THE ORIGIN OF THE GREAT PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

The Chantries’ Act of 1547, which we have previously described, expressly stipulated that its provisions should not apply either to the universities, or to the cathedral churches, or to “the Colledg called St. Marye Colledg of Winchester of the foundation of Bishopp Wikeham: nor to the College of Eton.”[592] It is these two latter schools with which we are now concerned, and more particularly with the questions relating to their origin and purpose.

A great deal of the current misconception of the origin and purpose of these schools may be removed if we reconstruct for ourselves the special ecclesiastical and educational features of the time. Our starting point in this connection must be the Black Death which, as we have shown,[593] caused so great a scarcity of priests and of candidates for the priesthood. William of Wykeham, desiring to give thanks to Almighty God because He had “enriched us, though unworthy, with ample honours and beyond our deserts raised us to divers degrees and dignities,”[594] founded “a perpetual college of seventy poor scholars, clerks, to study theology, canon and civil law and arts in the university of Oxford.”[595] In erecting this college, Wykeham was only following the example which was already well established at the universities, since several colleges had previously been established both at Oxford and at Cambridge. Experience soon convinced him that to found a college was one thing; to obtain a supply of students, who were qualified to profit by the proposed course was quite another; especially as, “through default of good teaching and sufficient learning in grammar, (they) often fall into the danger of failing, where they had set before themselves the desire of success.”[596]

Nor was a lack of knowledge of Latin the only difficulty. A greater obstacle was the poverty of the prospective student of the period. Wykeham refers to this, “There are and will be, hereafter, many poor scholars suffering from want of money and poverty, whose means barely suffice or will suffice in the future to allow them to continue and profit in the aforesaid art of Grammar.” Neither was this poverty a relative poverty, a mere “faÇon de parler,” as some would maintain. The university itself was poor, and had scarcely any funds available for general purposes.[597] “The university students of the Middle Ages were drawn from every class of society, excluding probably as a rule the very lowest, though not excluding the very poorest.”[598] We also note that poor students received from the chancellor a licence to beg.[599]

The writer of Piers Plowman illustrates the contemporary opinion of the social standing of many of those who proceeded to the priesthood.

“Now might each sowter his son setten to schole,
And each beggar’s brat in the book learne,
And worth to a writer and with a lorde dwell,
Or falsely to a frere the fiend for to serven,
So of that beggar’s brat a Bishop that worthen,
Among the peers of the land presse to sythen;
And lordes sons lowly to the lorde’s loute,
Knyghtes crooked hem to, and coucheth ful lowe,
And his sire a sowtor y-soiled with grees,
His teeth with toyling of lether battered as a sawe.”The “Norwich Corporation Records” contain an account which, even if not typical, is certainly illustrative of the way in which the sons of many poor men found their way to the priesthood. The account to which we refer is the story of his life which was given by “Sir William Green” when undergoing examination on the charge of being a spy. He stated that he was the son of a labouring man living at Boston, Lincolnshire, and that he “lerned gramer by the space of 2 yeres.” For about five or six years he was engaged in manual occupation with his father; next, he is at school again “by the space of 2 yeres and in that time receyved benet and accolet in the freres Austen in Boston of one frere Gaunt, then beyng suffragan of the diocese of Lincoln.” Subsequently he is found at Cambridge, where he enters upon his studies, and supports himself, partly by labour, partly by “going to the colleges, and gate his mete and drynke of almes.” After an interval, he “obteyned a licence for one year of Mr. Capper, than being deputee to the Chancellor of the said univ’sitie, under his seal of office whereby ... (he) gathered toguether in Cambridgeshire releaff toward their exhibicion to scole.”[600]

