate foundations which had yet appeared. Chapels had, indeed, in some cases been attached to colleges before the time of Wykeham, though they do not seem to have been regarded as any essential portion of such institutions; but now the choral office and the magnificent celebration of ecclesiastical rites were provided for with no less scrupulous care than the advancement of studies; and thus the founder set his seal to one great principle of the earlier monastic education, namely, that habits of devotion, and those too of a certain liturgical character, ought to be infused into the training which is given to the children of Holy Church. And in many ways these foundations reflected the spirit of more ancient times, in what regarded discipline. When the universities began to be frequented in place of those monastic and cathedral schools, which up to the twelth century had been the chief academies resorted to by students, clerical or lay, no provision at all had been made for the government of the scholars; a fact which sufficiently explains the scandals and disorders which fill up the early history of Paris and Oxford. Nor need the want of such provision excite any surprise, if we bear in mind that the first universities were not institutions, founded at any particular period according to some sagacious scheme; but that they sprang up of themselves out of small beginnings, and developed, like the grain of mustard seed, into a mighty tree. Scholars and professors came first, and it was not till they had insensibly grown into a population, and had committed the excesses of which most lawless populations would be guilty, that authority stepped in with statutes and decrees, and endeavoured to give shape and method to the unwieldy mass. The collegiate system, as we have seen, semi-monastic in its character, and undoubtedly formed in partial imitation of the religious houses of study, was called into being in order to struggle with the monster evils which had arisen out of the university system; it was an attempt to return, in some measure, to the ancient paths, and to reassert the principle that intellectual education, when separated from moral and religious training, is no education at all. Wykeham adopted this principle in all its fulness, and herein lay the special value of his work. But with an admirable discretion he contrived so to adapt it to the wants, the feelings, and the habits of his age, that it assumed the appearance, not of a retrogression but of an advance: nay more, he managed so thoroughly to root his system in the English mind that it stood the brunt of many revolutions, and even in our own day obtains a traditionary kind of honour, encrusted as our old foundations have become with the overgrowth of three Protestant centuries.

The Wykehamist colleges were not only the most splendid academies of learning founded at this time, but they opened the way to other foundations of a similar description; and a kind of fashion set in for founding schools and colleges, which, during the reigns of our Lancastrian kings, multiplied over the land. The alarm excited by the spread of Lollardism had something to do with this movement, and it is remarkable that one Oxford college, that of Lincoln, was founded by a prelate, Richard Fleming, who at an earlier period had taken part with Wickliffe, but who, thoroughly startled out of his partisanship, hastened to make amends for his fault by raising what he hoped would become a nursery of learned divines, who should confute the errors of the wily heresiarch. That Fleming was thoroughly in earnest in his change of views was manifested at the Council of Constance, when we find him distinguishing himself by a very able opposition to the Hussites.[296] His kinsman, Robert Fleming, travelled into Italy, and there studied in the school of the young Guarini. He was one of the earliest English scholars who took part in the revival of classical learning, and during his foreign travels collected great store of books for Lincoln College, some of which he transcribed and illuminated with his own hand, being in fact a very skilful limner. He was the author of a Greek and Latin dictionary, as well as of a Latin poem entitled, “Lucubrationes TiburtinÆ.” In 1438, Chichele, Archbishop of Canterbury, who had already shown himself a patron of learning by the erection of a free school at Higham Ferrars, and of St. Bernard’s College at Oxford for the use of the Cistercian students, laid the foundation of his noble college of All Souls, most liberally endowed, and furnished with books, chapel furniture, and every requisite for the use of the students. And in 1448 William of Waynflete, Bishop of Winchester, obtained the royal grant empowering him to erect his college of Magdalene, in which the collegiate system was more perfectly carried out than in any previous or subsequent foundation.

Besides these Oxford colleges, those of Eton, and King’s at Cambridge, owed their foundation to the zeal of Henry VI., being in avowed imitation of the plan, already adopted by Wykeham, of uniting a public school to a house of higher studies at the university, thus providing an entire course of instruction for elder and younger scholars.

Having elsewhere[297] given a more particular account than space will here admit of the foundations of Wykeham, Waynflete, and Henry VI., so important in the history of English education, it will not be necessary to dwell on them more at length in this place; but it should be remembered that these, if the most splendid, were very far from being the only educational institutions of the period. Our ancient school-system had ramifications which extended into every grade of society and we are, generally speaking, but little familiar with the method by which that system was worked, because we are equally unaccustomed to study the grand system of our ancient Catholic charities. A class of magnificent foundations formerly existed in England, of which there only remain such scanty ruins as escaped the rapacity of Henry VIII. and the Protector, Somerset, but the multitude and real nature of which is hardly appreciated. I refer, of course, to the hospitals and collegiate establishments, which administered a vast revenue, voluntarily made over by private charity, for the discharge of all the works of mercy.

Some amongst my readers may be able to look back to early days, whose first associations are blended with the thought of a venerable pile, which seemed altogether out of proportion in size and magnificence to the purposes of a simple parish church. On Sunday afternoons when the psalm has been unusually long, or the preacher unusually drowsy, their childish fancies have, it may be, been busy, among the bosses of the fretted roof, speculating as to the possible meaning of its wondrous embellishments, and perplexed to account for the fact that they should be summoned week after week to worship in what had the outward grandeur of a cathedral, whereas the town or village clustered round the minster walls seemed wholly undeserving of such a dignity. Attached to the church there is probably a school, as at Ottery, or Southwell, or Crediton, or Doncaster, or Shrewsbury; and if tourists come that way to inspect the encaustic pavement, or to take rubbings of the fine old brasses, and wonder to find so huge a building in so insignificant a locality, they are content to receive the information given them by their guide book, that “the church was once collegiate.” How vast a meaning may be enclosed in a simple phrase! “The church was once collegiate!” Yes: it was attached to one of those creations of Catholic piety which did the work of almshouse, schoolhouse, workhouse, hospital, and parish church, or rather, which did a great deal more than any or all of those put together, and did it with a magnificent profuseness of liberality, which strikes one dumb with astonishment and admiration. Thus, the great Lancastrian College at Leicester, known as the Newark, or College of St. Mary’s the Greater, the remains of which still cover many acres of ground, was originally founded for a dean, twelve secular canons, twelve vicars, three clerks, six choristers, fifty poor men, as many poor women, ten nurses, and other officers and attendants, all plentifully provided for. It had, according to Leland, an exceedingly fair “college church, large and fair cloisters, some pretty houses for the prebendaries in the college area, and stately walls and gates,” much of all which is still standing. That of St. Cross at Winchester was founded by Henry de Blois, Bishop of Winchester, for the maintenance of thirteen poor men, and the daily feeding of a hundred others, who were to enjoy their loaf of good wheaten bread, weighing three pounds, their three quarts of good small beer, and two messes either of fish or flesh, as the day should require, in the Hundred-mennes-hall; and as the allowance was more than any ordinary capacity could dispose of at table, the statutes judiciously permitted them to carry home what they could not eat. Cardinal Beaufort enlarged this noble foundation by providing for the maintenance of thirty-five additional brethren, and appointing three religious sisters to attend the sick, and bestowed on it the beautiful title of the “Almshouse of Noble Poverty.” Here, too, we find a grand collegiate church, with a warden, four chaplains, thirteen clerks, and seven choristers, for whose instruction provision was made by keeping up a school. Sometimes the school appears as the chief object of the foundation, as in the College of Ottery St. Mary’s in Devonshire, which Bishop Grandison erected in 1337, for a warden, eight prebendaries, ten vicars, a master of music, a grammar-master, two parish priests, eight secondaries, eight choristers, and two clerks. Sometimes the corporal and spiritual works of mercy were blended together, as at the hospital of St. Leonard’s at York, which maintained a master, thirteen poor brethren, four secular priests, eight sisters, thirty choristers, two schoolmasters, two hundred and six bedesmen, and six servitors. The whole was governed by semi-monastic statutes under the rule of St. Austin. Most of the smaller hospitals of York had likewise schools attached to them.

