Richard Mulcaster

RICHARD MULCASTER.81

The birthplace of Richard Mulcaster seems to have been the old border tower of Brackenhill Castle, on the river Line. The exact date of his birth is uncertain, but it was probably 1530 or 1531. The Mulcasters had for centuries been an important family on the Border. Among the old Exchequer Records in the Tower is a letter from Sir Robert de Clifford, King’s Captain of the counties of Cumberland, Westmorland, and Lancashire, to the Treasurer and Barons of the Exchequer, desiring them to excuse Sir William Molcastre, Sir Thomas de Felton, Robert de Molcastre, and Richard de Molcastre from appearing in the Court of Exchequer according to their summons, by reason of their attendance on him in defence of the Marches; dated at Lochmaben Castle, 4th July, 1299. The Sir William Mulcaster here spoken of was for five years in succession High Sheriff of Cumberland, and was much engaged in the war with Scotland. An old pedigree of the Mulcasters drawn up in Queen Elizabeth’s time says that Sir William Mulcaster in the reign of “Edward Longshanks entayled his landes at Torpenham, Bolton, Bolton-Yetten, and Blennerhasset on his eldest son, Robert Mulcaster, whom he marryed to Eufemia, sister to Raphe Nevil, Erle of Westmerland, and Erle Marshal of England. He entayled his landes at Brackenhill and Solport on his second sonne, Richard Mulcaster.” The elder branch, however, did not thrive. In the next generation “Sir Robert Mulcaster became ane Unthrift, and for smale summes of present money in hand did alien his landes in parcels to his Unkel the Erle of Westmerland, who knowing the title to be weake by reson of the entayle did straytway selle the said landes. Sir Robert presently after the sayle died.” But the Richard Mulcasters have flourished on and on through the centuries, and these particulars were communicated to me by the last Richard Mulcaster, who lived to see this reprint of his ancestor’s book.

In the fifteen hundreds, St. Bees was a noted place for instruction, and Bishop Grindal and Archbishop Sandys were brought up there. But the Mulcaster of the first half of the century sent his sons Richard and James to be “frappit” by the mighty Udal at Eton. The vates sacer of Udal is Tusser, without whose help he could hardly have been remembered. As it is, his name inevitably calls up the lines——

In 1548 (according to A. Wood) Richard Mulcaster gained his election from Eton to King’s, Cambridge; but for reasons unknown he did not take a Cambridge degree, but migrated to Oxford, where in 1555 he was elected Student of Christ Church, and the year following was “licensed to proceed in Arts.” Here he became distinguished by his knowledge of Eastern literature, and “that great English Rabbi, Hugh Broughton,” a contemporary, speaks of him as one of the best Hebrew scholars of the age. But the University had been preyed upon by “Reformers,” and many students had to beg for their living. So Mulcaster went to London and became a schoolmaster in 1558. Three years later the Merchant Taylors’ Company opened their new school at Lawrence Pountney Hill (between “Caning,” now Cannon, Street and the River), and made Mulcaster their first Master.

Thus we find Mulcaster’s reign at Merchant Taylors’ began three years before the birth of Shakespeare, Mulcaster himself being about thirty years old. But his monarchy was by no means absolute, and he was not always happy in his relations with the Company. The Merchants probably thought of him as one of their servants, and he, as “by ancient parentage and linnial discent an Esquier borne” (so he describes himself in his wife’s epitaph), thought himself a better man than they. Certainly many of his successors, though unable to lay stress on their parentage, would have grumbled at the terms imposed upon him.

