Chapter XXIII: Part I: p. 3) in 1259; “St. Michael de Paternoster-cherch” in 1284; (10)

Yet Mr. Lupton, late Surmaster of St. Paul’s School, in his _Life of Colet_ actually cites[77] the will of one of the almoners, William of Tolleshunt, made in 1329, as proof that the Cathedral school, which he confuses with the Almonry school, “not only existed and flourished, but contained within itself the germs of a University.” Yet what are the facts? The Almoner says:[78] “I bequeath a shilling to each senior and 6d. to each junior of the boys of the church whom I educated in the Almonry. Also I give them my best Hugocio and the big and little Priscian, bound in one volume, Isidore’s Etymology, and all my grammar books, except those which my clerk Ralph has, and all the volumes of sermons which the Boy-Bishops used to preach in my time, to remain in the Almonry for ever for the use of the boys living in it, and never to be lent outside, or given away or sold.” The will goes on, “I bequeath also my books of the art of Dialectic (of which John of Stoneground has the old and new Logic), with the books of Natural History and other books of that art, in order that these books may be lent to boys apt for learning (_ad scolatizandum_) when they leave the Almonry; due security being taken for their return, to prevent their being alienated. The books of physic also, of which I have several about medicines; and also the books of the civil law, viz. the Institutes, Code, Digest, and Authentics, and these legal works I give to the use of the boys in the manner above written.”

ST. PAUL’S SCHOOL (BEFORE ITS REMOVAL TO HAMMERSMITH)
]

Says Mr. Lupton: “There were works on Logic, on Physic, on Medicine, on Civil Law ... all were expressly bequeathed to the use of the boys.” Yes, but while the grammar books were for the use of the boys in the Almonry, these other books were, by the express terms of the will, to be lent to boys who had left the Almonry, when they went on to university studies, so that the very words cited to show that this school was something more than a grammar school prove the exact opposite; and this very case cited to show that the school in question was the St. Paul’s Cathedral Grammar School shows that it was a district foundation and intended only for the eight boys in the Almonry. That these eight boys, afterwards increased to ten, were the choir-boys, is shown by the will of Bishop Richard of Newport,[79] in 1315, giving to this very William of Tolleshunt, Almoner, one of his executors, and to the Almoner for the time being a house near St. Paul’s the rents of which, after paying £1 to the maintenance of the Lady Chapel, were to be applied “to the support of one or two of the Almonry boys for two years after they have changed their voices.” Again, among the earlier statutes of the Almonry it is ordered that “the boys after entering the choir are not to leave it except when their duty requires it.” William of Tolleshunt himself, too, bequeaths by his will a trust estate bequeathed to him some six years before “for the Almonry boys serving the choir, for their shoes.”

In 1348 Sir John Pulteney,[80] knight, gave 20s. a year to the almoner to provide the choristers with summer clothes.[81] In return for the shoes the boys had to sing _De Profundis_, with the usual Pater Noster, Ave Maria and collects, every morning on getting up and every evening on going to bed; and for the summer clothes to sing an anthem after complin with prayers for the dead in the Pulteney Chapel. In 1358 William of Ravenstone,[82] Almoner, gave a tenement called the Stonehouse in Paternoster Row “for the support of an additional chorister or two.” That the choristers when clever were meant to go on to the universities is clear from a payment out of the chantry of Bishop Ralph (Baldock) who died in 1313. He gave 3s. “to poor students being sometyme choristers of the said cathedral church towards ther exhibicion yearly,” while a later benefactor Thomas Ever, in the reign of Henry IV., gave a like sum specifically “to the poore choristers of Paules towards their exhibicion in the University.”

There is no question, therefore, that, while there was a grammar school maintained for the benefit of the choristers, it was quite distinct from the choir school for teaching them singing, and from the Cathedral Grammar School open to all boys. Or perhaps it would be more correct to say that the choir-boys, being lodged and boarded in the Almonry, had a tutor provided for them to see that they learnt grammar. For one can hardly call the teaching of eight or ten choristers a school.

There would not have been any need to insist on this school so much at length if the whole matter had not been thrown into confusion through the labours of a certain Miss Hackett who devoted herself in the first quarter of the 19th century to the interests of the choir-boys of St. Paul’s, who were then left without any proper schooling or care. She, with great energy, routed out all she could find in the records of St. Paul’s or elsewhere, relating to the choir-boys, and published it in a pamphlet misnamed _Correspondence and Evidences respecting the Ancient Collegiate School attached to St. Paul’s Cathedral_.[83] She succeeded in establishing in Chancery the claim of the choir-boys on the revenues of the Almonry. But her zeal outran her discretion, as whenever she saw in any of the records of St. Paul’s anything about a school or school-boys, she at once attributed it to the choir school and choirboys, and attacked the Chancellor, as well as the Almoner, on the ground that the St. Paul’s Grammar School was for the choir-boys. In this she failed. But she did a great deal of harm to the Cathedral Grammar Schools in general by imbuing people with the notion that they were mere choir-schools. Mr. Lupton makes the Grammar School to have been in Sharmoveres (now Sermon) Lane. Sharmoveres is a name of naught. It is simply a misreading of “Sarmoners,” _i.e._ Sermoners’ Lane, from a house which is said in a document of Edward I.’s reign to have belonged to “Adam le sermoner.” Sermon Lane is the modern shortening. This was not the Grammar School nor even the Almonry school, but a house bequeathed to the Almonry. Sermon Lane is at the west end of St. Paul’s, some little way from the church. The Grammar School was at the opposite or east end, in the churchyard, and quite close to the church.