Sometimes, again, as at Beverley and Ripon, the magnificent collegiate establishments seem principally designed for the celebration of the divine offices with a splendour which could not be carried out in parochial churches; and the schools and other charities attached to these foundations were not the primary idea. The same seems to have been the case in the great college of Stoke-by-Clare, the statutes of which are so very precise and rigorous as to the quality of the plain chant to be sung in choir; but here, too, there was a school in which boys were to be taught “grammar, singing, and good manners.” The endowments are not always on so sumptuous a scale as in these last-named colleges; yet often in very remote villages and rural parishes we find a modest hospital designed for the support of a few bedesmen of honest life, and a grammar-school, wherein, as in St. Gabriel’s Hospital at Brough, in Westmoreland, the chaplain was required to teach grammar and singing to the children of the place. Thus, too, at Ewelme, in Oxfordshire, De la Pole and his duchess had founded an almshouse, called God’s House, wherein a priest was appointed as schoolmaster to teach their grammar to the children of the Ewelme tenantry; and a very similar foundation existed at Bentley, in Derbyshire, where the family of Mountjoy erected a small college for seven old servants of the lordship, who were to have pasture for seven cows, wood from the lord’s manor, and a new gown and hood every third year, on condition of their saying our Lady’s Psalter twice a day for the founder in the chapel of the hospital. This last item in the constitutions sealed its fate at the time of the Reformation, and it was abolished, as being mixed up with “superstitious observances.” In foundations of this sort, which were exceedingly numerous, the great proprietors educated the children of their own tenantry at the same time that they provided for their superannuated servants.

There is much in the character of these ancient institutions that is suggestive and instructive to ourselves. What a vast machinery, what an enormous disbursement for, comparatively speaking, small results! Surely thirteen poor brethren could be fed and clothed without its being necessary for Dame Isabel Penbridge to found that great college of Tonge, in Shropshire, with its establishment of clerks, and chaplains, and choristers, and to supply them with that body of solemn statutes which regulates their community life and choral office with the exactness of a religious rule! Turn again to St. Giles’ Hospital at Norwich, and reckon what endowments it must have taken[298] to support a master, deacon, and subdeacon, eight chaplains, wearing the habit of St. Austin’s canons, four lay brothers, and seven choristers, who were to be scholars likewise; together with four religious sisters, in order to take care of eight infirm folk and a few poor superannuated priests, and daily to entertain thirteen non-resident poor at the common table. A liberal foundation, it may be said, for a few insignificant paupers; but it is clear the founder had in his mind the celebration of High Mass and the choral office; and that providing for the celebration of holy rites with becoming solemnity was reckoned then a good work as pleasing to God as the feeding of the poor.

Again, in what a beautiful light were the poor themselves regarded. They were not “paupers,” but “brethren.” They were not kept alive with water gruel, but fed with meat and ale, and good “mostrell.”[299] They were not assigned a narrow bench in a distant corner of those grand collegiate churches, but often enough had stalls like so many canons. Such stalls are still to be seen, or at least were so a few years since, in St. Mary’s Hospital, Chichester, and, I am glad to say, were still occupied by their lawful owners—the thirteen poor brethren. The church was their church; its numerous staff of clerks and choristers were assembled there to sing the divine office for them; they were honoured, not despised; and in their turn they felt an honest pride in wearing that reverend garb—the black gown or overcoat, with its red, white, or silver cross—such as may still be seen in the hospitals of Winchester or Worcester.

And, as to the schools attached to such foundations, what must have been the effect produced on the mind of the scholars whose earliest and most abiding lesson was, that nothing was too great or too good to give to God or the poor! For God, the stately minister, the magnificent vestments, and the solemn chant, which made up the daily business of a whole college of priests, clerks, and choristers.

And for the poor, a home in their old age, the care of religious women in time of sickness, generous maintenance, kindness, honour, and respect. What a prodigious amount of moral and religious education was conveyed in schools for the young, annexed to such hospitals and colleges, wherein the two duties of prayer and almsdeeds made up a portion of the daily life, and in which the instincts of reverence must have become a sort of second nature!

In the fifteenth century we find these foundations rapidly multiplying, and their scholastic character assuming a larger development. To the masters of grammar and singing is now frequently added a third for writing; the grammar-master is not unfrequently provided with an usher, which seems to argue that the scholars were becoming more numerous, and the salary of the masters is fixed higher than that of the other priests. In the College of Bradgate in Kent no chaplain was to be admitted who had not three qualifications—bene legere, bene construere, et bene cantare. The great English prelates had a special love for founding colleges of this description in the places of their birth. Thus Thomas Scott, Archbishop of York, founded the college and school of Rotherham; and Kempe, Archbishop of York, and cardinal, who was a poor husbandman’s son, converted the parish church of Wye, his native place, into a college for the education of youth, and for perpetual prayer to be made therein “for the sowles of them that set hym to schole.” And Chichele of Canterbury, as has been already said, founded the college of Higham Ferrars in Northamptonshire. This formerly occupied a grand quadrangle with two great wings. The schoolhouse, in the florid style of Gothic architecture, is, I believe, still standing; but the remainder of the stately and beautiful buildings were a few years since laid waste by the steward of a noble earl, and the site occupied by barns and hunting stables. Choral schools appear moreover to have been attached to the private chapels of great households. Thus there was a “Maister of the childer” among the officers of the Earl of Northumberland’s chapel, and the eight children belonging to King Edward IV.’s chapel had likewise their “Maister” who was to draw them not only to the study of prictsong, but also to that of their facet or grammar, “and suche other vertuous things.” Moreover his household accounts contain the pay and livery of the “Scholmaster’s teaching, given in the house.” Besides this choral school the same king maintained a sort of Palatine Academy at his court, formed of six or more young gentlemen, or henxmen, as they are called, whose master was to teach them “to read clenely and surely, to learn them their harness;” and moreover to teach them “sundry languages, and other vertuous learnings, such as to harp, to pipe, to sing and to dance, each to be trained to that kind of vertue that he is most apt to learn, with remembrance dayly of Goddes Service.”