The instructions to the Master are in many ways interesting. He was told that he was to teach the children not only good literature, but also good manners; he was to resign his post whenever ordered to do so by the Governors, but might not depart without giving the Governors a year’s notice; and he was never to be absent from the school more than twenty working days in the year. The number of boys is limited to 250, and these are to be taught by the High Master and two or three Ushers. “The children shall come to the school in the morning at 7 of the clock both winter and summer, and tarry there until 11, and return again at 1 of the clock, and depart at 5.” “Let not the school master, head usher, nor the under ushers, nor any of them, permit nor license their scholars to have remedy nor leave to play except only once a week when there falleth no holiday. And these remedies to be had upon no other day but only upon Tuesdays in the afternoon or Thursdays in the forenoon. Nor let the scholars use no cock-fighting, tennis-play, nor riding about of victoring [sic] nor disputing abroad, which is but foolish babbling and loss of time.” (“History of Merchant Taylors’ School,” by H.B. Wilson, 1812, i, 17.)

The Company agreed to pay to Mulcaster £40——i.e., £10 each for the High Master and the ushers; but Mr. Hills, the Master of the Company, undertook to double Mulcaster’s £10 out of his own purse. Some years afterwards Mr. Hills had heavy expenses with one of his children, and was obliged to discontinue his grant to Mulcaster; which led to a serious disagreement. But there seem to have been “difficulties” about other matters as well. In the very middle of his twenty-six years’ mastership (26th November, 1574) we find the following significant entry in the Minutes of the Court:——“Mr. Richard Moncaster convented at this Courte to be admonished of suche his contempt of the good orders made for the government of the Grammar Schole founded by the Worshipful company in St Lawrence Pountney’s parisshe where he is now Scholemaister; And also of suche his injurious and quarrellinge Speache as he used to the Visitors of the said Schole at the last callinge thereof, refused to here his fformer doings in that behalf recyted, willinge the said M^r. Warden and assistants to procede against him angrily or otherwise as they listed, so as he mighte have a copie of their decree.” (H.B. Wilson’s “Hist, of M. T. Sch.,” p. 56.) However, the “Esquier borne” found it prudent to yield. In the following month (14th Dec., 1574) it is recorded that Mr. Richard Muncaster confessed before the Court that he had spoken “merely of choller,” and promised obedience for the future. Four years later he was in high favour with the Company, for at the Court holden 29th April, 1579, an order was passed by which the Company undertook, in consideration of Mulcaster’s “painful services for near 20 years,” to provide for his wife if she survived him. But this was the only recognition his “painful services” received. After Hills’s grant of £10 a year had ceased, Mulcaster applied to the Company for a larger salary than he had received from them; but this very reasonable request was refused. Mulcaster then urged that he had been giving additional stipend to the senior Usher, and he made a claim for the amount he had lost by the stoppage of Hills’s subsidy. In reply to this the Court voted that he “might seeke his remedie.” He then petitioned humbly, but without avail, and in high dudgeon he resigned his post in 1586, either quoting or inventing the expression, Servus fidelis perpetuus asinus.82 In the appointment of his successor (Wilkinson) he had no influence, and the dispute between Mulcaster and the Company was carried on, the Company making a counter claim against him for £50, and offering to waive this claim only on receiving from Mulcaster a receipt in full. The quarrel was never made up, and years afterwards when Mulcaster had left St. Paul’s he applied to the Merchant Taylors’ Company for a gratuity and was refused.

So at about the age of fifty-five, Mulcaster found himself out of office. Five years before this he had published his “Positions” (1581), and the year after, the “First Part of the Elementarie.” Why the Second Part never appeared we cannot tell. Perhaps in this country publishing books about education was then, as now, an expensive occupation, and Mulcaster having lost half his income could publish no longer.83

Ten years later he became High Master of St. Paul’s School. In 1598 Elizabeth made him Rector of Stanford Rivers, in Essex, but as he was High Master of St. Paul’s for twelve years, he must have been non-resident at his living till 1608. Then at all events he took up his abode at Stanford Rivers, where his wife died in 1609. It seems strange that Mulcaster should have remained at the head of a great school till he was about seventy-seven years old, but there is no reasonable doubt of it; and that he lived to a great age is proved by his wife’s epitaph in which he records that they had been married fifty years. He himself died in 1611, only five years before Shakespeare, who was his junior by more than thirty years.84

Though Mulcaster himself has been well-nigh forgotten, he had relations, friendly or otherwise, with some of his contemporaries who are in no danger of being forgotten——Queen Elizabeth, Shakespeare, Sir Philip Sydney, and Edmund Spenser.