Having thus cleared away the confusion between the Grammar School and the choristers’ boarding-house we must leave the history of the Almonry without following it further, and for a little while turn from the history of St. Paul’s School to that of its two mediæval rivals.

ST. MARY-LE-BOW GRAMMAR SCHOOL

The history of the school of St. Mary-le-Bow is unfortunately soon exhausted. The only references to it, apart from the various mentions of it in connection with the two other privileged schools, which I have been able to find, are in the Archbishop’s Register at Lambeth. The first of these is an order from Archbishop Robert Winchelsea,[84] September 25, 1309, settling a dispute as to the right of appointment of the schoolmaster. It is addressed “To our official,” _i.e._ the Official Principal or Judge of the Archbishop’s Consistory Court. The archbishop says that he had received a petition from “Mr. John, rector of the Grammar School (_scolarum gramaticalium_) of the Church of the Blessed Mary le Bow (_de arcubus_) London,” showing that he had been appointed master of the school by the Dean of the church (the Dean of the Arches, as he is now called), to whom “by ancient and hitherto peacefully observed custom the order and government and appointment of Master is well known to belong.” But “after he had quietly taught (_rexerit_) the school,” the Official, “wishing to change this custom,” had appointed one Mr. Robert Cotoun and removed Mr. John. The Archbishop informed the Official that, if the facts were as stated, he was to let Mr. John enjoy the teaching of the said school freely.

The fact that the patronage of the school was vested in the Dean of Arches explains why we do not find appointments of the master in the Archbishop’s Registers as we do in the case of the Canterbury Grammar School. On March 23, 1382/3, however, an entry in Archbishop Courtney’s Register shows him committing to “his beloved son, William Poklyngton, clerk, the teaching and governance of the Grammar School of the deanery of our Church of Blessed Mary of the Arches now vacant and to our disposition belonging,” and appointing him master of the same school. The peculiar form of the appointment suggests that it was made by the Archbishop either because the deanery was vacant, or because the appointment had lapsed to him in default of the Dean. For some reason unknown this entry is cancelled in the original MS.

On October 4, 1399, Archbishop Arundel[85] “at his manor of Lambeth”—it is never called a palace in ancient documents; his “palace” was at Canterbury—in like manner “committed the teaching and governance of the Grammar School of the Arches of London with all its rights and appurtenances in the Deanery of the Arches” to “Mr. Thomas Barym, master in grammar.”

The school was clearly still in existence in 1446, when it is mentioned among the five grammar schools authorised by the ordinance of the ecclesiastical authorities, confirmed by Henry VI. Letters Patent of that year to be discussed later. These Letters Patent were interpreted by Stow[86] into a creation of the school of St. Mary-le-Bow. “In this parish,” he says, “was a Grammar-School by commandment of Henry VI., which school was of old time kept in a house for that purpose prepared in the churchyard, but that school being decayed, as others about the city, the school house was let out for rent, in the reign of King Henry the 8th for 4s. a year, a cellar for 2s. a year, and two vaults underneath the church for 15s. both.” It is probable, however, from the terms of the Letters Patent, that the school was held actually in the church, since St. Paul’s School is expressly described as being in the churchyard, while this school is, with equal exactness, described as being in the church.

THE GRAMMAR SCHOOL OF ST. MARTIN’S-LE-GRAND

Of the third ancient school, that of St. Martin’s-le-Grand, there seems to be no history recoverable. Presumably when Henry VII. annexed the college to Westminster Abbey the documents were transferred too. But only one small Register of St. Martin’s, written in the fifteenth century, remains in the Westminster Chapter Muniments, and there is no mention in it of the school. There is, however, one reference to the schoolmaster in the City Letter Books.[87] “On Thursday before 24 August, 26 Edward I., 1298, John, the cap, hat, or hood-maker (cappeler) of Fleet Street entered into a recognizance to Master Hugh of Whittington (Wytington), schoolmaster (_Magistro scolarum_) of St. Martin’s-le-Grand for payment of £8 at Michaelmas year. Afterwards Master John of Whittington, brother and executor of the said Hugh, came and acknowledged that he had been satisfied of such sum. Therefore it was cancelled.” The entry is enough to show that the school was going on and that the master was a man of substance, being able to lend the then considerable sum of £8.

* * * * *

The latter half of the fourteenth century was signalised by considerable activity in the foundation of new, or changes in old, grammar schools. This was due to two conflicting forces. On the one hand, it was due, as it was expressed in Wykeham’s foundation deed of New College, Oxford, to “the general disease of the clerical army, which through the want of clergy, caused by pestilence, wars, and other miseries of the world, we have seen greviously wounded,” or, as it was more shortly put in changing the appointment of a master of St. Peter’s School, York, in 1369, from a five-years’ appointment to a life tenure, to “the late Death and the rarity of M.A.s.” The demand for clergy to fill the ranks thinned by the Black Death of 1349 and its subsequent outbreaks, caused a demand for grammar schools. On the other hand, the incipient revolt of the townspeople against clerical domination which manifested itself in the substitution of lay for clerical ministers in the field of politics, and by the open propagation of Lollard opinions against image worship, transubstantiation, confession, and the celibacy of the clergy, and so forth, in the field of religion, created a demand for learning and for schools. The conflict of the two opposing forces is shown in the petition presented to Richard II. in 1394 (the very year, it may be noted, of the transfer of Winchester College, founded in 1382, to its present buildings) by the ecclesiastical authorities of London, who claimed the monopoly of education in “the three ancient and privileged schools.” “The King’s devout chaplains and orators, William,[88] Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of London, the Dean of your frank chapel of St. Martin’s-le-Grand and the Chancellor of the Church of St. Paul in London,” set out how to them, “as well by the law spiritual as by customary prescription in that behalf, the order, management, and examination of the masters of certain schools of the faculty of grammar in London and the suburbs, belonged, belong, or ought to belong, to them, with the advice of the Bishop of London, from time immemorial.” “Yet” they complained, “lately certain strangers, feigning themselves Masters of grammar, having no sufficient learning in that faculty, without the assent, or knowledge, and against the will of the petitioners, wilfully usurped their jurisdiction, and kept General Grammar Schools in the City in deceit and fraud of the children, to the great prejudice of the King’s lieges, and the jurisdiction of Holy Church. But when the three Masters of the schools of St. Paul’s, the Arches, and St. Martin’s for the care and profit of the king’s subjects, had gone to law against the foreign masters in Court Christian, according to ecclesiastical law, their adversaries had sued them in the secular courts to make them abandon their pleas.” The petitioners, therefore, asked the King, both because of his interest in his free chapel of St. Martin, and of the prejudice done to the petitioners, to direct letters to issue under the Privy Seal to the mayor and aldermen “to attempt nothing whereby the jurisdiction of Holy Church, or the process between the parties in Court Christian might be disturbed.”