Another proof of the increasing interest which was being felt in the work of education, is the occasional transformation of charitable, into educational, institutions. Reading school was originally one of those numerous hospitals which the lordly abbots had established in their town. It was designed for certain poor women serving God day and night, who prayed for the king’s estate and the soul of the founder, the good abbot, Hugh. They had a fair chapel for divine service, bread, meat, and drink from the abbey, and an annual sum of money and outfit of clothing. The sisters were widows of respectable persons in the town who had fallen into poverty; they had a quasi religious character, and the formulary of their admission included prayer, sprinkling of holy water, the blessing of the veil and mantle, and the giving of the kiss of peace. In 1446, Abbot Thorne suppressed this hospice, though as he applied its revenues to the use of the almoner, we will hope that they were expended in charity. “On a tyme, however,” says an anonymous and rather discontented writer, “Kyng Edward IV. cam through Redyng to Woodstock,” and expressed himself much displeased that “Saint Johny’s House,” as well as another house for lazars, had been diverted from its original purpose. He commanded Beauchamp, Bishop of Salisbury, to institute a reform, but he was unable to do so, and departed “ful ylle content.” However, some years later, at the suggestion of Henry VII., the hospital was re-endowed as “a fre scole,” and although when the nameless author, above quoted, wrote, there was as yet “neither scole, nor man, nor woman, nor chyld, relieved there,” yet in due time the master and usher were appointed, and the school attained no inconsiderable renown as a place of learning. It is remarkable that among the privileges of the abbots of Reading was that of granting school licenses. No one was permitted to open a school of any description in the town without the approbation of the Abbot and Convent, who exercised within certain limits the same authority as a diocesan chancellor.

At Bury, again, the abbots had so early as 1193 founded in the town a free school for forty poor boys. The building was near the present shire house whence the street still retains the name of School Street. This school was still flourishing in the reign of Henry VI., for we find a letter addressed by Abbot Curteys, a great friend of that amiable and scholar-loving king, to Master William Farceaux, graduate in grammar and arts, and master of the School of Bury. And not to weary the reader with the enumeration of names and places, I will only add that all the large abbeys appear to have maintained not one, but several of these endowed free schools in various parts of their domains.

The greater variety of seminaries now existing was gradually introducing a greater separation of classes; hitherto students of all ranks had mingled under the same master, but now aristocratic distinctions began to be made. Eton soon became the favourite resort of the sons of the gentry, though not a few continued to be prepared for the universities at the monastic schools, especially at Glastonbury and Pollesworth. The latter was found in an admirable state of discipline at the time of the suppression, when the commissioners testified to the fact that the town which had sprung up round the monastery was almost entirely peopled, by “artifycers, laborers, and vitellers, that lyve by the said house, and the repayre and resorte that ys made to the gentylmennes children and studiounts that doo ther lif to the numbre of xxx. or xl. and moo, that ther be right vertuously brought upp.” At Hyde Abbey eight noble youths were received as students, who always ate at the abbot’s table. Winchcombe likewise retained its character for learning, and Abbot Kidderminster, by his wise government and encouragement of good letters, is said to have made his school flourish so much that it became equal to a little university.

If we put together the different classes of schools enumerated above, it will, I think, appear that in the fifteenth century England was quite as amply provided with the means of education for rich and poor as she is in the present day. There were, it seems, two large public schools for the gentry, other schools for the upper classes attached to monasteries and the larger colleges; monastic and collegiate schools for the middle classes, and other endowed free schools of a similar grade, and schools attached to smaller hospitals, evidently for a yet humbler class, such as the children of the neighbouring villages, or the tenantry of the founder; and lastly, there were the priests’ or parish schools, usually governed by a dame.

A more general interest was being felt in the work of education among all classes, and an attentive study of the household accounts of noble families of this period will discover among the items of expenditure a more frequent mention of “pennes,” “ynke,” and “bokes.” Hallam notices that the Paston letters, all written by members of a private family during the reigns of Henry VI., Edward IV., and Richard III., are not only grammatical, but fluent and elegant in their style, and he remarks that it is a proof how unfairly we should measure the refinement and education of an age merely by its published literature. England in the fifteenth century was in too troublous a state for men to have much leisure for writing books; and hence though there was evidently an increased relish for literary pursuits under our Lancastrian princes, we are not surprised to find few additions to our national literature during this period. Yet some writers there were, such as the poets Occleve and Lydgate; the former a disciple of Chaucer, and author of a poem on the education of princes; whilst Lydgate, the monk of Bury, enjoyed an immense reputation in his own day, and in ours has been equally undervalued. He was educated at Oxford, and was a man of varied learning, familiar with the literature of France and Italy, both which countries he had visited, a mathematician and a classical scholar, and altogether well qualified to fill the post of professor in his own abbey. Here he taught the sons of the nobility “the art of versification, elegancies, poetry, rhetoric, geometry, astronomy, and theology.” He was equally esteemed by the pious king Henry VI., who visited him in his monastic cell, and by the London goldsmiths and citizens, who employed him in writing verses, and contriving quaint devices for their May games and city pageants. Of his two hundred and fifty poems none have been judged worthy to find a place in the various collections of the British poets, published during the last century. Halliwell has published a selection of his minor pieces, but his “Court of Sapience,” a noble poem extending to several hundred stanzas, remains still in MS., or in the early Caxton editions. The student of English literature is often perplexed to understand the principles which appear to have directed the choice of our modern editors. With the exception of Chaucer and Gower, whose claims were too great to be disallowed, no ante-reformation poets are admitted into the collections of Southey or Chalmers, with the exception of Hawes and Skelton, whose doggerel is tolerated, possibly on account of its scurrility. Even Occleve, though but a second-rate versifier, is better than these, but Lydgate’s “Court of Sapience” is incomparably superior to anything that appeared between the times of Chaucer and Spenser. Its tone, however, is essentially Catholic, and even theological, and this, together with the monkish titles of some of his works, such as the Lyf of our Ladye, and the Legende of St. Edmund, seem to have occasioned his exclusion by collectors, who have not been ashamed to rake together all the rubbish, and worse than rubbish, of our Restoration and Georgian periods. If the ancient religious poetry of this country should ever find an editor, readers who are accustomed to suppose that intelligible English dates from the time of Spenser, would be amazed at the power and pathos possessed by earlier writers. When we examine such poetical fragments as are still preserved, the wonder perhaps ceases, that they should have found small favour from modern editors. For the most part they are devoted to celebrate the glories of the Blessed Virgin, or the Mysteries of the Passion. The first subject has, of course, no chance of indulgence from a Protestant public, and the second is hardly more popular when treated precisely in the same spirit as it is presented to us in the prayers of St. Bridget, or the devout productions of antique Christian art. To Catholics, however, it is a joy and a solace to look back into past centuries, and remember that there were days when our poets drank of a purer fount than that of Castaly; and made it their pride to celebrate in their verse, not Dian, nor Proserpine, but the Immaculate Queen of Heaven. Of Chaucer’s devotion to this theme I have already spoken, but other poets before his time delighted in dedicating their verses to her who, as she has inspired the most exquisite designs of the artist’s pencil, has also claimed not the least beautiful productions of the poet’s pen. Thus, one sings of her as “Dame Lyfe,” and describes how