We need not follow the fortunes or misfortunes of this pretended priest any further. The record gives the names of three men who were of the lowest social grade, and who were evidently unscrupulous, as they not only forged begging licences, but also forged letters of ordination. Though we do not claim that the case is typical of the social class from which students come, yet, on the other hand, it should not be regarded as entirely exceptional; in other words, the class of person who received the licence to beg as an accredited student of the university must have been a commonly recognised one. We must remember, at the same time, as Dr. Hastings Rashdall points out, that the example of the Friars had made mendicity comparatively respectable. “Many a man who would have been ashamed to dig was not ashamed to beg; and the begging scholar was invested with something like the sacredness of the begging Friar.”[601]

Realising that it was necessary that prospective priests should study grammar before they proceeded to the universities, and assuming that these embryo scholars were literally poor, and could not afford even to attend the local grammar schools, which, as we have seen, were common in medieval England, we ask what action would a man such as William of Wykeham, who was desirous of perpetuating a memorial to himself and of being of service to the Church generally, naturally take?

The answer to this question depends partly on the nature of the models available for imitation. We have previously shown that imitation has played a large part in English educational development. The first obvious model for imitation was the ordinary one of providing a master who should teach grammar freely to all boys who might care to come to him. This plan naturally commended itself at first to William of Wykeham, and was adopted by him. In 1373 he made an agreement with Master Richard Herton, Grammarian, that he “should instruct and teach faithfully and diligently in Grammar the poor scholars whom the said Father keeps and shall keep at his own expense; and shall receive no others without the licence of the said Father.”[602]

This arrangement would scarcely meet the purpose which Wykeham had in mind. He wished to provide for suitable poor youths in all parts of the country, and not only for those whose homes were in the locality of Winchester.

Again we ask, what models were available? Provision for the feeding of poor scholars had been made, two centuries previously, in connection with the Hospital of St. Cross, about a mile distant from the city of Winchester, by Bishop Henry of Blois. At this hospital thirteen poor and infirm men were lodged and boarded, and, in addition, one hundred of the poor of the city were provided with a dinner each day. Among these one hundred poor were to be included, “thirteen poor scholars of the city school,” who were to be sent there “by the Master of the High Grammar School of the city of Winchester.”

A similar custom had prevailed “from time immemorial” at the Hospital of St. Nicholas where forty loaves were to be provided each week for the scholars who attended Pontefract School.[603]

Then too, the provision of a house for the lodging of scholars was a form of charity whose origin could be traced back to the twelfth century at least. About 1150, Walchelin, the moneyer of Derby, and Goda, his wife, bequeathed certain property to the abbey of Derby “on this trust that the hall shall be for a school of clerks and the chambers shall be for the house of a master and clerks for ever.”[604]

A more immediate example for Wykeham in his desire to make provision for the maintenance and education of “pauperes et indigentes clericii” was Bishop Stapledon of Exeter. He wished to provide for the “maintenance of boys studying grammar and receiving instruction in morals and life” in connection with the Hospital of St. John at Exeter. The accomplishment of this purpose was prevented by his death, but Bishop Grandisson, his successor, arranged in 1332 that the master and brethren of the hospital were to provide accommodation and all other necessaries for a master of grammar and fourteen boys. Prior to admission, the boys were to know their psalter and to be familiar with plain song.[605]

Several similar instances may be quoted. Thus, about the close of the twelfth century, the Archdeacon of Durham, of the time, provided an endowment for the purpose of supplying three scholars of Durham School with food and lodging at the almonry.[606] In 1262 Bishop Giles of Salisbury founded a hostel in that city “for the perpetual reception and maintenance of a warden, two chaplains and twenty poor, needy, well-behaved and teachable scholars.”[607] In 1364, Walter de Merton, Chancellor of England, gave certain manors “for the perpetual maintenance of twenty scholars living in the schools at Oxford or elsewhere.”[608] About 1387, Bishop Burghersh of Lincoln provided that the chantry founded by him should maintain six poor boys who were “professing the art of Grammar.”

In addition to these models, there existed the models furnished by the collegiate churches and the monasteries. The collegiate churches were under the control of a dean or provost and a small number of officials; generally speaking, a master of grammar was also attached to the Church. These colleges were non-resident. The priests attached to the church lived in their own homes. A monastery was presided over by an abbot or prior, the monks were resident, and a small number of choir boys were also attached.

