Chapter XXIV (28)

Contemporary with Chaucer, the father of our poetry, was Sir John Mandeville, who commonly enjoys the credit of being the father of English prose, and whose travels let into the popular mind a glimmering light as to the whereabouts of Tartary, Persia, Armenia, Lybia, Chaldea, and Ethiopia, all which he visited, besides some Eastern lands that he calls by the name of “Amazoyn,” “Ind the Less and the More,” and “many isles that be abouten Ind.” In his “Itinerary” he describes his visit to Jerusalem and the Holy Land, apologising for possible inaccuracies by reminding the indulgent reader that “thynges passed out of long time from a man’s mynd turnen soon into forgetting; because that the mynd of man ne may not be comprehended ne withholden for the freelty of mankind.” The “Itinerary” was written in Latin, and translated by the author first into French, and from thence into English, and enjoyed great popularity. And the publication of these travels, together with those of Marco Polo, stimulated an interest in the study of geography, so that we begin to find more frequent mention in the catalogues of monastic libraries of maps and charts. The whole science of map-drawing, it may be observed, had developed in the cloister; the German monks showing themselves indefatigable in improving this branch of science. About the year 1370 Prior Nicholas Hereford of Evesham Abbey, after collecting a fine assortment of books, caused a great map of the world to be executed, at the cost of six marks, for the use of his convent. And a certain Camaldolese monk, named Fra Mauro, made use of the information derived from the writings of Marco Polo, and produced a grand Mappamondo, wherein he depicts the sea rolling round the southern extremity of Africa. On the margin of his map appear some learned notes, referring the phenomena of the tides to the moon’s attraction--a piece of natural philosophy, however, which, as we have seen, was not unknown to Bede.

It has been already said that during the reign of Edward III. the English universities had to sustain the twofold attack of Lollardism and the Black Death, by the united effects of which they were reduced to so low a condition, as at one time to have ceased to be regarded as seats of learning. Nine tenths of the English clergy are said to have been swept away by the terrible plague, together with the population of entire cities, and the necessity of the case obliged the bishops to fill the vacant benefices with men of inferior education, a practice which for the moment told severely on the state of the schools. But the effects of the pestilence were less fatally disastrous than those caused by the heresy of Wickliffe. When in 1361, that celebrated man, then master of Baliol College, Oxford, first made himself notorious by his attacks on the mendicant orders, he seems to have done little more than repeat the old threadbare calumnies of William de St. Amour and Richard Fitz Ralph. His views were of course exceedingly relished by the secular doctors, and his reputed talents induced the primate, Simon Islip, to offer him the wardenship of Canterbury Hall, then newly founded, partly for secular and partly for monastic students. In order to make room for him, the former warden, Woodhal, a Canterbury monk, had to retire, and three other monastic students who held scholarships in the college were at the same time removed. Langham, the successor of Islip, pronounced these proceedings irregular, and restored Woodhal to his post. The matter was referred to the decision of Pope Urban V., who decided in favour of Woodhal, and from that day Wickliffe became the deadly enemy of the papal power. The university, or rather the secular regents of the university, immediately took part with him against the Pope and the Friars, and in 1372, to mark their adherence to his cause, elected him Professor of Divinity. He succeeded, moreover, in obtaining the powerful support of John of Gaunt, and on occasion of a congress, held at Bruges, to settle various points in dispute between the English Government and the Holy See, the name of John Wickliffe appears in the list of Royal Commissioners. All this time there had been no whisper of heresy, nor was it until after his return to England, when he was promoted to a prebend in the collegiate church of Westbury, and a little later was presented by John of Gaunt to the rectory of Lutterworth, that he began to disseminate his pernicious doctrines. Besides his peculiar views regarding the possession of property, he had started views on the subject of predestination, analogous to those afterwards embraced by Calvin, and attacked the supremacy of the Pope, and the doctrines of penance, indulgences, the worship of the saints and of holy images, and prayer for the dead. He and his followers propagated their opinions by a sort of popular preaching suited to the tastes of the common people, and accompanied by a certain low buffoonery, in all ages specially attractive to rude audiences of the Anglo-Saxon race. The coarse invectives levelled against the clergy found eager reception among such hearers; for there is perhaps to most men an irresistible fascination in doctrines which aim at bringing down any dominant class of society to a lower level. The English commons were at this period seething in a chronic state of insurrection, and the Lollard denunciations of the priests and land-holders were extremely to the taste of the Socialists of the fourteenth century. It is therefore quite easy to understand how it was that Hob Miller and Colin Lout should have thought it an excellent joke to ridicule and despise their betters; but that Wickliffe should have found warm supporters in the university of Oxford is a fact that may well surprise and startle us. But Lollardism had a double aspect, its theological heresies were at first as little relished at Oxford as at Rome, but its enmity to the religious orders happened to chime in with the views of the secular faction, and therefore they gave it their support. An appeal had already been made, not to Rome, but to Parliament, for a law to prohibit any member of the university joining a religious order before his eighteenth year, and the Oxonian divines were not ashamed to accept, together with the desired statute, a prohibition to carry the matter to Rome. They next established the rule that no religious, whether monk or friar, should be admitted to graduate in arts, while at the same time, by the university statutes, no one could fill a theological professorship without so graduating. The monks appealed to the Holy See, and obtained a dispensation from this unjust law, and thus increased the ill-will of their thwarted and malicious adversaries. The struggle was at its height when Wickliffe raised his cry against the mendicant orders, whom he declared to be Antichrist, and proctors of Satan; and he at once found plenty of grave divines who were willing to regard him as a useful ally, and forgive both his heresies and his nonsense for the support he furnished to their side of the quarrel. Hence, in 1377, when Gregory XI. sent Bulls to the Archbishop of Canterbury the Bishop of London, and the university of Oxford, calling on them to take active measures for the condemnation of the heresiarch, we are assured by Walsingham that the heads of the university deliberated whether or no they should receive the Bull, nor does it appear certain that it ever was received. At last, however, in 1381, Wickliffe startled even his Oxford allies by his attack on the doctrine of the Holy Eucharist, and a decree was drawn up, and signed by William de Burton, the chancellor, and twelve of the chief divines, condemning his errors, and forbidding them to be promulgated in the university. Hereupon Wickliffe scrupled not to appeal to the Crown and Parliament, but the English people were not yet quite prepared for such a step, and the act caused general scandal. Even John of Gaunt, who had hitherto, from political motives, given him his countenance, now withdrew his protection, and declared his teaching on the Sacrament of the Altar to be a “doctrine of devils.”