Others, according to their quaint fashion, mixed up English and Latin rhymes in a style which, barbarous as it is, is certainly not deficient in harmony. One little poem, ascribed to a writer in the reign of Henry III., commences thus:—

Another class of poems is dedicated to the sorrows of Mary; from one of which, apparently of the fourteenth century, entitled “The Lamentation of the Blessed Virgin,” I extract but two verses, the exceeding pathos of which can hardly be surpassed. Our Ladye is supposed to be addressing her complaint to some happy mother, and drawing a contrast between her joys and her own sorrows:

The mystery, entitled “The Wepynge of the Thre Maries,” is a dramatic paraphrase of the Gospel history, told in the same homely and pathetic strain. It is thus that St. Mary Magdalene describes Our Ladye at the foot of the Cross:—

And when after the Resurrection she runs joyfully to tell the holy women that she has seen her risen Lord, and the second Mary asks

Her reply is from the heart:—

Warton, in his “History of English Poetry,” has published a few fragments of poems on the Passion, which he ascribes to the reigns of Henry III. and Edward I. There is a harmony in the versification of the following that one scarcely looks for at so early a date:—

And again:—

I will give but one fragment more, which is taken from a sort of dialogue between our Lord on the Cross and the devout soul:—

A great number of the Church hymns and other devotions are also to be found translated in a versified form for the use of the laity, such as the Veni Creator, the Popule mi, quid feci? and other portions of the Holy Week office. These fragments, which are mere indications of the rich stores of religious literature possessed by our ancestors, must not be lost sight of when studying the subject of popular education. Were we to credit the majority of writers on ancient manners, the poetry of the Middle Ages was exclusively furnished by the profane and licentious jongleurs, whose productions have been very diligently sought out and republished for the edification of the curious, whilst the very existence of a vast body of popular religious poetry is systematically ignored. Yet the one class of writings is surely as characteristic of the age to which it belongs as the other; and we are bound not to condemn the morals of our forefathers from the study of that portion of their literature which is corrupt and reprehensible, without also receiving the evidence furnished by poetry of a totally opposite description.

We must not conclude our notice of the English writers of the Lancastrian period without briefly noticing the names of two learned monks. The first was John Capgrave, author of the Legenda Sanctorum AngliÆ, which Leland says was chiefly derived from an earlier collection of saints’ lives by John of Tynemouth, a monk of St. Alban’s, who died in 1370. Capgrave also produced other learned works, a MS. copy of one of which, a commentary on the Book of Genesis, is preserved in the library of Oriel College, and contains in its initial letter a portrait of the author presenting his book to Duke Humphrey, whose autograph is at the end of the volume. The other religious writer was Walter Hilton, a Carthusian monk of Shene. His “Scale of Perfection,” an invaluable spiritual treatise, which formed the favourite study of Sir Thomas More, has been reprinted, but a considerable number of his other spiritual works exist in manuscript in the British Museum, and yet await an editor.

If the English did not compose many books at this period, they bought and transcribed them with great diligence. More books were copied during the first half of the fifteenth century than during any previous century and a half. Book collectors were enterprising enough to take journeys into Italy, and returned laden with literary treasures; among whom, besides Fleming, already noticed, were Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, the friend of Pius II.; John Free, a British ecclesiastic, afterwards Bishop of Worcester; Millyng, Abbot of Westminster; and Sellynge, Prior of Canterbury; all of whom had studied the classical literature at Padua, or in Guarini’s Florentine school. In the household accounts of Sir John Howard, founder of the house of Norfolk, is a bill for the transcribing, illuminating, and “flourishing” of books. Enormous sums were spent by literary dandies on bookbinding. Edward IV. is said to have spent as much on binding a book as was then the price of an ox, and “caused thereafter to be delivered to his binder six yards of velvet, ditto of silk, besides laces, tassels, and gilt nails.” The Lancastrian princes were all patrons of letters: Henry V., as we know, was a scholar of Queen’s, though, judging from his life after leaving the university, we can hardly suppose him to have been at that time much of a reading man. At a later period, however, he seems to have had literary tastes, and in order to gratify them he did not always return the books he borrowed. After his death, petitions were presented from the Countess of Westmoreland and the Prior of Christchurch, praying that certain books borrowed of them by the King might be restored. Those lent by the Prior consisted of the works of St. Gregory. His son, Henry VI., was the very type of a scholar; whilst his uncle Beaufort, Cardinal and Bishop of Winchester, and his two brothers, the Regent, Duke of Bedford, and Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, were all distinguished as men of learning. Duke Humphrey was beyond all doubt the most munificent patron of letters that had yet appeared in England, and did his best to redeem her schools from the charge of barbarism brought against them by Poggio and the other classic scholars of Italy. He was a great book collector, and the copies he caused to be transcribed were all of the most costly and splendid description, written on vellum and adorned with illuminations: 129 such manuscripts[302] were bequeathed by him to the University of Oxford, of which one, and one alone, remains. All the others were destroyed by the pious visitors of Edward VI., who considered that everything that was enriched with illuminations must be a popish missal, and therefore only fit to be cast to the flames. The solitary survivor is a copy of Valerius Maximus, the index to which is written by the hand of Humphrey’s dear and learned friend Whethamstede, Abbot of St. Alban’s.