Elizabeth, as we have seen, gave Mulcaster a living. This was not till near the end of her reign, but he seems to have been long in her favour. This book, the “Positions,” was dedicated to her, and the tone of the letter in which Mulcaster addresses his Sovereign is not that of a stranger, but rather of an old acquaintance, who is sure of a friendly reception. In the fifteen hundreds a very common entertainment was the performance of plays by boys. In the Queen’s book of household expenses we find: “18th Mch. 1573-4. To Mr. Richard Mouncaster for 2 plays presented before her on Candlemas-day, and Shrove Tuesday last, 20 marks: and further for his charges 20 marks.” Again: “11th Mch. 1575-6. To Richard Mouncaster for presenting a play before her on Shrove Sunday last, 10 pounds.” This performance seems to have been continued for many years. In the Liber Famelicus of Sir James Whitelocke (Camden Society’s Publications, No. LXX), Sir James tells of his bringing up at Merchant Taylors’. He was born in 1570 and was elected from the School to be a probationer of St. John’s College, Oxford, in June, 1588. He says: “I was brought up at School under Mr. Mulcaster in the famous school of the Merchant Taylors in London, where I continued until I was well instructed in the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin tongues. His care was also to increase my skill in music, in which I was brought up by daily exercise in it, as in singing and playing upon instruments: and yearly he presented some plays to the Court, in which his scholars were [the] only actors, and I one among them; and by that means [he] taught them good behaviour and audacity” (p. 12).

It has been suggested to me by Mr. Lupton that Shakespeare may have had Mulcaster in his mind when he put Holofernes the schoolmaster in Love’s Labour’s Lost. There was, as we know, rivalry between Shakespeare and the boy actors, and when Armado says (Act V, sc. 2), “I protest the schoolmaster is exceeding fantastical; too too vain, too too vain,” he uses a common expression of Mulcaster’s.

That Shakespeare had a contempt for the schoolmasters or “pedants” of his time is tolerably clear, and he must have seen in Mulcaster a typical schoolmaster and also a rival of his in producing court entertainments. Holofernes is both a “pedant” and a court entertainer, but in other respects he does not answer to Mulcaster, for he is a parish schoolmaster and teaches both boys and girls. However, as Mulcaster was a favourite at court, Shakespeare, if really thinking of him, may have had reasons for not making the resemblance too striking.

In Hamlet (Act II, sc. 2) there is a very remarkable dialogue which shows the rivalry that then (i.e., about 1603) existed between “the tragedians of the City” and “the boys.” There is, too, a very beautiful epitaph by Ben Jonson on a boy who had become famous for playing the part of an old man. Mulcaster no doubt had had a great share in keeping the playing of boy actors in fashion; but he probably had nothing to do with “the children of Powles” whose acting was stopped by edict from about 1589 to 1600, and then started again with increased popularity (see J.P. Collier, “Annals of the Stage,” edition of 1879, vol. i, pp. 271 ff), or with “the children of the Revels” who acted at Blackfriars Theatre, and are probably the “aiery of children” talked of by Rosenkrantz.

To return to Elizabeth, it seems that Mulcaster took part in preparing the pageant at Kenilworth in 1575. I have not read the accounts by George Gascoigne and Robert Laneham or Langham to which Collier refers (“Annals of Stage,” i, 225), but the late Mr. Mulcaster gives some Latin verses preserved by Gascoigne which were, as he says, “devised by Master R. Muncaster.” The “Middlesex Minstrel” also recited King “Ryence’s challenge to King Arthur.” Of this Bishop Percy says: “It was sung before Queen Elizabeth at the grand entertainment at Kenelworth Castle in 1575, and was probably composed for that occasion” (Percy’s “Relics,” Wheatley’s edition, 1877, vol. iii, p. 24). If so, it may have been Mulcaster’s as well as the Latin verses, though for my part I doubt his writing so simply.