It does not require any great stretch of the imagination to conceive of William of Wykeham pondering over all these possibilities. In the end, the monastic idea seems to have triumphed with this important distinction that, for the adult monks, were substituted “scholares pauperes et indigentes.”

A study of an illustration of Winchester School serves to support this conception. The most prominent feature of the college buildings was the church. Divine worship was to be effectively rendered daily. Grouped round the church were the cloisters and the chambers, the dwelling places for the poor scholar clerks. The more closely the building is examined, the more clearly is its relation to the monastic ideal realised.

The influence of the monastic ideal is even more evident in connection with the foundation of Eton College, the second of our great public schools in respect of date of origin. The foundation charter of this school was sealed on October 11th, 1440. In this charter, Henry VI., the founder of the college, who was then eighteen years of age, declared his intention to establish a college[609] “in the honour and for the support of our great and most holy mother in the parish church of Eton by Windsor, which is not far removed from the place of our birth.”[610]

This college, as originally planned, was to consist of a “provost and ten priests, four clerks, and six chorister boys whose duty it shall be to serve divine worship there daily, and twenty-five poor and needy scholars whose duty it shall be to learn grammar and moreover twenty-five poor and weakly men whose duty it shall be always to pray in the same place for our good estate while we live and for our soul when we have passed from this light ... also of a master or teacher in grammar, whose duty it shall be to teach the said needy scholars and all others whatsoever and whencesoever of our realm of England coming to the said college, the rudiments of grammar gratis without exacting money or anything else.”[611]

The monastic conception is brought out prominently. At the head of the institution were the provost and ten priests, corresponding to the abbot and the obedientaries of a convent, next we find the chorister boys who correspond to the boys of the almonry school who assisted in divine worship, next comes the support of poor and weakly men, a common feature of many monasteries, finally there are the “poor and needy scholars” to take the place ordinarily occupied by monks.

In 1441 Henry VI. founded a college in Cambridge University by the name of King’s College of St. Nicholas. At first, there was no connection between Eton and King’s College, but in 1443, new statutes were made which enlarged the number of students who could be admitted there and also arranged for the admission of “commensales” who were to pay for their board. The addition of “commensales” accentuates still further the influence of the monastic model. From early times, it had been customary for the heads of monasteries to receive a kind of “parlour boarder” and it would be particularly fitting that, in an institution which was primarily educational and not merely devotional, arrangements should be made for the reception of those scholars who were able and willing to pay.

Henry showed his interest in the school by his issue of a warrant in 1446, in which, after reciting that he had founded a college at Eton for “seventy scholars whose duty it is to learn the science of grammar and sixteen choristers whose duty likewise it shall be, when they have been sufficiently instructed in singing, to learn grammar, also a master teacher in grammar and an usher to teach the aforesaid boys, scholars and choristers,”[612] he proceeded to declare that “it shall not be lawful for anyone, of whatever authority he may be, at any time to presume to keep, set up, or found any such public grammar school in the town of Windsor or elsewhere within the space of ten English miles from our said Royal College.”[613]

This warrant is specially significant in two respects. One is, that it shows that the institution, founded by Henry VI., was not intended to differ in any essential respect from the other local grammar schools which existed in various parts of the country. On the contrary, steps were taken to prevent opposition. There was a real danger that the gratuitous character of the instruction given at Eton might tempt masters to open fee paying schools, with the inevitable result that the social prestige of the school would be lowered. The other significant fact arises from the use of the phrase “public grammar school.” This is the first use of the term in this sense which we have been able to trace, and it is probable that we have here the first occasion on which the word is employed as an alternative for “free,” which denotes, as we have explained, that the school was open to all comers.

It is not necessary that we should consider any further the history of the public schools. This subject has already been fully treated by others, notably by Mr. Leach in his History of Winchester College, and by Sir H. C. Maxwell Lyte in his History of Eton College.