Whether the Privy Seal asked for was issued does not appear. Parliament was then supporting the Lollards.[89] But next year Richard was fetched back from his Irish War to put them down, and the leading Lollards had to recant on pain of death. Certain it is that the three church schools retained their monopoly for nearly half a century more. It was then attacked and broken up by assailants from within the pale of the church itself and by orthodox churchmen. The first breach of it, apparently for purely educational reasons, was made by the establishment of a grammar school in St. Anthony’s Hospital in Threadneedle Street.

ST. ANTHONY’S HOSPITAL AND SCHOOL

This hospital was so interesting an institution in itself, and the erection and career of its school have been so much misrepresented, that its history is worth telling at some length. Stow’s[90] account of this hospital is rather long but not very correct. It “was sometime a cell to St. Anthonies of Vienne. For I read that King Henry III. granted to the brotherhood of St. Anthony of Vienne, a place among the Jews, which was sometime their synagogue, and had been builded by them about the year 1231; but the Christians obtained of the King that it should be dedicated to our blessed Lady, and since, an hospital being there builded, was called St. Anthonies in London. It was founded in the parish of St. Bennett Fynke ‘for a mayster, two priestes, one scholemayster and 12 poore men.’” “Moreover, king Henry VI. in the twentieth of his reign gave unto John Carpenter, D.D., master of St. Anthonies Hospital and to his brethren and their successors for ever his manor of Ponington, with the appurtenances” and other property “towards the maintenance of 5 scholars in the University of Oxford to be brought up in the faculty of arts, after the rate of 10d. a week for every scholar, so that the said scholars before their going to Oxford, be first instructed in the rudiments of grammar at the College of Eton, founded by the same king. In the year 1474 Edward IV. granted to William Say, B.D., master of the hospital of St. Anthony’s to have priests, clerks, scholars, poor men, and brethren of the same, clerks or lay men, quoristers, proctors, messengers, servants in household and other things whatsoever, the like as the Prior and Convent of St. Anthony’s of Vienne. This Hospital was united, annexed and appropriated unto the Collegiate Church of St. George in Windsor about the year 1485. This goodly foundation, having a free school and almshouses for poor men, builded of hard stone, adjoining to the west end of the church, was of old time confirmed by Henry VI. in the year 1447.” Such is his account of the origin of the foundation. He then deals with its latter end. “One Johnson (a schoolmaster there) became a prebendary of Windsor and then by little and little followed the spoil of this hospital. He first dissolved the choir, conveyed the plate and ornaments, then the bells, and lastly put out the Almsmen from their houses, appointing them portions of 12d. a week to each (but now I hear of no such matter), their houses with other be now letten out for rent, and the Church is a preaching-place for the French nation. The school-house was commanded in the reign of Henry VI., and sithence also, above other; but now it is decayed and come to nothing, by taking from it what thereunto belonged.”

The Hospital was at first a cell of the Hospital of St. Anthony at Vienne, a hospital famous throughout the world. There is no mention of any local habitation of the brethren of St. Anthony in England before 1249. Then in a document at Windsor, dated 1253, a grant to the hospital of the earlier date is mentioned, when the Church of All Saints, Hereford, was bestowed upon it by Henry III., and in 1253 a letter from Pope Alexander IV. congratulates the same king on having granted to the Master and Brethren of St. Anthony’s “a place in London among the Jews.” For further on this subject see _Mediæval London_, vol. ii. p. 268.

Later writers have for the most part followed Stow. Thus Mr. Lupton in his _Life of Dean Colet_ repeats[91] the story that the original foundation included a schoolmaster; and says that Edward IV. “augmented it. The school continued into the reign of Elizabeth, the rest of the property was not left to wait for the inquisition of Henry VIII.,” and then repeats, as typical, Stow’s story of the plunder by Prebendary Johnson. Again, Dr. Sharpe says,[92] “The Hospital appears to have always supported a Schoolmaster from its foundation.”

As a matter of fact, the school was no part of the original foundation of the hospital, and only made its appearance when the main institution had undergone a complete revolution. The hospital existed for at least 100 years longer, and the school began at least 200 years later, and continued for nearly 100 years more than Stow leads us to believe. The life of the hospital lasted for as nearly as possible four centuries. It began about 1249; it ended in 1666. For the first 150 years of its existence it was in tutelage to a foreign and monastic parent. A brief period of independence followed under native English clerical (not monastic) rulers, for some three-quarters of a century; and the era of its complete and formal release from tutelage was signalised by the foundation of the Grammar School in it, which enjoyed the highest reputation for about 100 years. The institution was then again placed under an external master. But the school continued to flourish, and, instead of being destroyed in the reign of Elizabeth, lasted into the reign of Charles II., under whom both school and hospital perished, never to be revived, in the Great Fire of London.