On Elizabeth’s death in 1603, Mulcaster published “NÆnia consolans in mortem SerenissimÆ ReginÆ ElizabethÆ,” in which he seems quite consoled by the accession of James.

Mulcaster was a correspondent of Sir Philip Sydney’s, and he wrote to him in Latin. This was against his own principles, for perhaps his best chance of being remembered rests in his vigorous protest against the use of Latin, and his advice to his learned countrymen to write in their own language (cfr. Masson’s Life of Milton).

Perhaps Mulcaster’s enthusiasm for English may have influenced one of his pupils who lived to write imperishable verse in it. The late Mr. Mulcaster, in his MS. notice of his ancestor, surmised that Spenser may have been a “Merchant Taylor” and therefore have come under Mulcaster. The guess was a happy one. Dean Church, in his volume on Spenser (“English Men of Letters”), tells us how the account books of the executors of a bountiful citizen, Robert Nowell, have been preserved, and that at his funeral in 1568 two yards of cloth were given to selected scholars of the great London Schools. The names of these scholars are recorded, and at the head of the Merchant Taylors’ list stands Edmund Spenser.

It is very remarkable that a schoolmaster noted for his classical attainments should before the last decade of the fifteen hundreds have urged the literary use of the mother tongue. It is remarkable, too, that this man was the master of Edmund Spenser. In these and some other respects Mulcaster seems to have been more memorable than Ascham. Yet Ascham is known by all, and Mulcaster is unknown, not only by ordinary Englishmen, but even, as it would seem, by scholars like Mr. George Saintsbury, the author of a book on Elizabethan Literature. In Professor Arber’s invaluable work for the bibliography of our old books, his “Transcript of the Registers of the Company of Stationers of London, 1554-1640,” we find in vol. ii, p. 178b, the following curious entry:——“Thomas Chare sub manu Episcopi Londinii. Sexto die Marcii [1581] Receaved of him for his license to printe positions whereupon the trayning up of children and so consequentlie the wholle course of learninge ys grounded ... xvjd. Provyded alwaies that yf this booke conteine any thinge prejudiciall or hurtfull to the booke of maister Askham that was printed by master Daie called the Scholemayster, That then this lycense shal be voyd.” But Ascham’s widow needed no protection from the Bishop of London. His posthumous book did for the English language what Mulcaster tried to do in vain: it showed how English might be used for clear and even graceful expression. Mulcaster thought that the English language had then reached its highest point. In his very curious and interesting allegory of the progress of language (“Elementarie,” pp. 66 ff.) he says that Art selects the best age of a language to draw rules from, such as the age of Demosthenes in Greece, and of Tully in Rome. “Such a period in the English tongue,” he continues, “I take to be in our days for both the pen and the speech.” And this language, then at its best, was, he thought, shown at its best in his own writings. After enumerating its excellencies he says, “I need no example in any of these, whereof mine own penning is a general pattern.” This tempts one to exclaim with Armado, “I protest the schoolmaster is exceeding fantastical; too too vain, too too vain” (Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act V, sc. 2), and posterity has most emphatically rejected the offered pattern. Dean Church describes the writers of that time as “usually clumsy and awkward, sometimes grotesque, often affected, always hopelessly wanting in the finish, breadth, moderation, and order which alone can give permanence to writing,” (“Spenser,” p. 3). Some of these epithets certainly hit Mulcaster hard. I have spent much time on what he calls his “so careful, I will not say so curious writing” (“Elementarie,” p. 253), and I perfectly agree with him when he says, “Even some of reasonable study can hardly understand the couching of my sentence and the depth of my conceit” (ib., p. 235). This, no doubt, explains to us why Mulcaster has been long forgotten.

