No More Learning

XIII.
20


## p. 306 (#322) ############################################

306 Scholars and Scholarship, 1600—60
independent enquiry stimulated them to complete the knowledge
of the Orbis Visibilis and Orbis Intellectualis, and to supply
'gaps' such as those indicated by Bacon.
Besides native sources of wider development than could
be gained from the Bible centre alone, the close connection of
English scholars with foreign scholars must be taken into account.
England was drawn close to the continent after the return of
protestant exiles. Of the twenty-one bishops whom queen
Elizabeth appointed, thirteen had passed most of queen Mary's
reign in Germany or Switzerland, and the 650 letters on theo-
logical subjects published by the Parker society show the close
relationship between English protestants and their fellow believers
abroad. English bishops remembered Geneva in the days of her
tribulation, by the practical method of sending remittances for the
relief of distress when the duke of Savoy was harassing that city.
In 1583, by royal brief, a collection for the Genevese was made in
the churches of England, which brought in £5039. Calvin's Insti-
tutes was translated into English in 1559, by Thomas Norton, and
ran through many editions. Almost all the chief Elizabethan
divines were Zwinglian or Calvinist in doctrine, and were in
communication with foreign theologians and scholars. When the
Spanish armies of Alva were devastating the Low Countries,
distressed protestant Fleming refugees came to England in
hundreds! , while the earl of Leicester and Sir Philip Sidney took
some thousands of Englishmen to fight for the Dutch cause. Pre-
viously, Sir Walter Ralegh had fought for the Huguenots in
France. The duke of Buckingham's duplicity and feebleness in
attempting the relief of La Rochelle in Charles I's reign caused
boundless indignation in England. The sympathy of Cromwell and
the English people with the protestants of Piedmont was sufficient, in
1655, to open the national exchequer for grants to schoolmasters,
ministers, physicians, even to students in divinity and physic.
The continuity of these close relations, political and per-
sonal, with foreign protestants, is of capital importance in under-
standing the history of English scholarship. For, while England
largely owed its concentrative group of Bible studies to Geneva,
the greatest classical scholarship of the sixteenth century had
been shown by French Huguenots, and the chief glories of scholar-
ship in the seventeenth century were clustered together in
1 The frequent immigrations into England of Huguenots and other foreign religious
refugees form an important subject in English commercial history. See Cunningham,
W. , Alien Immigrants to England, chaps. Iv and vi.


## p. 307 (#323) ############################################

C
307
French and Dutch Scholars
; ;;
LH
10
? !
Holland ; and France and Holland, in each age, respectively, were
the countries with which our divines and scholars were in closest
touch. Thus, in the sixteenth century, French scholarship had
been transfigured by the genius and research of Budaeus, Turnebus,
Lambinus and the Stephenses, and the succession into the seven-
teenth century included Casaubon and Salmasius. In 1593, Joseph
Scaliger went to Holland to the university of Leyden (founded 1575).
Dutch scholarship was the ripest in Europe from 1600—60 and
included G. J. Vossius, Isaac Vossius (his son), Claude Saumaise
or Salmasius, P. Cluverius? , Daniel Heinsius, N. Heinsius (his son),
Hugo Grotius, J. F. Gronovius. The interest of this list consists
in the fact that all these distinguished scholars were in direct
touch with English scholars. The older Vossius corresponded,
for instance, with Thomas Farnaby; Isaac Vossius actually left
Holland and lived in England, where he held a prebend at
Windsor for sixteen years (1673—88). Salmasius had the famous
controversy with Milton. From his contemporary, Daniel Heinsius,
Ben Jonson borrowed freely in his Timber. Heinsius's son Nicholas
travelled in England. Hugo Grotius wrote his famous Mare
liberum (1609) to assert the international right of the seas, and
John Selden in 1635 published his answer Mare Clausum, written
about 1619. The brother-in-law of G. J. Vossius, Franciscus
Junius, himself a man of no mean learning, left Holland to come
to England as librarian to the earl of Arundel, and remained in
this post for 30 years. He published his De Pictura Veterum,
in Latin, in 1637, and, in English, in 1638. Junius was drawn
into the enthusiasm for British antiquities and produced an
edition of Caedmon, in 1655, and the Moeso-Gothic text of Ulfilas
in 1664–5; and he left in MS an English etymology which
served the turn of Johnson's Dictionary.
The direct influence of these great French and Dutch scholars
was reinforced by the general state of culture prevalent among
foreign protestants. Travelling was a constituent part of the educa-
tion of the well-to-do. The travelling of men with messages of
goodwill, or of advice to the various churches abroad, brought
about an appreciation of standards of knowledge and learning.
Correspondence between learned men and religious leaders filled
the place of modern reviews and newspapers. Reports of new
books and learned investigations penetrated into remote corners
and at a pace unexampled in the previous history of the world.
ar
DI
reperto
KA
1 P. Cluverius was one of the many 'sojourners' with John Prideaux, rector of
Exeter college, Oxford.
chil
be
>
20_2