In 1434 John Carpenter became master or warden of the hospital, and he must be regarded as the second founder of the hospital and the actual founder of its school. He was a very considerable person in his day, being a great promoter of education and supporter of the secular clergy as against the regulars, the monks, black canons, and friars. His fine tomb, restored out of all antiquity by the ill-directed gratitude of Oriel College, is still to be seen in the ancient collegiate church of Westbury-on-Trym near Bristol. He was anxious to establish the secular canons of that church as his episcopal chapter instead of, or at least in addition to, the monks of Worcester. Indeed he actually called himself Bishop of Westbury and Worcester. He became Provost of Oriel in 1425, and Master of the hospital at least seven years later.

Carpenter was mixed up with the foundation of Eton as well as with that of St. Anthony’s School. When he was made Bishop of Worcester, he was consecrated in the collegiate church of Eton, and it was as a trustee of Eton and Oriel, and only nominally in his capacity as Master of St. Anthony’s, that the grants, mentioned by Stow,[93] of the manor of Ponington, and quit-rents from several places in Hampshire, were made to him and the brethren of the hospital. What became of this grant it seems impossible to find out. No mention of it occurs in the accounts of the hospital, nor do the authorities of St. George’s, Windsor, Eton, or Oriel know anything of the property. Probably it was one of the Lancastrian grants for the benefit of Eton on which Edward IV.’s Act of Resumption operated, and so passed away from Eton and Oriel for ever.

In 1441 the revolution in the constitution of the hospital was consummated. A Bull of Pope Eugenius IV. released the brethren of the hospital from the obligation to use a common dormitory and refectory, which by the Augustinian rule they were bound to use (though it is stated that there was no such dormitory or refectory), and enabled the clerks who served it to live in any decent place, until a dormitory and refectory were provided—a politic way of completely authorising its conversion into a house of seculars. At the same time, by the licence of Robert (Gilbert), Bishop of London, the church of St. Benet Finck was entirely appropriated to the hospital, and converted from a rectory into a vicarage. This was in order that the revenues of the rectory, worth sixteen marks a year, might be applied to the maintenance of “a master or fit Informer in the faculty of grammar,” “to keep a grammar school (_regere scolas gramaticales_) in the precinct of the hospital or some fit house close by, to teach, instruct, and inform gratis all boys and others whatsoever wishing to learn and become scholars (_scolatizare_).”

Its foundation was only one of a long series of school foundations which marked the period of the reign of Henry VI., who, far more than Edward VI., is entitled to the credit of being the patron king of school-boys. Eton, Newport, Shropshire, Newland, Wye (now the Wye Agricultural College, Kent), Alnwick, Towcester, are some among the grammar schools still existing which were founded in the ten years 1440-50; while there were many more which are no longer existing or have been degraded into elementary schools, or converted into exhibition funds. The movement was the first breath of the Renaissance stirring the dry bones of the schools. It was the outcome of a beginning of reaction against the excessive cult of scholastic logic, and a desire to return to the humanities of the “artists” as opposed to the sophistry of the theologians. Considering the conspicuous part taken in the new movement by men like Beckington, Waynflete, and Say, all Wykehamists, we may attribute a considerable share of it at least to the influence of Wykeham’s foundation at Winchester.

The most striking manifestation of the new spirit is seen in the Letters Patent granted in 1439, giving leave to William Byngham, rector of St. John Zachary in London, to found the College of God’s House in Cambridge, at first an annex to Clare Hall, and afterwards incorporated with Christ’s College. In his petition for the licence Bingham said that he had found all over the country grammar schools, formerly flourishing, now fallen into abeyance for lack of proper teachers. He therefore asked for leave to found a college of a master and twenty-four scholars for the training of Grammar schoolmasters, who were to issue thence to teach school all over the country. This, then, is the first Training College on record. In its statutes the importance of the classics was insisted on, not merely, as in the days of Wykeham and the foundation of Winchester, because grammar was the key which unlocked the Holy Scriptures, and was the gate to the liberal sciences “and theology, the mistress of all,” but because “it was necessary in dealing with law and other difficult matters of State and also the means of mutual communication and conversation between us and strangers and foreigners.” Here spoke the citizen of London and the man of the modern world. In much the same way Waynflete, himself ex-Headmaster of Winchester and first Headmaster of Eton, in his foundation of Magdalen College School, carried on by him from 1448 though not finally endowed and settled till 1480, provided by his statutes for the demyes being trained in grammar “that they might go out and teach others,” and he particularly ordered that they were not prematurely to be made sophisters.[94]