Oxford, however, had not yet entirely given up his cause. In 1382, when Courtenay, Archbishop of Canterbury, set on foot vigorous measures for the eradication of the new heresies, he met with stout resistance from Rigge, who had succeeded De Burton in the office of chancellor of the university, and who flatly refused to silence a Lollard professor. Courtenay at last obtained a royal mandate, in virtue of which Wickliffe and his most obstinate adherents were expelled the university, a good number of professors purchasing immunity, however by a ready recantation of their errors, for few evinced any desire of becoming martyrs in the cause.

The steps taken by Courtenay vindicated the authority of the Church but they were far from being sufficient to purge the university from the heretical leaven, or remedy the evils caused by these internal troubles. So far is Ayliffe’s statement that the Wickliffites restored sound learning at Oxford, from possessing a shadow of truth, that the period when this heresy was rampant among her doctors was precisely that when her schools had confessedly sunk to their very lowest state of decay. The authorities were themselves perfectly aware of the fact, and represented it as one of the unhappy effects produced by papal provisions. But the statutes of Provisors, passed in the reign of Edward III., by which all such provisions were forbidden under severe penalties, instead of applying a remedy to this evil, only hastened the decline of learning. It was found that the Crown was far less disposed to promote men of learning than the Popes had been; and, to quote the words of Lingard, “experience showed that the statutes in question operated to the depression of learning and the deterioration of the universities.” Accordingly in the year 1399 petitions were presented to Convocation from Oxford and Cambridge, setting forth that _while the Popes were permitted to bestow benefices by provision, the preference had always been given to men of talent and industry_, and that the effect of such preference had been to quicken the application and increase the number of the students; but that since the passing of the Act against Provisors, their members had been neglected by the patrons of livings, the _students had disappeared_, and the schools were nearly abandoned.[290] Sixteen years later the House of Commons awoke to a sense of the suicidal character of their own policy, and petitioned King Henry V. that, _to save the universities from destruction_, he would suffer the statutes against Provisors to be repealed. The King referred the matter to the bishops, who, however, had no wish at all to interfere with the existing legislation, and contented themselves with passing a law in convocation obliging every patron of a benefice for the next ten years to present a graduate of one of the universities.