Humphrey’s patronage was not confined to English scholars. Heeren prints a Latin epistle, addressed by him to the Italian Decembrio, who had presented him with a translation of Plato De Republica. He employed several learned French and Italian translators, and to him Leonard Aretino dedicated his version of Aristotle, the presentation copy of which is preserved in the Bodleian. Pope Pius II., in a letter written about the middle of the century, mentions the fact that the duke had sent into Italy and procured several professors to explain the Latin poets and orators in his own country. And Vossius speaks of a certain master from Ferrara, to whom he gives the name of Titus Livius, and who, he says, came into England by the invitation of the Duke of Gloucester, and while there wrote a life of Henry V., and dedicated it to his son Henry VI. This life has been republished by Heeren. The real name of the author is unknown, and he probably assumed that of the Latin historian to indicate that he imitated his style.

Duke Humphrey’s chief assistant, however, in his literary labours was the learned abbot named above, John Whethamstede of St. Alban’s. He was originally a monk of Tynemouth, in Northumberland (which was a cell of St. Alban’s), whence he removed to Gloucester Abbey; then he was made prior of Gloucester College at Oxford, in which office he had every opportunity for indulging his taste for study and his equally characteristic liberality; for he spent a considerable sum in the erection of a new library, on which he bestowed many books prefixed with verses, warning off the fingers of pilferers. He also adorned the college with painted windows, set up inscriptions under the Crucifix and other holy images, and poured out so many other benefactions on the house that he was formally declared to be its second founder.

He was elected Abbot of St. Alban’s for the first time in 1420, and having resigned his office in 1440, was elected a second time in 1451. It would be no easy matter to catalogue all his good deeds, for Whethamstede was a great reformer and builder, and setter to rights of decayed offices. In fact, he united in a very uncommon degree the literary and the practical gifts, and while busy with his books and libraries, did not forget the repairing of brew-houses and enclosing of kitchen gardens; in spite of which services, the monks very unjustly accused him of neglecting their affairs, and giving all his time to study. Weever enumerates all the multifarious decorations in the shape of painted windows, gilded and illuminated verses, and other ornaments which he set up in his abbey. “Our Lady’s Chapel,” he says, “was very curiously trimmed and depicted, and letters dispersed therein in gold.” The north part of the abbey church being somewhat dark, he made it glorious with new windows, introducing, with taste more classical than suitable, the figures of such heathen philosophers as had testified of Christ. He also expended great sums in books for the abbey library, “as well for the use of the brethren of the cloister as for the scholars;” an expression which shows that the monastic school was still kept up. These books exceeded eighty-seven in number, besides which he caused to be begun the copying of Nicholas de Lyra’s great commentary on the Bible, and employed Lydgate to translate the metrical life of St. Alban into English verse. He also added many of his own compositions, such as his Granarium, a sort of theological commonplace book, in five volumes, dedicated to Duke Humphrey. The duke was fond of visiting the abbey, to which he was a great benefactor, and employed Whethamstede in collecting books for him; and after his death, St. Alban’s was very fitly chosen as the place of his interment.

We must now for a time leave the company of princes and abbots, and take our way through the streets of London—a city which, even in the days of Henry II., was thickly populated with schoolboys, and which, thanks to his pious namesake Henry VI., kept up its name as a place of good learning in the fifteenth century. We have already seen something of the university and domestic education of Old England, but we have yet to make ourselves acquainted with the schools and scholars of the middle class. The English Commons were at this precise period fast rising in wealth and importance, and the number among them who sought a good education for their children was every year on the increase. The London citizens particularly were men of intelligence and enterprise, fully conscious of the weighty position they held in the State, and perfectly well qualified to fill it. Nor let the fastidious reader scorn the idea of scholarship as associated with that of a community of mercers and fishmongers; for it is a fact of which England has no cause to be ashamed, that many of her greatest public men, and not a few of her best scholars, have risen from the mercantile and working classes. Lord mayors and aldermen have not unfrequently spent the wealth they have amassed by trade in foundations of charity or learning. Thus, Elsing Spittal, at Cripplegate, was founded in 1329, by a London mercer, for the sustentation of a hundred blind men; St. Lawrence’s College, in 1332, by Lord Mayor Poulteney; St. Michael’s College, by Sir William Walworth, of Wat Tyler-slaying celebrity; and Leadenhall College, by Sir Simon Eyre, another lord mayor and draper, who provided that a school should be attached to his college under the care of three schoolmasters and an usher. His wishes do not seem to have been carried out, but in 1446 his beautiful chapel was given over to the newly-established confraternity of the Holy Trinity; and some of the priests belonging to this society, says Stowe, celebrated divine service in this chapel every market day for the market people.

So again in 1418, William of Sevenoaks, who from a foundling had made his way to civic honours, built and endowed a college in his native place, and a free school for the townsmen’s children; and, not to multiply examples, the renowned Sir Richard Whittington, mercer and Lord Mayor of London, after founding his noble College and Hospital of St. Michael’s Royal, and repairing St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, built at his own expense the great library of the Grey Friars, and expended a considerable sum in furnishing it with reading pews, and causing to be transcribed a fair copy of Nicholas de Lyra for the friars’ use. Men of this stamp were solicitous to see their city provided with good schools, and in 1446 we find a petition presented to Parliament by four city priests, begging the honourable Commons to take into consideration the great number of grammar-schools that had formerly existed in the metropolis, and the fact that many of them had lately fallen into decay. The petitioners go on to say that many persons now resort to London to be informed of grammar, through lack of good schoolmasters in the provinces, “wherefore it were expedient that in London were a sufficient number of scholes and good informers in grammar; for where there is gret number of lerners, and few techers, the maisters wax rich of money, and the lerners poorer in cunning, agenst all virtue and order of weal publik.” They entreat therefore that schools may be opened in each of their parishes, and persons learned in grammar set over them “there to teach to all that will learn.” In compliance with this petition, we find the good king Henry VI. founding no fewer than eight grammar-schools in this and the following year. And Mercers’ School was likewise established in connection with the Mercers’ Company.