In 1443 Walter Lyhert, who succeeded Carpenter on his promotion to the See of Worcester, in the provostship of Oriel, also succeeded him as Warden (Custos), as he was now called, of St. Anthony’s. He in turn became a bishop, being promoted to Norwich in 1445. He was succeeded in the Mastership of St. Anthony’s by William Say, a Wykehamist of some fame, afterwards Dean of St. Paul’s. Under his rule the new constitution was completed. By Bull of January 28, 1446, the Pope granted, on the request of Henry VI. as patron, power to make new statutes for the hospital and its inmates to the Bishop of Worcester (Carpenter), the Bishop of Norwich (Lyhert), William Waynflete, then Provost of Eton, and William Say, then master of the hospital. The school, like that of Eton, was thus inaugurated on the model and under the guidance of members of the College of William of Wykeham, which Henry VI. dearly loved and deeply studied, and to which he paid the sincere homage of exact imitation. The statutes made by Carpenter and the rest are not forthcoming, but considering the auspices under which they were made, we may safely conclude that they followed their model as closely as did those of Eton, so far as what was presumably mainly a day-school could follow the statutes of what was mainly a boarding-school. There are indeed not wanting minor indications that some scholars at least boarded in the hospital. We know at all events that in two things in which Eton departed from the Winchester model, St. Anthony’s followed suit, namely, the raising of the stipend of the master from £10 to £16, and the direction that the school should be a free school to all who chose to come. We also know that, as at Winchester and Eton, a singing master was established and a Song School; for in 1440, David Fythian, who was rector of St. Bennet Finck, and John Grene, clerks, at the request of John Carpenter (and we may be sure at his expense and in consideration of a payment by him) had granted a rent of ten marks issuing out of “the Cowpe on the Hoope” in All Saints parish, London Wall, with power of distraint on it and another brew-house called the Dolphin and a tavern called the Bell in Southwark, to pay “John Bennet of London, clerk, yearly 8 marks, and 4 yards of new cloth of gentlemens’ suit” for teaching singing “to the boys, who are and shall be in the church of the said hospital.” This meant, of course, the choristers. In 1449 the brewery called the Cup on the Hoop was definitely devised by will, which, when enrolled in the Hustings Court, at once operated as a conveyance and dispensed with the necessity of a licence in mortmain, to William Say, then Master, and the Brethren of St. Anthony’s, “for maintenance of a clerk to teach assiduously all the boys of the house chanting with the organ (_cantico organico_) and plain song,” but while John Benatt (_sic_) remained, the Master was not bound to find another teacher. The hospital was to enjoy the residue after providing for the Song schoolmaster.

There is a series of documents connected with the hospital, the exact purport of which it is a little difficult to make out, but they seem to suggest some intention on the part of John Carpenter to benefit alike St. Anthony’s School and Oriel College, Oxford, by exhibitions at the university; bringing the school, though in a much modified degree, into the same sort of relationship with that college which Winchester bore to New College, or Eton to King’s, or Westminster afterwards to Christ Church and Trinity, Cambridge.

Oriel College,[95] Oxford, possesses a conveyance, June 27, 1424, to John Carpenter and Henry Sampson, both fellows and afterwards provosts, and others of land at Dagenham in Essex. Nine years later, the manor or manors of Valence Gallants and lands at Frystelings and Copped Hall were conveyed to a similar body of feoffees. In 1442 the manor of Easthall was acquired. By deed of June 27, 1447, all these properties were conveyed to Carpenter and Sampson, and in 1451 by Carpenter, then Bishop of Worcester, to Oriel College, on condition of their granting them to St. Anthony’s, reserving a pension “for the exhibition of certain poor scholars in St. Mary’s Hall, Oxford,” a dependency of the College. By deed of 14th November in the same year, the college granted the lands to the hospital, reserving a rent-charge of twenty-five marks, and by deed of 20th November,[96] William Say, “Master or Warden of the house or hospital of St. Anthony and the brethren of the same” granted an annual rent of £20 to the Provost and fellows “of the Royal College, commonly called Oreall,” payable in St. Mary’s Church, Oxford, “for the exhibition and maintenance of scholars to study there according to the form and effect of certain provisions or ordinances to be made by John, Bishop of Worcester.” By another deed of the same day, the Bishop, John Carpenter, declared the conditions of the exhibitions, but, alas! only in general terms; and whether any ordinances were actually made by Carpenter, and if so, what has become of them, is unknown.

When the exhibitions were established seems rather obscure. The earliest extant accounts, now at Windsor, of the hospital are for 1478-79 and 1494-95, and contain no mention of the Essex property or of scholars at Oxford. But in 1501-2, the rental includes the manors of Valence and Easthall and lands called Frystelyng’s lands in Essex let for £13 a year; and among the expenses is the item “The skolers of Oxford stypents, £10 : 18s.” The first entry in the Oriel College accounts of any money received for scholars is December 6, 1504, when, £10 : 6 : 8 was received by the College “for Mr. Tretyng” and paid over to him. In 1521-22, the St. Anthony’s account, which is for expenses only, includes “for the exhibicion of the scolers of Oxford in Seynt Mary Haule £10 : 7s.” St. Mary’s Hall was originally the rectory house of St. Mary’s Church, which was appropriated to Oriel College, who still appoint the vicar; and was probably the original home of the college and always remained a dependency of it.