These facts may serve as sufficient reply to the vaunted “restoration of learning” achieved by the Lollards. The effect of their influence in the universities, coupled with that of an anti-Roman course of legislation, had been to bring those institutions to the very verge of ruin, and that in spite of the extraordinary efforts which were being made by private munificence to enlarge and perfect the collegiate system of education. Indeed, though Wickliffe himself was a man of undoubted ability, the attempt to convert him into a restorer of humane letters, savours of the absurd.[291] His learning was precisely the same which, when found in the possession of friars and other scholastics, earns for them such bitter taunts and gibes as “locusts,” who devoured all the green things in the land, and darkened it with bad Latin and captious logic. Wickliffe’s Latin was not better than that of his adversaries, and his logic was of that true Oxonian temper which Wood qualifies as “frivolous sophistry whereby scholars could at any time be for or against anything proposed.” The well-known ballad in which an Oxford student puzzles his simple-minded parent by proving a pigeon and an eel pie to be convertible terms, seems hardly a caricature when we read the shifts, or, as Wood terms them, the “screws” by which the Lollard chief sought to prove that he meant the precise contrary of what he had been convicted of saying. “He so qualified his doctrines with conditions,” says Lingard, “and explained them away by distinctions, as to give an appearance of innocence to tenets the most mischievous. On the subject of the Holy Eucharist he intrenched himself behind unintelligible distinctions, the meaning of which it would have puzzled the most acute logician to detect.”[292] And Rohrbacher observes that instead of appealing to the Scriptures explained by the Fathers, he took refuge in “arguments and dialectic subtleties, wrapped up in an obscure and barbarous phraseology;” in other words, he exhibited precisely the same description of learning, the display of which has earned so many hard epithets for the academic “locusts.”

Wickliffe’s literary fame rests chiefly on his translation of the Bible into the vulgar tongue, often incorrectly spoken of as the earliest English version. It is not clear that he himself ever translated more than the Gospels, for of the various manuscripts which bear his name, some are now admitted to have been the production of later Lollard writers. His English is declared by Mr. Craik to be “coarse and slovenly,” and far more harsh and obscure than that of Mandeville or Chaucer. His version was made the vehicle for conveying his peculiar tenets, by means of corruptions of the Sacred Text, and was accompanied by certain Prologues or Glosses, explaining it in an heretical sense. On this account it was enacted by Archbishop Arundel, in a Provincial Synod held in 1408, that “no one should hereafter translate any text of Holy Scripture into English by way of a book, and that no such book, _composed lately, in the time of Wickliffe, or since his death_, shall be read.” This decree has been erroneously interpreted as a prohibition to the laity to read the Scriptures. But its real meaning is very clearly explained by the Canonist Lyndwood,[293] a contemporary of Arundel’s, as being, first, a prohibition to any private person to translate the Scriptures into English without authority; and secondly, a prohibition to use or read any such unauthorised and incorrect versions. And he expressly adds that from the terms “newly composed, in the time of Wickliffe, or since his death,” it is evident that the Lollard versions only are prohibited, but that every one is still at liberty to read those formerly translated from the text of Scripture into English or any other modern idiom. Lyndwood died in 1446, and was living when the decree in question was first published. His testimony as to its meaning as then understood and interpreted, as well as to the fact that other earlier versions did exist at that time, cannot therefore be called in question. Moreover, Fox the Protestant martyrologist, tells us, on the authority of Polydore Vergil, that this same Archbishop Arundel, who is so often accused of prohibiting the reading of the Scriptures, preached the funeral sermon of Queen Anne of Bohemia, and mentioned among other things in her praise that she was a diligent reader of the Four Gospels written in Bohemian, English, and Latin, with divers expositions, which book she had sent to him to be viewed and examined.

If this account be correct, it equally vindicates Arundel from the charge of prohibiting the Scriptures, and Queen Anne from that of Lollardism on the ground of reading them, for it will be observed the copy she used had been first submitted to the archbishop’s approval, and his formal permission had been obtained. We have also another interesting testimony to the existence of these earlier versions, and an explanation of the decree against those of the Lollards, in the words of Sir Thomas More, who, in his Dialogue, notices the prohibitory Constitution of Arundel in the following terms:--

“Ye shall understand that the great arch-heretic, Wickliffe (whereas the Holy Bible was long before his time by virtuous and well-learned men translated into the English tongue, and by good and godly people, with devotion and soberness, well and reverently read) took upon him, of a malicious purpose, to translate it anew. In which translation he purposely corrupted the Holy Text, maliciously planting therein such words as might in the reader’s ears serve to the proof of such heresies as he went about to sow; which he not only set forth in his own translation of the Bible, but also in certain prologues or glosses, which he made hereupon. So that after it was perceived what harm the people took by the translations, prologues, and glosses of Wickliffe’s, and also of some others who after him helped to set forth his sect, then, for that cause, it was at a council holden at Oxford provided, upon great pain, that no man should henceforth translate the Scriptures into the English tongue _upon his own authority_ by way of book or treatise, nor no man should read such books as were newly made in the time of Wickliffe, or since, or that should be made any time after, _till the same translation were by the Diocesan or Provincial Council approved_. But that it neither forbade the translations to be read that were already well done of old before Wickliffe’s time, nor condemned his because it was _new_, but because it was _naught_, nor prohibited new to be made, but only provided that they shall not be read if they be made amiss, till by good examination they be amended; except they be such translations as those of Wickliffe and Tindal, which the malicious mind of the translator hath so handled that it were lost labour to go about to mend them.”