We may, however, note three respects in which Winchester first, and subsequently Eton differed from the scholastic institutions, which had previously been established.

1. The scale on which Winchester College was carried out, clearly differentiates it from all earlier foundations. The number of scholars for whom Wykeham provided, and the value of the endowments attached to the school, mark a considerable advance on what had been attempted previously.

2. It was a new idea to associate a school in a district remote from a university centre with a college at Oxford. Rashdall points out that Robert Egglesfield, the founder of Queen’s College, had hoped to have had at Oxford a school of boys in connection with his college. This proposal was not carried out. That which Egglesfield simply proposed for Oxford, Wykeham actually accomplished at Winchester.[614]

3. Winchester College is the first example of a boarding school, pure and simple. Collegiate churches had previously provided for the gratuitous instruction of scholars, but the real object of the establishment of a collegiate church was that divine worship should be rendered in an effective and dignified manner. Endowments had previously been provided for the feeding and lodging of scholars, but this was to be effected in connection with an existing charitable institution. At Winchester, for the first time, an institution was established for the combined purpose of teaching and of maintaining scholars, and for those purposes alone. “The really important new departure was taken, a real step in advance made, when Wykeham made his school a separate and distinct foundation.... The corporate name of ‘Warden and scholars, clerks’ stamped the school and the schoolboys as the aim and object of the foundation.”[615]

One other question must be considered. The great public schools to-day are attended by the sons of wealthy parents: were these schools founded originally for children of the social grade who now attend them? The foundation deeds state explicitly that they were established for “pauperes et indigentes scolares.”

Mr. Leach writes vehemently on the subject. “A great deal of discussion has taken place, and much excellent eloquence run to waste on the qualification of ‘poor and needy.’ It was alleged ... that there had been a robbery of the poor in the matter of endowed schools; that the persons entitled, under the founder’s statutes, to the benefits of Winchester College, were the poor in the sense of the poor law, the destitute poor, the gutter poor, or, at least, the poor labouring classes. There is not, I believe, a title or a shred of justification for any such allegation in the case of any public or endowed grammar school founded before 1627.”[616]

The following arguments are advanced by Mr. Leach in support of the views he enunciates:—

(1) He urges that the test of poverty from the school point of view, was the oath which every scholar had to take on reaching fifteen years of age: “I have nothing whereby I know I can spend beyond five marks a year.”[617] Now, as there were at this date sixty-seven livings in the diocese of Winchester below this value, and as £1 6s. 8d. was the pay of a skilled artisan of that date, Mr. Leach maintains that the possession of £3 6s. 8d. was a very considerable income for a boy.

In reply it may be pointed out that the oath would provide for extreme cases only. In this connection, it may be mentioned that it was proposed, towards the close of the reign of Henry VIII., to establish a free grammar school in connection with Exeter Cathedral. Forty of the scholars of this school were to be admitted without making any payment for their instruction and, in addition, they were to receive a shilling a week for the purpose of paying for “their commons within the citie.” Now, the test of poverty to qualify the candidates for this position was, that their parents were not to be in receipt of a higher income than £300 a year, possibly equal to £5,000 to-day.[618] If we assume that the money payments of the opening years of the twentieth century were forty times the value of such payments in the fourteenth century, even then the extreme limit of the income of a candidate for admission to Winchester was £133 6s. 8d. of modern money. It is, therefore, obvious that the class of boy for which Winchester College was intended must have been of a lower social scale than that for which the proposed cathedral grammar school at Exeter was to be established.

(2) By a clause which forms a postscript to Rubric XVI., it was provided that “sons of noble and powerful persons ... to the number of ten might be instructed and informed in grammar within the college, without charge to the college.” This clause Mr. Leach describes as containing the “germ” of the public school system, and he claims that he has traced among the early commoners of the college “young noblemen, scions of county families and relations of judges and chancery officials.”

