SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CHANGES.

During the period we now proceed to consider, the idea gradually developed that education was not a matter which exclusively pertained to the Church. With the rise of the universities, the control of education tended to pass out of the power of the Church; with the social and economic progress of the country, there was a growth of the idea that civic and trade and craft organisations respectively owed a duty to the community, and that this duty included the provision of facilities for education.

This idea of civic or community responsibility for education which began to manifest itself in a tentative manner, was not the outcome of any opposition to the Church, or due to a feeling that the Church had not been sufficiently alive to its responsibilities. On the contrary, the provision for education which was made was, generally speaking, entrusted to the care of the Church, and the teachers of the schools continued to be the priests of the Church. In fact, we may go so far as to assert that the consciousness of social responsibility which now developed was, to a great extent, the outgrowth of religious teaching.

At the same time that we emphasise this general statement, we must admit that there existed certain signs of a tendency to assert independence of the Church, and various symptoms began to manifest themselves which were indicative of the fact that school-keeping was ceasing to be regarded as exclusively a function of the priesthood. The tendency to independence of the Church showed itself, among other places, at Coventry, where the corporation sent a deputation to the Prior of Coventry “wyllyng hym to occupye a skole of Gramer, fyye he like to teche hys Brederon and Childerom of the aumbry, and that he wolnot gruche ne meve the contrai, but that euery mon off this Cite be at hys ffre chosse to sette hys chylde to skole to what techer off Gramer that he likyth, as reson askyth”[366]; and at Bridgenorth, where an ordinance was passed in 1503, that no priest should keep a school after a schoolmaster had come to town.[367] As illustrating the tendency to place schools under the control of organisations other than the Church may be mentioned the school founded at Farthinghoe in 1443 by John Abbot, a mercer of London, who placed the school under the control of the Mercers’ Company,[368] and the school founded by Sir Edmund Sha in 1487, which was put in mortmain “unto his felliship of the craft of goldsmythes.”[369] Two other instances are available. In 1502, Sir John Percyvale founded a “Fre Gramer Scole” at Macclesfield[370] for “gentil mennes sonnes and other good menses children in Maxfiled and the Countre thereabouts.” The government of the school was entrusted to seventeen local laymen who were to act as trustees. In 1505, Sir Bartholomew Read, who founded a school at Cromer, made the Goldsmith’s Company the governing body.[371] That school-keeping was ceasing to be regarded as the exclusive function of the priesthood is indicated by the will of the founder of Sevenoaks Grammar School in 1432, which specified that the schoolmaster was not to be a priest “in sacris ordinibus minime constitutus,”[372] and by the fact that the names of schoolmasters are to be found on the rolls of the Freemen of the city of York.[373]

The growing interest of the laity in education did not result in apathy on the part of the Church. On the contrary, the Church was stimulated to renewed activity. Not only did the great churchmen of the day, e.g. Wykeham, Chicheley, and Waynflete, found schools of enduring magnificence, but a large number of collegiate churches were established in various parts of the country, and there exists considerable evidence (which we shall consider in a subsequent chapter) to show that the majority of these collegiate churches provided special facilities for education.

The change in the attitude of the nation towards education is the direct outcome of its social and economic conditions, and if we are properly to understand the educational developments, it is necessary that we should consider briefly the changes in the economic conditions of England, and the resultant social changes, which manifested themselves in the closing centuries of the Middle Ages.

The date of the pestilence termed the Black Death will form a convenient starting point from which we may consider these changes. The factors contributory to the results, which we propose to describe, may be traced to an earlier date, but as we are concerned in this chapter with general tendencies rather than with minute economic investigations, the year 1349 will admirably serve our purpose.

The economic effects of the Black Death were particularly evident in the rural districts. The decay of the manorial system was accelerated; the system of manorial farming was thrown into confusion and new methods of land tenure became imperative; the existing system of customary regulation was no longer possible. In the towns the influence of the pestilence was not so marked. Though individual towns might suffer, yet the relative importance of towns in the life of the nation was increased, and the way was prepared for that industrial and commercial supremacy of towns which began to manifest itself in the early years of the fifteenth century.[374]

In addition to the economic effects, the Black Death had important educational effects. The mortality among the clergy was considerable, and consequently the number of men who were qualified to act as schoolmasters was appreciably diminished. The reduction in the number of priests, as a result of the Black Death, is indicated by a letter which Pope Clement V. wrote in 1349 to the Archbishop of York, and in which it is stated that “in consequence of the Plague, there are not enough priests to administer the sacraments.”[375] A statute of 1362 also refers to the fact that “the priests be become so very scant after the pestilence to the great grievance and oppression of the people.”[376]

This diminution in the number of schoolmasters, for some reason or other, seems to have continued into the following century. William Byngham, in the petition which he submitted to the king in 1439 for the purpose of obtaining permission to found a college at Cambridge for the training of teachers for grammar schools throughout the country, stated that, “on the East of the way between Hampton and Coventry and no further north than Ripon, no less than seventy grammar schools had fallen into desuetude because of the scarcity of teachers.”[377]