He goes on to say that he has seen, and, if necessary, could show, copies of English Bibles, “fair and old,” approved by the Diocesans, which have been left with lay men and women, and used by Catholic folk with soberness and devotion, and that the clergy never kept any Bibles from the laity save those that were “naught,” and not so approved; that is, those in which heretical corruptions of the text had been introduced, or to which were attached the pernicious Lollard glosses. And he explains how it was that no printer had yet ventured to print an English Bible, a great and expensive undertaking, which might, after all, have been unsaleable, through the question which might have been raised whether it were printed from a version made before or since the days of Wickliffe. The whole passage is sufficiently explicit, both as to the fact of approved English versions of the Scriptures existing before the time of Wickliffe, and also as to the received interpretation of Arundel’s decree. We have the very explicit testimony of Cranmer to the same effect. “It is not much above a hundred years,” he writes, “since Scripture hath not been accustomed to be read in the vulgar tongue within this realm; many hundred years before that it was translated and read in the Saxon tongue, and when that language waxed old and out of common usage, because folks should not lack the fruit of reading it, it was translated again into the newer language.”[294] It is, however, by no means easy in all cases to distinguish these early versions from their later imitations. All the translations of the Scriptures preserved in manuscript in the Oxford libraries have been commonly assigned to Wickliffe, although Dr. Thomas James is of opinion that a close examination of some of them would show them to be of much more ancient date. He is also disposed to think that one of the prologues ordinarily assigned to one of Wickliffe’s disciples belongs to an earlier translation. Lewis, in his “History of the English Translations of the Bible,” supposes this prologue to have been written in 1396 by John Purvey, one of Wickliffe’s most learned followers; but its allusions to the care taken to consult St. Jerome, and the gloss of Nicholas de Lyra, do not seem to harmonise very well with this theory. Dr. James considers that the copies preserved in the Bodleian Library, and in Christ Church Library, are of ancient Catholic versions, that in Queen’s College Library alone being properly assigned to Wickliffe. Lewis opposes this view, yet he admits that the Bodleian and Queen’s College versions are different from that of Christ Church. Warton claims one of these for John of Trevisa, and Weever assigns one to the Venerable Richard of Hampole, an Austin hermit, who lived about the year 1349, near the Monastery of Hampole in Yorkshire, and, according to Camden, wrote many books full of “heavenly unction,” and whose translation of the Psalter is still preserved. Whatever may be the real history of these three versions (and it is evident that critics are by no means unanimous as to their authorship), several fragments exist of different books of Scripture which are admitted to be of ancient date. In the library of Bennet College, Cambridge, a translation is preserved of two of the Gospels and St. Paul’s Epistles, with a gloss, written in the English spoken after the Conquest. In Sydney Sussex College are portions of the Old Testament commented on in like manner. A translation of the Psalter, with a gloss, is in the Harleian Library, besides the Psalter of Richard of Hampole, mentioned above, to which is prefixed a prologue, in which the author explains that he has sought no strange English, but only that which was commonest and easiest, and has been careful to consult the holy doctors. There are also, according to Lewis, other translations extant of the Psalter, the New Testament, and the Church Lessons and Hymns, all made before the time of Wickliffe. It must be borne in mind that the manuscripts preserved in our libraries are mere fragments accidentally saved from destruction, and can scarcely be taken as evidence of what existed in England before the Reformation. The pious visitors of Edward VI., in their zeal to purify the university of Popish service books, destroyed every manuscript they could lay hands on, which exhibited illuminations or other ornaments, without the slightest reference to its contents. Whole libraries were then sold for waste paper, and bought by bakers to feed their ovens, or for other base purposes. But among the scanty relics that escaped the hands of these worse than Vandals, stray leaves are to be found of sermons, treatises, and mutilated hymns, many of which are in the vernacular English of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. One of these interesting fragments has been printed by Messrs Wright and Halliwell in the _Reliquiæ Antiquæ_, and is assigned by them to the fourteenth century. The preacher appears to have been familiar with some English version of the Canticle of Canticles, and introduces a passage which may be quoted as a beautiful specimen of our ancient English idiom:--“Behold my derlyng speketh to me; arys, come nerre my beautiful, now wynter is passid; that is, the coulde wynd of worldly covertise that mad me hard y-froze as yse: the floures scheweth them on erth, the voys of the tortel is herd in our herber; that is, the soule that the kyng of heven has y-lad to his vyne celler, syngeth chast songes of mornyng for hir sinnes and for deth of Christ hir mate: she will no more sette on grene bows lovynge worldlye things, bote fedeth hir with love of Christ, the clene white corne, and fleeth up to the holes of His five woundes, lookyng with sympel eyne into the cler waters of holie writ.”