Hardly had the hospital and school thus been put upon a sound basis than the Wars of the Roses substituted the Yorkists for the Lancastrians on the throne. The Yorkist accession and the Restoration of Charles II. are the only epochs in English history since the Norman Conquest in which the successful party have not been content with the enjoyment of power and the prospect of having things all their own way for the future, but have set themselves _more Gallico_ to destroy the good deeds of the opposite party and root out their remembrance, if possible, from the land. All the foundations of Henry VI. were threatened with destruction. For the purpose apparently of proving himself the true heir of the Plantagenet Edwards, Edward IV. professed the most extreme devotion to the collegiate church of Windsor. He showed his devotion in the vicarious way common in those days, by endowing it with the plunder of other places. An Act of Parliament on Edward’s accession in 1460 declared all the grants of the three Lancastrian Henries void. Part of the possessions of Eton was granted to other places; while the whole institution was by a Bull of Union in November 1463 annexed to St. George’s, Windsor. Whether, as has been represented,[97] it was intended that the school should cease to exist, is very doubtful. When St. James’s Hospital, Westminster, was granted to Eton itself as St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, Oxford, had been to Oriel College, and St. Julian’s Hospital, Southampton, to Queen’s College, Oxford, those colleges only took the net surplus after keeping up the hospitals. Windsor in like manner was probably only intended to get the surplus after keeping up Eton school. However, the Bull was strongly opposed by William Westbury, the provost and ex-headmaster. In 1467 a large part of the Eton estates was restored to it, and in 1470 King Edward IV. himself asked for the revocation of the Bull of Union and obtained a commission from the Pope for the purpose, and a final decree revoking it was pronounced by Cardinal-Archbishop Bouchier on August 30, 1476. It was, one can hardly doubt, by way of compensation to Windsor for the loss of Eton College that St. Anthony’s Hospital was, in 1475, annexed and appropriated to it in the same way as Eton had been. The terms of the annexation were absolute.[98] The King granted to “the Warden of Dean of the College of the Blessed Mary, St. George and Edward the Confessor in his castle of Windsor and to the chapter of the same college the Wardenship, advowson, parsonage, donation, collation, presentation, and free bestowal of the house, hospital or free chapel of St. Anthony, London, by whatever name it might be called, and the house hospital, or free chapel itself, with all its liberties, franchises, privileges, immunities, lands, tenements, rents, services,” etc., etc., belonging thereto, “to hold in pure and perpetual alms to their own use whenever it next became vacant by death, resignation, or otherwise”; and with power to take possession without any further process. On June 2, 1475, Dean and Chapter appointed Richard Beauchamp, Bishop of Salisbury, and others their attorneys to take possession of the hospital, they having got Peter Courtney, then master of the hospital, to resign in consideration of a pension of 100 marks or £66 : 13 : 4 a year. As in 1478 he became himself Dean of Windsor, he did not suffer much by the transaction.

Nor, indeed, did the hospital or school, which went on for at least 200 years more. Absolute as the terms of annexation were they seem to have been interpreted not as an abolition of the hospital, but only as a transfer to the dean and chapter of the right to the surplus, formerly taken by the master for his own use, estimated in the pension arrangement at 100 marks.

This comes out clearly in one of the earliest Account Rolls of the hospital after the transfer, which is fortunately preserved at Windsor, and gives an exact picture of the way the hospital was managed. It is for the year 1478-79 when David Hopton, Canon of Windsor, acted as Master of the hospital. The total income was the very large sum of £539 : 19s. or about £10,800 a year of our money. Of this only £18 : 2 : 4 was derived from rents or property, and that rental was subject to outgoings in the way of quit-rents of £7 : 6 : 8 and repairs to the extent of £9 : 5s.; so that the endowment was really a minus quantity.

The whole of the rest of the revenue was derived from voluntary subscriptions, which are called in the accounts “procurations,” being collected by procurators or proctors, exactly on the same principle that collections on Church Briefs were made after the Reformation. Indeed these and other like accounts make it clear[99] that the system of Church Briefs,[100] only abolished in 1828, was not of post-Reformation origin, but was extremely ancient. The right of collecting in a particular district was farmed out to different people who paid a fixed rent for the privilege for a term of years, and pocketed in return for the expenditure of their time and trouble whatever they managed to extract from the pockets of the faithful beyond the stipulated rent. Some specimens of St. Anthony’s Hospital leases to these farmers are preserved. There is one for the year 1479. It’s an Indenture made between the Dean or Warden of St. George’s College, the Master of St. Anthony’s, London, or in England, and the Canons of Windsor of the one part, and Thomas Morton of Worcester of the other part. In the same form as in a lease of land the Dean and Canons transfer, grant, and let to the aforesaid Thomas “all goods, profits, and commodities for any reason given, or to be given, assigned, or to be assigned, bequeathed, or to be bequeathed to and for the Hospital of St. Anthony in and throughout the whole bishopric of Hereford and archdeaconry of Oxford in places exempt [from the ordinary’s authority] as well as not exempt; with all pigs and other animals in the places aforesaid”; and constitute the said Thomas their lawful proctor and receiver in the premises, with full power of appointing substitutes, and without rendering any account. The term was ten years and the rent reserved £30 a year, payable in two half-yearly payments at Michaelmas and St. Philip and St. James’s Day. If the rent was in arrear the Dean and Canons were at liberty to dismiss the said Thomas and appoint another proctor in his place. The total rents of the Hospital shown in the account for 1478-79 derived in this fashion were:

Bishoprics of Salisbury and Ely, and archdeaconries of Lincoln, Stow, Huntingdon, and Leicester, and Deanery of Rutland (3 proctors in one lease) £128 13 4 Archdeaconries of Northampton, Bedford, Bucks, and the jurisdiction of St. Alban’s (1 proctor) 40 0 0 Bishoprics of Exeter and Bath and Wells (3 proctors) 44 0 0 Bishopric of Rochester, and Deaneries of Shoreham and Croydon, with church of Criff 4 0 0[101] Archdeaconries of Derby, Stafford, Coventry, and Shrewsbury (2 proctors) 22 0 0 Archdeaconries of Chester and Lancaster 11 0 0 Bishopric of London 22 0 0 Bishopric of Winchester 26 10 0 Bishopric of Chichester 8 0 0[102] Province of York and Isle of Man (2 proctors) 76 13 4[103] Bishopric of Winchester 28 13 4 Bishopric of Hereford and Archdeaconry of Oxford 29 6 8[104] Archdeaconry of Canterbury 26 13 4 Bishopric of Norwich 44 0 0 Bishoprics of St. David’s and Llandaff 8 0 0[105] Bishoprics of Bangor and Asaph 4 16 8 £523 16 8

The rentals are interesting as showing approximately the relative wealth and population of the various districts of England at the time. The superior wealth of the south over the north and the eastern over the western parts stands out clearly. The total receipts, equal in value to over £10,000 a year of our money, show an astounding liberality on the part of the givers of the voluntary donations and subscriptions by which the Hospital was maintained.