But if he had taken less pains with his “style,” Mulcaster would have been recognised as a master of his subject. A right conception of education could not be formed by the worshippers of “learning;” and the false ideal set up at the Renascence has had a disastrous effect on European education ever since. But Mulcaster, scholar though he was, was not in bondage to scholarship. With him education was not instruction in the classics. How few schoolmasters have asked the question, “Why is it not good to have every part of the body and every power of the soul to be fined to his best?” (“Positions,” p. 34.) The following passage from the “Elementarie” (p. 22) shows how much he had risen above the ideal of the learned:——“The end of education and train is to help nature unto her perfection, which is, when all her abilities be perfected in their habit.... Consideration and Judgment must wisely mark whereunto Nature is either evidently given or secretly affectionate, and must frame education consonant thereto.” And having shown this admirable conception of the end to be attained, he sets to work to consider what are the powers that need training. “We have,” he says, “a perceiving by outward sense, to feel, to see, to smell, to taste all sensible things; which qualities of the outward being received in by the common sense, and examined by fancy, are delivered to remembrance and afterward prove our great and only grounds unto further knowledge” (“Elementarie,” p. 28). Here we see him feeling after the foundation of a science of education. He goes still further when in the “Positions” (p. 27) he tells us of the natural inclinations in the soul, and of the three things which we shall find “peering out of the little young souls,” viz.: Wit to take, Memory to keep, and Discretion to discern.

Michelet (“Nos Fils,” p. 170) with justice gives credit to Montaigne for avoiding the great blunder of his time, and basing his scheme of education, not on what was to be learned, but on the nature of the learner, “non l’objet, le savoir, mais le sujet, c’est l’homme.” This was indeed a wonderful step in advance, a step which placed Montaigne before most schoolmasters of that time, perhaps of any succeeding time. But in Mulcaster we have a schoolmaster who in Montaigne’s own day seems to have shown similar wisdom. Perhaps admirable results might have followed had Mulcaster’s mode of expression only been somewhat less “curious.”

Looking to human nature as a whole, Montaigne and Mulcaster saw that “it was not a mind, it was not a body that we have to educate, but a man, and we cannot divide him.” A writer of the present day who is supposed to be in the van of modern thinkers has given us his notion of “Education as a Science.” In some respects the conception of the Elizabethan writer seems to me more complete and truly scientific. Mulcaster thinks that the educator should care both for mind and body, and adapt his “train” to each of them. The treatment of the body recommended in the “Positions” will surprise some Continental authors, who seem to think that physical education had hardly been considered before the appearance of Locke’s “Thoughts.”

There are several other points where Mulcaster seems to me to show remarkable wisdom. He does not approve of a very early start in the learned languages, and is specially strong against the “hastening on” of a “sharp young wit;” so that one of the earliest English writers on education warns us against some of the latest English practices (see “Positions,” pp. 19, 33; also “Elementarie,” xi, pp. 52 ff).

Another of our head-masters, whose teaching now, alas! comes to us also recommended by the proverb, Optimi consiliarii mortui, Edward Thring, has testified to the difficulty and to the importance of instructing the younger classes properly. Mulcaster is so strong on this point that instead of handing over the younger boys in a crowd to the least experienced and worst paid master, as the custom still is, he would have the forms smaller at the bottom than at the top of the school, and would have the best and best paid teacher for them (“Positions,” pp. 233 ff.)