Stowe describes the grammatical disputations kept up between the scholars of these academies even in his time, and lets us know that the scholars of St. Paul’s were wont to call those of St. Anthony’s “Antonie pigs,” by reason that St. Anthony is usually figured with a pig following him; and that they in their turn retaliated on their rivals the sobriquet of “pigeons,” many such birds being wont to make their haunt in the spire of St. Paul’s church. And it was their custom when they met one another in the street to provoke one another to disputation with the words Salve tu quoque; placetne disputare? To which, if the answer were Placet, they fell to words, and soon to blows also, the satchels full of grammars serving as convenient weapons, which oftentimes bursting in the fray, the books were scattered about in heaps to the great trouble of the passers-by. The least admirable thing recorded of the London schoolboys, however, is their taste for cock-fighting. On Shrove Tuesday every schoolboy in London brought a cock to his master, and the whole of that forenoon, says Fitz Stephen, “is spent by them in seeing the cocks fight in their schoolroom.” No wonder that Colet, among other retrenchments, prohibited his scholars of St. Paul’s from taking part in these Shrovetide cock-fightings, as a description of sport eminently fitted to foster in the boyish nature those brutal tendencies which are perhaps indigenous to the soil. That a taste for learning and a generous disposition to encourage it were to be found among not a few of the London citizens of this period is sufficiently clear; and among many names that might be given of founders of schools and lovers of letters, that of John Carpenter, town clerk of London in the reigns of Henry V. and Henry VI., must not be omitted. He was executor to Whittington, and the personal friend of two at least of those four priests above named who had petitioned Parliament for the establishment of more schools. These were Thomas Neel, Master of the Hospital of St. Thomas de Acon, and Incumbent of St. Mary, Colechurch; and William Lichfield, Rector of Allhallows the Great. Lichfield was a considerable writer both in prose and verse, whom Stowe calls “a great student and a famous preacher.” These two excellent ecclesiastics took part in many good works with John Carpenter, and probably assisted him in making that collection of books, afterwards mentioned in his will. Carpenter seems also to have had a taste for the arts; for the famous Dance of Death painted in the cloisters of old St. Paul’s, was placed there at his expense, with accompanying verses from the pen of Lydgate. It is, however, as an encourager of liberal education that he claims a place in these pages, and the benefaction by which he left certain tenements in the city “for finding and bringing up four poor men’s children with meat, drink, apparel, and learning, at the schools in the universities, for ever,” was the foundation which has since grown into the City of London School.[303]

But after all, the mind is trained by other things than schools and pedagogues; and the London apprentice, no less than the university undergraduate, drew in no small part of his education from the scenes and daily life that went on around him. Old London, no less than old Oxford, had a teaching of her own; she was not altogether that place of smoke and trade and unceasing business which we think of now when we name “the City:” she had a fairer,—I had almost said a poetic—side, and her old historians grow eloquent when they describe it. Who would suppose that it is the great Babylon that Fitz Stephen is speaking of when he praises the picturesque beauty of the suburbs, “with the citizens’ gardens and orchards planted with trees tall and sightly, and adjoining together. On the north side,” he continues, “are pastures and meadows, with brooks running through them, turning water-mills with a pleasant noise. Not far off is a great forest and a well-wooded chase, having good covert for harts, does, boars, and wild bulls. The cornfields are not of a hungry, sandy mould, but as the fruitful fields of Asia, yielding plentiful increase, and filling the barns with corn. And there are near London abundance of wells, sweet, wholesome, and clear, such as Holy-well, Clerken-well, and St. Clement’s-well, much frequented by scholars and youth of the city in summer evenings when they walk forth to take the air.” Stowe likewise speaks of these pleasant walks in the suburbs, and adds a feature of touching beauty to the picture:—“Near a fair field in Houndsditch, belonging to the Prior of the Holy Trinity, were some cottages and little garden-plots for poor bed-rid people, built by some prior of that house; and in my youth I remember devout persons were accustomed, specially on Fridays, to walk that way to bestow their alms on the poor, who lay in their beds near the window, that opened low, and on it was spread a fair linen cloth and a pair of beads, to show that there lay a bed-rid person unable but to pray only.” Within the walls were 130 churches, besides convents, priories, and hospitals innumerable. In Westcheap, near the north door of St. Paul’s, stood the great Crucifix surrounded by figures of saints, where the choristers of St. Paul’s had a goodly exhibition for singing on certain days the responsory, Sancte Deus fortis, and thither on all feasts of St. Paul’s came the chapter in embroidered vestments and wearing rose garlands on their heads. This last ornament was very commonly worn in English processions, specially on the summer festivals of Whit-Sunday and Corpus Christi, and not only by canons and choristers, but also by young scholars, as we learn from Matthew Paris. There were city companies then as now, and there were guilds and confraternities, which gave to their members “gret commodyte and surety of lyvyng,” and which recreated the citizens with their gorgeous processions, while they provided support for their poor brethren during life, and after death, burial, prayers, and masses. On the feast of the patron saint, the guild brethren had a dinner, of course, and generally an interlude or sacred drama; and Fitz Stephen assures us that the citizens of his time preferred those which were from sacred subjects, such as the Passion, or the martyrdom of a saint. Clerkenwell received its name from the Fraternity of Parish Clerks, who yearly assembled there to play “some large history of Holy Scripture,” and in the reign of Henry IV. enacted one which lasted eight days, and was “of matter from the creation of the world.”

But, to use the words of our old historian, “a city should not only be commodious and serious, but also merry and sportful,” and London had nothing to blame herself for on this head. During the Easter holidays there were sham fights on the river, with leaping, dancing, shooting, and cock-fighting, and great twisted trees were brought in from the woods to adorn the house of every man of worship. The great May-pole hung in Westcheap, and on May morning every citizen went forth early into the country to seek the May. All through the summer months bonfires were kept up on the eves of great festivals, and tables set out in the streets with meat and drink plentifully provided by the wealthy householders, who invited the neighbours and passers-by to eat and be merry with them with great familiarity, and so thank God for His benefits. And Rome herself never witnessed a more graceful celebration of the feasts of St. John Baptist and the Holy Apostles than that which used to be held in the streets of London, where “every man’s door was shadowed with green birch, fennel, and St. John’s-wort, together with white lilies and such like, and garnished with garlands of beautiful flowers, among which lamps of glass burnt all the night;”[304] while some hung out huge branches of iron, curiously wrought, whence hung hundreds of lamps at once, and this was particularly the custom in New Fish-street. At Christmas, of course, the houses and conduits were decked with a profusion of evergreens, and the Christmas revels must be left to the imagination of the reader.

When the holidays were over, came sports and contentions of another sort. The masters of the different schools held solemn meetings in the London churches, and their scholars disputed logically, grammatically, and demonstratively. The disciples of rival academies “capped or potted verses one with another, nipping and quipping their fellows with pleasant rhymes, which caused much laughter.” The poets sometimes addressed their fun and their verses to their masters, expending their wit in hopes to obtain a holiday. And, however it may be explained, I find more notices of versifiers among the London scholars than elsewhere. Indeed, we must fain suppose that the citizens had a naturally poetic vein when we read of their gorgeous and fanciful devices. Chaucer tells us that the good shopkeepers of the Cheap had weary work with their apprentices, who, when there were any “ridings” or royal entries, would leap out of the shop, and not return till they had seen all the sight, and had a good dance into the bargain. And really, when we read how the fifth Harry rode into London with little birds fluttering round his helmet, green boughs cast in his way, priests, with gilded copes, swinging censers, and every street exhibiting a castle, or a giant, or a legend of some saint, we cannot wonder that it was sometimes a difficult matter to keep the ’prentices behind the counter.