The expenditure is only given under a few different headings in gross, the reader being referred for details to a “paper book” which is not forthcoming. The wages of ministers, “priests, clerks, other ministers and servants” came to £45 : 12 : 8; the “robes of the said priests, clerks, scholars, poor, and other ministers and servants” cost £10 : 13 : 9. Bread made by Hobald, a baker of London, £21 : 18 : 7; beer bought from divers brewers at 1-1/2d. and 1d. a gallon, £35 : 11 : 8; other purchases (_cati_) £70 : 14s. “Foreign” expenses totalled £40 : 5 : 11-1/2d. The Sacrist of the Chapel received £4 : 0 : 9 for general expenses; a general obit, 8s. 8d., and Thomas Sainge’s obit, 6s. 8d. The clothes of the poor of the Hospital consisted of ten shirts and eight pairs of drawers of fustian at 3-1/2d. a yard; ten pairs of shoes at 2s. 5d. each; and ten pairs of stockings (caligis) of wool at 8d. a yard, and cost 19s. 11-1/2d. A new vestry at All Saints’, Hereford, was erected for £10 : 17 : 11. Repairs on the Hospital and the Swan next door came to £82 : 12 : 2-1/2d. So that the “arrears” (_arregaia_, meaning in mediæval accounts, not money due, but the clear surplus), amounting to £98, were handed over to the Treasurer of St. George’s, Windsor, “for the wages of 7 clerks and 7 choristers there.” In this amount, unfortunately, the salaries of the schoolmasters are not given separately, nor the number of “the children” or boys attending the school. Indeed, beyond the bare fact of its existence we know little of the history of St. Anthony’s School up to this time. It comes to light incidentally in a letter[106] from William Selling, Prior of Canterbury, to Thomas Bourchier, Cardinal-Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1472. “Please it your good fatherhood to have in knowledge that, according to your commandment, I have provided for a Schoolmaster for your ‘Gramerscole’ in Canterbury, the which hath lately taught grammar at Winchester and St. Anthony’s in London, that as I trust to God shall so guide him that it shall be worship and pleasure to your lordship and profit and increase to them that he shall have in governance.” As Archbishop Bourchier’s own nephew, the heir to the earldom of Essex, was a commoner at Winchester College,[107] this reference to the master of St, Anthony’s as having been also a master at Winchester, probably usher or second master there, shows that St. Anthony’s School already stood high in reputation.

There is a much more detailed account than that above given in English for the year 10 Henry VII., 1494-95, which gives the expenses of the Hospital for the Michaelmas quarter, day by day, being in fact one of the “paper books” referred to in the Latin account. It is extremely interesting by reason of its details, telling us exactly what the Master and “the Hall,” _i.e._ clergy and schoolmaster on the one hand, and “the Hospital,” _i.e._ almsfolk and “children,” had for dinner every day. The account begins on Michaelmas Day, when two of the traditional geese[108] were given to the Hall “at dener” at a cost of 18d., while “the Hospital and chyldryn” were put off with two loins of veal at 8d. The Master, a Canon of Windsor, is the only one who is debited with anything for breakfast, but that was a substantial one, consisting of a neck of mutton and chicken. The others presumably only had the commons of bread and beer. At “soper,” “the Hall” enjoyed ten chickens for 15d, while “the Hospital and children” had two quarters of mutton for 7d., with a halfpenny for “erbis,” or vegetables, and 5d. for “potage fleich”; the day’s diet cost 4s. 9d. Next day all fared well with seven ribs of roast beef and stewed veal at dinner; and three-quarters of mutton at supper. The 1st of October there was “potage fleich” and loins of mutton for dinner; mutton and two “coneys” or rabbits for supper. On the 2nd of the month there was again “pottage flesh,” and pork for dinner, “for all the house”; ten chickens for supper for “the Hall”; mutton for the rest. Friday, October 3, though it was the feast of the dedication of the church, was no-flesh day. There was a “sewe” for 4d.; twenty plaice for all the house, twenty small pike, a quarter and a half of roach, and fresh herrings. The total cost was 9s. 5-1/2d. Presumably there were strangers. Saturday was again a no-flesh day. There was milk, 3d., and butter, 7d., for dinner, in the form of frumenty probably; salt salmon for “the Hall” and stockfish for “the Hospital” at dinner; five barbels for “the Hall,” and 100 eggs for “all the house” at supper, while the Master had, all to himself, oysters at 1d.