It is also extremely probable that the Black Death contributed considerably to the almost total disappearance of the French language from the schools. One effect of the Norman Conquest had been the gradual growth of French as the spoken language; after the pestilence period, the use of the native tongue of the English nation again became common. This is directly evidenced by statements contained in John de Trevisa’s translation of Higden’s Polychronicon. After showing that French was at one time very prevalent in this country because it was the language in common use at schools and that the children of “gentil men” were taught that language from the time they were “i-rokked in here cradel,” Trevisa states that after the Black Death the knowledge of French had disappeared to so great an extent that “now children of gramer scole conneth na more Frensche than can hir lift heele.”[378]

The fifteenth century witnessed important changes in the economic condition of England. The most important of these changes was connected with the development of manufactures. At the close of the fourteenth century, we learn that wool was “la Sovereigne Marchandise and Jewel ... d’Angleterre”[379]; a century later, it is said that “the makeyng of cloth” was “the grettest occupacion and lyving of the poor people of the land.”[380]

Various enactments of the period testify to the growth of the woollen industry, and to the efforts which were made by the government to foster and develop it. But though the manufacture of cloth was the most important industry, yet it was not the only form of industrial occupation. Before the close of the fifteenth century, the manufacture of silk had been established in London, coal mining was carried on to a considerable extent, the manufacture of beer had been instituted, the making of bricks had been renewed, guns were being made, and ship-building was making progress.[381]

The development of manufactures naturally brought about changes in the organisation of industry. Owing to the operation of the principle of division of labour, new crafts came into existence, and these, in their turn, were also sub-divided into other new crafts. Gradually, all the various classes of the industrial world—the artisan, the manufacturer, the middleman, and the merchant—began to emerge. As a result, the “rude beginnings of a factory system” manifested themselves,[382] and there are even traces of a movement which resembles a modern strike.[383]

These changes in the industrial system necessarily exerted a powerful influence upon the agricultural industry, which previously had been the principal occupation of the people. The Black Death had been responsible for a great diminution in the number of agricultural labourers, and as a result, it was scarcely possible to find sufficient labour for the cultivation of the soil. This scarcity of labour was intensified by the fact that employment in the manufacturing industries proved to many a more attractive form of occupation than service on the land. The Central Government took steps with the object of compelling people to work on the land, and an attempt was even made, as we shall see in a subsequent chapter, to prevent agricultural labourers from sending their children to school. Thus in the reign of Richard II., it was enacted that any person who was engaged on agricultural labour up to twelve years of age, was to be compelled to remain at that occupation during the remainder of his life.[384] Other Acts of Parliament, with a similar object, were passed in 1406 and 1444.[385] This repressive legislation failed to secure its purpose, as the steady flow of labour from agriculture to manufacture continued.

The increasing scarcity of labour led naturally to the gradual substitution of sheep farming for the cultivation of wheat, a development to which the growth of the cloth industry necessarily contributed. The demand for wool by the English manufacturers of cloth increased to so great an extent that sheep-farming gradually became more profitable than the cultivation of the soil and, as a result, the enclosure movement, which began to set in during the closing years of the fourteenth century, made such progress that, during the fifteenth century, there occurred “the greatest of those agricultural changes which have in successive ages swept over this country—the transition from arable to pasture farming.”[386]

Even more important than the industrial changes were the commercial changes, which occurred during the fifteenth century. These arose out of the development of English foreign trade with its natural effect upon the growth of a shipping industry. The records of the time show that English merchants visited all the civilised maritime countries of Europe, notably Holland, Zealand, Flanders, and the shores of the Baltic. Trade was also carried on with Iceland, Spain, Portugal, the countries of Southern Europe, and, in spite of the Hundred Years’ War, with France.

These developments in manufactures, in agriculture, and in commerce naturally necessitated changes in financial matters. In the earlier part of the Middle Ages a system of barter had been common. Such a system could not continue under the new order of things. Not only did the use of money for facilitating international exchange become common, but money began to be employed for capitalistic purposes instead of being hoarded or used for unproductive military purposes.

These various changes could not occur in the economic life without producing important effects in the social life of the community. One of the most important of these resulted from an appreciation of the power of wealth. Formerly, rank and birth had been the main mark of distinction between one man and another. Apart from high birth, the Church had previously been the only avenue by which a man of ability could attain to a position of importance. Under the new condition of things, the possession of wealth proved to be a passport to social recognition, and the old ideas of status and class began rapidly to disappear.

The social standing thus gained by men of wealth naturally hastened the decline of the Feudal System; the failure of the Feudal System involved the decay of chivalry, which was closely associated with it. Outwardly chivalry continued to flourish, but the tournaments which now took place were held for political purposes on occasions of pomp and show, and not with the object of effecting a training to war.

The closing century of the Middle Ages not only witnessed the rise of the capitalist class, but it also saw the rise of the middle class, which has been described as the “most noteworthy feature in the history of social life in England in the late fourteenth and the early fifteenth century.”[387] The various changes in the economic conditions had made it possible to acquire wealth through successful trade, and abundant evidence exists that the merchant class was both numerous and was held in high esteem. Socially, these men seem to have ranked with squires and in consequence “Merchaundes and Franklonz, worship fulle and honourable, they may be set semely at a squyers table.”[388]

The educational development of a country is closely connected with its social and economic progress, and it is necessary clearly to bear in mind the economic changes of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries if we are properly to understand the educational adjustments which resulted.