Surely too there must have been scholars among the citizens to devise such scenes as were exhibited at the entry of Henry VI., when a tabernacle of curious work arose on Cornhill, wherein Dame Sapience appeared, surrounded by the seven liberal arts; and when divers wells poured forth goodly wine to the passers-by, appropriately named the Well of Mercy, of Grace, or of Pity. But, in fact, most of such pageants were designed by men of letters, and no one was more frequently called on for this purpose than the monk of Bury. He was exceedingly popular with the London citizens, and whether a disguising was intended by the company of goldsmiths, a May game for the sheriffs, or a carol for the Coronation, it was generally Lydgate who supplied the poetry. And he, in his turn, loved the citizens, and ever spoke well of them in his verse:—

A testimony to which we must add that delivered two hundred years earlier by Fitz Stephen. “I do not think,” he says, “that there is any city to be found wherein are better customs in frequenting the churches, in serving God, in keeping holidays, in giving alms, in entertaining strangers, in solemnising marriages, in furnishing banquets, celebrating funerals, and burying dead bodies.” He adds, however, that London had some “inconveniences,” such as the immoderate drinking of some foolish persons, and the frequent fires.

Such then were some of the scenes in the midst of which the young citizen grew up, and which supplied him with many ideas beyond those of his shop wares and his reckonings. Sometimes he passed over to France or Flanders to procure his stores of silks and velvets, or fine Paris thread; and on such occasions, book collectors, like Duke Humphrey, or Tiptoft of Worcester, did not disdain to employ the services of an intelligent merchant to procure them choice copies of foreign works. Treaties of commerce were generally negotiated by merchants, who were thus brought into contact with courtiers and politicians, and not unfrequently the commercial treaty was but the veil to conceal more profound political intrigues. We need not, therefore, be surprised to find a commission issued by Edward IV., in 1464, to Richard Whitehill and William Caxton, conferring on them the quality of ambassadors at the court of Burgundy, to reopen the trade with that country, which had been suspended in consequence of certain prohibitive decrees issued by Philip the Good. All that we know of Caxton up to this time was, that he had begun his education in a poor school of the weald of Kent, and had probably perfected it in some one of the London grammar-schools; that he had been apprenticed to Master Robert Large, a mercer of Cheapside, who became Lord Mayor in 1440, and dying the next year, left the sum of twenty marks to his servant William Caxton. Then he appears as a travelling agent of the London mercers in Brabant, and Holland, and Flanders, in which countries he spent thirty years of his life, and at last we find him at the court of Burgundy, to which the Flemish provinces were then subject. When his mission was ended, he continued to reside at the court, and was at Bruges in 1468, when the marriage took place between Duke Charles the Bold and Margaret Plantagenet, sister to Edward IV. He probably received some office in the household of the Duchess, but he seems to have had little to do, and to fill up his time the English mercer took to literary pursuits; considering, as he says, that every man is bounden by the counsel of the wise man to eschew sloth and idleness. He therefore resolved to translate into English the “Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye,” by Raoul de Fevre, wherein he had great delight, both for the novelty of the same, and the fair language of the French; and having concluded to begin this work, he forthwith took pen and ink, and set to work; but after writing five or six quires, fell into despair over his task and put it aside. Duchess Margaret, however, at this juncture came to his aid: she had heard of his proposed translation, and required the quires to be brought to her for inspection; praised them, found fault with the English here and there, and finally commanded the translator to continue and make an end.

“I might not disobey her dreadful command,” says Caxton, “seeing that I was a servant of her Grace, and received of her yearly fee.” Dibdin, in his “Typographical Antiquities,” endeavours to prove that Caxton had printed the original French book before translating it into English; but this is mere conjecture, and there seem no satisfactory grounds for supposing him to have turned his attention to the new art of printing before the year 1471, when his English translation of the “Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye” was printed by him at Cologne. We are not told how he acquired a knowledge of the art, which had then been in operation for about twenty years, but the motive which led to his first applying himself to it was, as he tells us, the desire to multiply copies of his book, which was in request with divers gentlemen. Three years later he returned to England and set up the first English printing-press in the Almonry of Westminster Abbey, the learned abbot Millyng being his first patron, and evincing a lively interest in his success. Caxton’s earliest works were mostly his own translations; “The Game and Play of Chess” was the first production of his Westminster press, and its second edition was adorned with woodcuts. Another was “The Doctrine of Sapience,” also translated by him from the French, and intended “for the use of parish priests, and for the erudition of simple people.” “The Dictes and Sayings of Philosophers” was a translation from the pen of his accomplished friend Anthony Woodville, Lord Rivers, who had so high an opinion of his printer’s literary powers that he permitted him to overlook and correct the sheets. This accomplished nobleman, the chosen “champion” of the English ladies, the best scholar, the best poet, and the best jouster of King Edward’s court, helped to set the types with his own hand, and afterwards presented both the book and the printer to his royal brother-in-law.

Caxton did not altogether pursue his art in the spirit of a tradesman. He evidently had it much at heart to provide his countrymen with good and useful books, and took considerable pains in their selection. In spite of Gibbon’s sneer at the number of saints’ legends[305] and romances that issued from his press, we have every reason to admire the variety of subjects to be found in the sixty-four works which he lived to publish. They embrace religion history, poetry, law, ritual, and romance. No original work of the Latin classics appears on the list, which does not argue much for the scholarship of the English reading public at that time, and offers a striking contrast to the state of things in Italy, where the first works printed at the Subiaco press were “Lactantius,” St. Augustine’s “City of God,” and Cicero’s “Rhetoric;” and these were followed a little later by twenty-three editions of ancient Latin authors. But in England, though a few individuals had shown an interest in the classic revival, the nation at large was, at this time, wholly indifferent to the subject, and Caxton had to consult their taste, at the same time that he attempted to raise and refine it. He himself was no classical scholar; nevertheless, he chose a certain number of French versions of ancient authors for translation into English, such as the Treatise “De Senectute” of Cicero, Ovid’s “Metamorphoses,”[306] Boethius’ “De Consolatione,” the “Fables of Æsop,” and Cato’s “Morals.” The last he recommended as the best book that could be used by children in schools. He likewise translated a French narrative of Virgil’s “Æneid;” and contemptible as this sort of literature may appear to scholars, it helped to give his readers a certain acquaintance with the names and subjects of classical authors, and prepared the way for the study of the originals.