The next week began with “half a beeff to lay in powdyr for the weke, 6s. 8d.,” while the Sunday dinner consisted of roast pork for dinner and mutton for supper. Pork, veal, beef, and mutton, varied with conies and soup, and for “the Hall” chickens; meat twice a day, and never the same at dinner and supper, show that our ancestors lived on a very much more generous and wholesomely varied diet than is commonly supposed. The two fast days only represented a pleasing change of diet: “Lamprons” or lampreys “for sew,” bream, fresh herrings and salt salmon on Friday; milk and butter “for dinner,” haddocks and whitings, 100 eggs on Saturday, were really not unsatisfying. The varieties of the fish menu were very extensive; it comprised sturgeon, cod, stockfish, fresh salmon, haddock, halibut, roach with shrimps (for sauce apparently), trout, carp, turbot, plaice, mackerel, thornbacks, gudgeons, guinards, flounders, smelts, sprats, mussels, crayfish, crabs, lobsters, eels, and conger eels, besides those already mentioned. On All Saints’ Day, which fell on a non-fast day, there was a warden-pie for all the house, the wardens, or pears, which cost 6d., while the flour cost 7d., and the “serypp” or sirop, 4d. On St. Nicholas’ Day, December 6, there was “fruit for them that ete no fish,” and 2 lb. of almonds. Among birds, besides cocks and fowls, geese frequently appear, with mallards, plovers, woodcocks, and larks, the latter for the Master’s table only. Beer as usual flowed in streams. The “good man” of the Swan—the brewery next door belonging to the Hospital—supplied for one quarter eighteen barrels of “threehalpenny ale,” and ten barrels of penny ale (a penny a gallon), while another brewer at the Checker supplied fifteen barrels of 1-1/2d., and ten barrels of 1d. beer. Beer, of course, served for breakfast and tea as well as dinner and supper. Still the quantity used was enormous. At St. Cross Hospital, Winchester, every poor man had a gallon a day, and at St. Anthony’s the provision must have been on the same scale. Wine was only drunk at the Master’s table, and that only on feast days.

On Christmas Day everybody had mutton for breakfast. There was a filet of pork for “force gruel,” six geese and fourteen fowls for all the house at dinner, while “the Hall” had eight conies besides. There were eight plovers, six cocks, and three dozen larks for the Master’s dinner and supper; and mallards or wild duck for “the Hall,” at supper; a gallon of cream for the Master’s custard, a gallon of milk for curd. Two and a half gallons of red wine and “claryet” were drunk. There was dessert: 4 lb. of “raysons” and currants at 5d.; 2 lb. of great raisins, 2d.; 4 lb. prunes, 8d.; ½ lb. ginger, 10d.; 3 lb. dates, 7-1/2d.; 1 quarter of cloves and mace, 8d.; ½ lb. “saundre,” 7d.; ½ oz. saffron, 8d.; comfits, “counfeits,” 1 lb., 5d.; 4 lb. of almonds, 8d. On Boxing Day, the Hall had a “pottle of Malmsey to their brawn, 6d.,” and another gallon and half of wine. On New Year’s Day the Master had, among other things, half a lamb; curd for tart, and oranges, which, with butter, cost 2d. On Twelfth Day, the Epiphany, the whole house enjoyed mutton and frumenty, made of milk and wheat, for breakfast. Dinner included four fillets of pork in mortrews, bake-meats and tarts. But the great event was a “wassayle.” To this there went 3 gallons of red wine at 2s.; 3 lb. sugar, 12s.; 2 gallons of “strok” (what was that?); a curd, powder of cinnamon, ginger and other spices, and pears. It was a mighty brew, and must have been almost as trying as a Winchester “egg-flip” on Founder’s Commemoration.

The staff of the Hospital (besides the Master, who was one of the Canons appointed for a year, who only resided at intervals) consisted first and foremost of “Master Nicholas,” the Grammar schoolmaster, at 50s. a quarter, or £10 a year—being at the same rate of pay as that of the headmasters of Winchester and Eton. Then there were four priests, of whom the senior, Sir John Galaway, received £4 : 13 : 4 a year, as against £5 a year given to a Fellow of Winchester for performing much the same functions, while the three others got £4 a year. A clerk (not called Sir), John Marche, “Maister of the children of the Song-School,” also got £4 a year. Then came six clerkes at £2 : 13 : 4 a year each. The poor usher, or “oysshur,” of the Grammar School only got 6s. 8d. a quarter, or £1 : 6 : 8 a year, a sad contrast to the £6 : 13 : 4 of the usher of Winchester College. It was less than the wages of the cook of St. Anthony’s, who got £2 a year, and the same as those of the butler or buttery man. Even his name is not given. Probably the explanation is that John Goreham, one of the priests, or one of the clerks acted also as usher. Of course, as was the case at Winchester and Eton, and all the College and Hospital schools, these salaries were in addition to board, lodging, and “liveries,” or broad cloth for their gowns.

In the next extant account, 17 Henry VII., 1502-3, Mr. David was “skolemaister,” but received only 20s. a quarter, the same as R. Hall “the maister of Queresters”—a term which the Wykehamist will recognise as a living word. It looks as if this reduction of the schoolmaster’s salary was due to greed on the part of the Dean and Chapter of Windsor, who wished to have a larger surplus to put in their own pockets. Rogers was the usher, and received 6s. 8d. The livery of the schoolmaster and priests consisted of 4 yards of cloth at 3s. 4d. a yard, while that of the “clerks,” including the Master of the children, was only 3¼ yards, and the usher’s livery was the same as that of the clerks, sexton, and butler, 3 yards at 3s. The 12 “chylder” had 2½ yards at 2s. 4d. It is a little difficult to understand who the twelve children were. In a subsequent account for Michaelmas to Christmas 1521, twelve whose names are given had cloth for gowns; but then comes a heading “For the chylthern of the Songe Scole,” under which six only out of the twelve received hose and shoes, and had them repaired as well. Are the other six to be regarded as scholars in the Grammar School, or, as is perhaps more probable, choristers on probation?

The next extant account is for 1521-22, when Mr. Ball was the schoolmaster and Richard-a-Lee the Song schoolmaster. The latter was succeeded in 1522 by William Johnson, who, although he got £5 a year as against the Grammar schoolmasters’ £4, was still reckoned on a lower grade among the clerks, while the schoolmaster was always ranked with the priests. There had apparently been a considerable curtailment in expenditure as the surplus handed over to Windsor this year was no less than £210, or more than double the sum they derived from it in their first year.