From what has been said, it may be gathered that before the time of Wickliffe, the Scriptures were in no sense shut up from the laity; that considerable portions of them were rendered into English, and are known to have been actually in the possession of lay persons, and that it was not until the corrupt versions and glosses of the Lollards were made instruments of disseminating pernicious errors, that any decrees were made on the subject. Even then the restrictions were not prohibitions: the laity were still allowed to read approved Catholic versions: though it is very probable, that at a time when so large a portion of the population was infected with Lollardism, and when there was a disposition to make the Sacred Text, interpreted by each man’s whim, the rule of each man’s belief, the private reading of the English Scriptures by lay persons was not greatly encouraged. In fact, prohibitions or restrictions of this sort were never promulgated by the ecclesiastical authorities, until rendered necessary by the perverse misuse of the Sacred Volume by heretics. Thus, in France no such restrictions existed until 1229 when the extravagant doctrines which the Albigenses pretended to adduce from Scripture, obliged the Council of Toulouse to forbid the translation of the Sacred Books, the use of which had, up to that time, been freely permitted. In no case was the _Latin_ Bible withdrawn from the laity,[295] and it must be remembered that in those days the majority of those who could read at all, could read Latin. Lewis, indeed, would have us believe that before Wickliffe’s time, even the Latin Bible was not allowed in common use; and gravely assures us, that the monks and friars collected copies and laid them up in their libraries, not (as one might suppose) for the obvious purpose of reading them, but “to imprison them from the curates and secular priests, and so prevent them from preaching the Word of God to the people.” Nonsense of this sort is scarcely worth refuting, though it finds a place in very grave writers, and by certain readers is often enough believed. Bibles were, of course, comparatively rare and expensive books, and not within reach of every poor curate’s purse. But so far from any conspiracy existing to make them rarer, it was a common devotion among those who possessed such a treasure, to bequeath it by will to some public church, there to be set up and chained, _ad usum communem_. This practice is often supposed to have originated with the Reformers, and a modern artist has depicted, with great skill, the grey-haired peasant approaching the chained Bible set forth by order of his sacred majesty king Edward VI., and turning over its pages with pious awe. It was, however, a good thought stolen from the ancients, as there is abundant evidence to show. Thus, in 1378 a Bible and Concordance were left by will by Thomas Farnylaw, to be set up and chained in the north aisle of St. Nicholas’ Church, Newcastle; and in 1385, a Bible and Concordance were to be found chained in St. George’s Chapel, Windsor.

These Bibles were, of course, copies of the Latin Vulgate, for it is not pretended that any effort was made to place a version of the Scriptures, in the vulgar tongue, at the command of the unlettered laity. The Catholic system of education did not aim at enabling every poor man to read his Bible, but rather at making him know his faith. Nevertheless, so true is it that a strong Scriptural element has always predominated in the teaching of the Church, that the first attempts to provide the poor with cheap literature of any sort were called _Biblia Pauperum_, or the Bibles of the poor. They were rude engravings of Scriptural subjects, or stories of the saints, taken off carved wooden blocks, and accompanied with texts of Scripture, or pious verses. These were known as block-books, and were reproduced at a much cheaper rate than books written out by hand. Of course they were not Bibles, but they show that even in the age most tainted by the Lollard heresy, there was a disposition on the part of Catholic teachers to supply the people with instruction into which a certain Biblical element had been infused. The block-books were likewise used to strike off small school manuals of grammar, and a book of this sort was technically called a “Donatus.” If the grammars were welcome boons to schoolboys, the Bibles of the poor were not less convenient for the use of preachers, who could not carry so cumbrous a volume as a whole Bible into the pulpit, and were often glad to help their memory by a selection of suitable texts. Specimens of these block-books are preserved as curiosities by modern bibliopolists, and the contrivance seems to have been the immediate forerunner of the more important invention of printing. But in mentioning them we are somewhat departing from the order of time, as they can hardly be assigned an earlier date than the beginning of the fifteenth century.

_CHAPTER XIX._

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.