On the other hand, the number of English works which he produced, and the care he expended on presenting them to his readers in clear and simple language, “casting away the chaff of superfluity, and showing the picked gram of sentence,” gave a powerful stimulus to his native literature. His own favourite author was Chaucer, in printing whose works he grudged neither care nor expense: and he incidentally gives us to understand that the English gentry of that period had, like himself, a marvellous love for their great poet. He had no slight difficulty in getting a correct MS. to print from, and his first edition of Chaucer’s poems was, therefore, full of inaccuracies. A young gentleman criticised its defects, and offered, if he would print another edition, to supply him with a certain very correct copy, which was in the possession of his father, who loved it much, and would not willingly part with it. Caxton agreed to the proposal, by which, of course, he lost considerably as a tradesman, but gained in the esteem of the learned: and one is glad to find that the young gentleman, in fulfilment of his part of the bargain, did not purloin the book from his father but “got it from him full gently,” and delivered it to the careful custody of the honest printer.

Not content with the labour of printing and translating, which he carried on with so much eagerness that, as he tells us, his eyes were half blinded with continual looking at the white paper, the indefatigable old man undertook, at the age of seventy, to compose his “Chronicles of England,” and “Description of Britain,” which books he intended to convey to English readers a certain amount of information about the history and geography of their own country. He had plenty of critics while engaged on these works; some wanted him to use only “old and homely” terms; others, who were finer clerks, begged him to write the most curious words he could find. Caxton good humouredly complains of the difficulty he found in pleasing everybody, and remarks on the variable character of the English language, which gives ground for supposing that the English people must be born under the domination of the moon, never steadfast, but ever wavering. His own good sense, however, decided that the best English for any writer to use is that common phraseology which is more readily understood than what is antique or curious. He never assumed the airs of a scholar, and in his preface to a modernised version of Higden’s “Polychronicon,” calls himself “William Caxton, a simple person,” and modestly apologises for his attempt to render the rude old English of his author into more intelligible language.

One of his translations from the French, entitled “The Mirror of the World,” gives an outline of as much natural philosophy as was at that time known. This book was printed at the request, and at the cost, of Hugh Brice, a London alderman, and the choice speaks well for the intelligence of that worthy citizen. Caxton seems to have taken considerable pains over it, and says he has made it so plain, that every reasonable man may understand it, and begs his readers’ indulgence if there be found any fault in the measurements of the sun, moon, or firmament. To assist the intelligence of his “reasonable” readers, he added twenty-seven diagrams explanatory of scientific principles, and woodcuts representing the seven liberal arts. In these woodcuts we observe that the schoolmaster generally appears seated, while his scholars kneel before him. The grammar-master is furnished with a rod, which need not cause dismay, for perhaps it was but the ferule, part of the academic insignia of a master of arts. The logician’s book rests on a reading-desk, and he is expounding its contents to his kneeling pupils.

Dibdin calculates that Caxton’s translations alone would fill twenty-five octavo volumes, and that they extend to over 5000 closely-printed pages. His biographer Lewis bears witness to the fact that in his original writings he constantly expresses himself as “a man who lived in the fear of God, and desired much to promote His honour and glory.” But he thinks it necessary to regret that he should have been carried away by the superstitions of his times so far as to print saints’ legends, advocate pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and proclaim himself an enthusiastic admirer of the Crusades. Mercer and printer as he was, Caxton was indeed thoroughly informed with the spirit of chivalry. It was this that directed his choice of “The History of Godfrey de Bouillon,” “The Book of Chivalry,” and the “Histories of King Arthur.” In his preface to the first, the venerable printer makes an appeal to all Christian princes to establish peace and amity one with another and unite for the recovery of the Holy City, where our Blessed Saviour Jesus Christ redeemed us with His Precious Blood; to encourage them to which “he emprised to translate his book.” In the second he utters a lament for the good days when the knights of England were really knights, “when each man knew his horse, and his horse knew him.” And in the third he confesses his conviction that Arthur was no fabulous character, but a real man; and exhorts his readers to study his noble deeds, “for herein may be seen noble chivalry, courtesy, humanity, friendliness, hardiness, love, friendship, cowardice, murder, hate, virtue, and sin. Do after the good, and leave the evil undone, and it shall bring you good fame and honour.”

Lewis informs us that the progress of printing terribly alarmed the ignorant and illiterate monks, who saw in the advancement of learning their own impending ruin. If so, they took a very strange way of expressing their alarm, for they were the first to patronise the new invention; so that in a very few years after Caxton had set up his press in Westminster Abbey, other printing-presses were at work in the monasteries of St. Alban’s, Worcester, Bury, and others. The monk who first introduced printing at St. Alban’s was the schoolmaster; his name is not known, though Sir H. Chauncey styles him “Insomuch.” Bale and Pits tell us that he was a reader in history, and say that he had collected materials for a history of England, but died before it was completed, that his papers fell into Caxton’s hands, who printed them under his own name. But this is evidently incorrect. The St. Alban’s printer was still working his press in 1486; and Caxton’s chronicles were printed six years earlier. Before the death of Caxton, several other printers, both English and foreign, were established in London, and among the latter was the celebrated Fleming Wynkyn de Worde. An Oxford press was at work so early as 1478, and seven years later the Latin translation of the Epistles of Phalaris issued from the press, to which is affixed a Latin couplet, boasting that the English who had been wont in former times to be indebted to the Venetians for their books, now themselves exported books to foreign countries:—

However, I have no intention here of tracing the history of English printers, and have only said thus much of Caxton, because he presents us with an admirable example of an intelligent Englishman of the middle class—a practical persevering man, full of the healthy energy which belongs to a life of labour; a vigorous, homely writer who desired, in his day, to serve his country in so far as he had the needful “cunning;” whose plain broad sense is illumined by a ray of piety, and warmed into a touch of generous enthusiasm, which makes his name more dear and venerable to us than that of many a profounder scholar. Is it fancy or partiality which makes one detect in the fair large type that he uses, so clear and readable, a reflection of his own simple and genuine character; a character which, making allowance for the difference of station, reminds us of that of the great Alfred, to whose written language also that of Caxton bears a remarkable resemblance.

He died in the year 1492, at the age of eighty, having two years previously completed his translation of “The Craft how to Die Well,” from which the following is an extract:—“When it is so, that what a man maketh or doeth, it is made to come to some end, and if the thing be good and well made, it must needs come to good end; then, by better and greater reason, every man ought to intend in such wise to live in this world in keeping the commandments of God that he may come to a good end. And then out of this world, full of wretchedness and tribulation, he may go to heaven unto God and His saints, into joy perdurable.”

Two years after writing these lines he was laid to rest in the Church of St. Margaret’s, Westminster, not far from the spot where for eighteen years he had carried on his noble and useful labours.