His wisdom appears, too, in his curriculum for the young. What a blessing for them could he have arranged their studies all over Europe instead of his contemporary, Sturm! He would have taught them to read and write their own language, to draw, to sing, and to play some musical instrument, and he maintains that if instead of beginning with Latin the child were put through a preliminary course in these five things, he would learn “the tongue” sooner and do more between 12 and 16 than from 7 to 17 the other way (“Elementarie,” chap. xi). So school instruction in drawing and singing was recommended by this old schoolmaster more than 300 years ago. I take up the New England “Journal of Education,” dated 2nd February, 1888, and I find a well-known writer, Col. T.W. Higginson, telling us: “I can remember when the introduction of singing, and later of drawing, into our public schools was regarded as a finical whim, suitable for girls’ schools only. Emollit mores, each of these practices is found to help school discipline and refine the taste, so that the whole tone of school life is elevated.” Thus we are at length adopting Mulcaster’s proposals, and quoting in their favour what Ovid said 2,000 years ago.

It is interesting, by the way, to observe that the unfortunate “three R’s” had not been invented in Mulcaster’s time, and his “Elementarie,” with its five studies, ignores arithmetic.

The five studies are intended for those who are to be put to learning, and those only; but we see that Mulcaster would have had every one taught to read and write (“Positions,” p. 139).

We have seen that we are at length introducing drawing and singing, as Mulcaster advised. In one particular he is still in advance of us. He would have at the University a college for training teachers. “Is the framing of young minds,” he asks, “and the training of their bodies so mean a point of cunning? Be schoolmasters in this realm such a paucity as they are not even in good sadness to be soundly thought on?... He that will not allow of this careful provision for such a seminary of masters is most unworthy either to have had a good master himself or hereafter to have a good one for his.” (“Positions” p. 248.)

In another respect Mulcaster showed much good sense, and though perhaps not in advance of his own generation he was far before the generations of the two succeeding centuries. I was at a private meeting connected with the founding of Girton College, when, I remember, the late Professor Brewer denied that girls in the Elizabethan age were better educated than in the days that followed. Joseph Payne, who was also present, expressed a strong opinion that they were. If he had had his copy of the “Positions” with him (his collection of rare books on education included this work) he might have proved his point by apposite quotation. This was twenty years ago. Much has been done for girls’ education since then; and in one respect at least the Victorians have advanced beyond the Elizabethans, for no English writer can now say with Mulcaster, “I set not young maidens to public grammar schools, a thing not used in my country; I send them not to the universities, having no precedent thereof in my country.” (“Positions,” p. 167.)

I have now, I think, said enough so show that at least for the history of education Mulcaster’s books are of great interest and value. Travellers are always ready to run any risks in exploring the source of great rivers. When we consider how many millions of the human race using English as their mother tongue receive instruction in school, it might seem worth while to spend some little time and trouble in tracing back the history of that instruction, and seeing what it was in its earliest days. Such knowledge as is now obtainable must be derived from a few books, among which Mulcaster’s are almost the first, both in time and in importance. I know of nothing earlier except Elyot’s “Governor” and Ascham’s “Schoolmaster.” The next English work on education known to me is W. Kemp’s “The Education of Children” in 1588, which probably furthered his wish that the good town of Plymouth might “bring forth some young imps and buds of learning;” but this is in every way a small book. The next important book is John Brinsly’s “Ludus Literarius; or, the Grammar School,” and this was not published till 1612.

The first edition of the “Positions” was dedicated to Queen Elizabeth. This, which is as far as I have seen the second, I should dedicate to no contemporary, not even to the Queen herself; but to the coming New Zealander. The prescient eye of Macaulay sees that Mulcaster’s scheme of instruction will by that time have been adopted, and our intelligent descendant will be able to draw. I hope he will know of the old book in which drawing in schools was first recommended. He will, I feel certain, take a deep interest in the most important discovery of his age, the new science of education, and gratitude for this science will make him think kindly of those quaint old writers, standing almost together, “foreshortened in the tract of time,” who in the days of Elizabeth and Victoria made the first crude suggestions and surmises towards it.

R.H. Q.

16th February, 1888.

HARRISON AND SONS
PRINTERS IN ORDINARY TO HER MAJESTY
ST. MARTIN’S LANE.