We contend that this does not apply to the case at all, inasmuch as “parlour boarders,” as Mr. Leach himself points out,[619] had frequently been received in monastic houses. Even apart from the fact that the details which he gives are meagre, and that his conclusions are by no means demonstrated, it may be maintained that the presence of wealthy boys at school, under special circumstances, does not invalidate the contention that the boys normally found there were the “poor and needy.” Thus Dr. Hastings Rashdall, in speaking of the students at the university, states that “there was the scion of the princely or noble house who lived in the style to which he was accustomed at home, in a hostel of his own with a numerous ‘familia’ including poorer but well born youths who dressed like him.... At the other end of the social ladder there was the poor scholar, reduced to beg for his living, or to become the servitor of a college, or of a master or well-to-do student.”[620] If the poor, in the sense of those who had to beg for a living or earn it, whilst they were at college, by manual labour, were not excluded from the university, why should it be assumed that they did not rank among the “pauperes et indigentes scolares” for whom Winchester College was expressly founded?

We may also point out that it was not customary, at this time, for boys of good family, or even the sons of wealthy and prosperous merchants and tradesmen, to be educated by being sent to school. The instances which may be given are few and inconclusive. The usual practice adopted for the education of these young people, as we have shown, was either by sending them to a great household or, at a later date, by having a private tutor in the house. Evidence may also be adduced to show that youths of good social standing rarely proceeded to the universities at this time. Thus Dr. Furnivall points out that, up to the close of the sixteenth century, only three names of noblemen and nine of sons of knights are mentioned in Cooper’s Athenae Cantabrigienses and only nineteen men of noble or knightly birth in Wood’s Athenae Oxonienses.[621]

We may next pass to consider the evidence for the contention which we advance, that, when Wykeham built his college, he intended it for those who were too poor to pay for an education, irrespective of their social position, and that the term “poor” did not exclude the children of men who were members of the labouring classes of the community.

(1) As we have reiterated so frequently, the actual term used in the foundation deed is “pauperes et indigentes.” Mr. Leach maintains that this simply means the “relatively poor,” the poor relations of the nobility, or the children of prosperous merchants. His contention seems to be an unwarranted extension of the meaning of the phrase, and it will not be possible to quote from any charter or document of the time in which this special meaning is assigned to the term.(2) Even sixty years later, at the foundation of Eton College, when the character of Winchester School would be definitely fixed, when King Henry VI. desired to establish a foundation which should exceed that of Wykeham, he associated with the school an almshouse for “twenty-five poor and weakly men.” The associating of an almshouse with the school marks the purpose of the school as a charitable endowment for the lower classes of the community.

(3) The middle class of the fifteenth century was a wealthy class. In the eleventh century, there were only two social grades in England, the nobility and the various classes of tenants. The middle class, which gradually grew up, won its way through its wealth. Wealthy and prosperous merchants would seek to emulate the nobility of the land, and send their sons to the houses of nobles for their education or—at the least—to provide them with a tutor. It may also be added that the clergy of the period, who were practically the professional class, were celibates.

(4) Mr. Leach himself, undesignedly, applies examples to show that the sons of serfs attended schools. He instances that in 1295, Walter, the son of Reginald the carpenter, “was licensed to attend school” subject to the payment of a fine.[622] Similarly, in 1344, a villein at Coggeshall in Essex was fined for sending his son to school without license. At Harrow in 1384, a villein was deprived of his horse for sending his son to school without license. Mr. Leach continues “the fourteenth century manor rolls all over the country are dotted with fines for sending boys, ‘ad scolas clericales,’ to schools to become clerks.”[623] Now, it would appear to us obvious, that if some serfs sent their sons to schools after paying a license, others would attempt to do so without payment and would probably succeed in doing so. But the point which is established, without doubt, is that it was customary for children of parents of the lowest social grade to attend school.When these arguments are fairly considered, it is claimed that the institutions of Eton and Winchester were originally intended for boys whose parents were “poor and needy”—and not simply for scions of the nobility or the sons of prosperous merchants. The only condition of admission, practically, was that these boys would subsequently proceed to the universities, in order that their course of preparation for the priesthood might be completed.