## p. 308 (#324) ############################################

308 Scholars and Scholarship, 1600—60
Frankfort and Leipzig fairs collected and circulated books broad-
cast. Dutch presses found a large English market. England was
thus within reach of the best of foreign culture, because she
was protestant after the Genevan type ; and much of the most
solid foreign scholarship, in the seventeenth century, was directly
or indirectly under the spell of Calvin. An interesting indica-
tion of the religious sympathies which united English and foreign
protestants is the growth of the custom of sending boys and girls
to French Huguenot academies and pastors, or English youths to
the university of Leyden; on the other hand, an English scholar such
as Thomas Gataker could maintain for some time a private seminary
in his house at Rotherhithe, and ‘many foreigners went and lodged
with him, that they might enjoy the benefit of his advice. '
Casaubon, when in straitened means in Paris, received lord
Herbert of Cherbury as boarder as he had received young Henry
Wotton in his house at Geneva. Before the Pilgrim fathers went to
America, they had sojourned in Dutch cities, established con-
gregations there and appointed ministers in Amsterdam and
Leyden. There was an English congregation at Rotterdam, whose
minister was William Ames, who, for twelve years, had been pro-
fessor in the university of Franeker in Friesland. William Bedell,
who was chaplain to Wotton at Venice for about three years,
penned his sermons in Italian and Latin, wrote an English grammar
so that Italians might learn to read English sermons and trans-
lated father Paul's works into Latin for all protestant Europe to
read. The great mathematician John Wallis wrote an English
grammar (in Latin) for the use of foreigners. The great English
disputant John Featley lived three years in France and did great
honour to his nation and protestantism by disputing successfully
against the most learned papists. ' Matthew Slade, an Oxford
graduate, became rector of the academy at Amsterdam and
distinguished himself by entering the lists against the scholar
Conrad Vorstius. David Primrose, a Scot, became minister
of the Huguenot church at Rouen. The chaplaincies of the
Merchant companies of England, especially the Levant company,
at Aleppo, furnished important opportunities for the cultivation
of oriental languages. The greatest of these chaplains was
Edward Pococke. The name of Thomas Davies, resident at
Aleppo, is memorable for his services in securing oriental MSS
for archbishop Ussher (1624—7).
Many were the distinguished foreigners who found a home
in England. Antonio de Dominis, once Roman Catholic arch-
6


## p. 309 (#325) ############################################

0
Roman Catholic Scholarship 309
ir
RAD
Ear
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21
bishop of Spalatro, was made dean of Windsor in 1617, and
maintained the rights of national churches, but left England in
1622 and recanted. Saravia and Peter du Moulin, like Isaac
Vossius, held English prebends. John Verneuil, of Bordeaux,
was appointed second keeper of the Bodleian library in 1625.
Matthias Pasor lectured on oriental languages at Exeter college,
Oxford, 1625—9, whilst Christian Ravis of Berlin taught the
same subjects in Gresham college, London, in 1642. John Milton,
in 1649, was appointed secretary for foreign tongues, succeeding
G. R. Weckherlin, a native of Stuttgart, fluent in German, French
and English, and a writer of verses in each of those languages.
The great Albericus Gentilis had lectured on law in Oxford. Isaac
Casaubon took up his abode here from 1610 to 1614 and held a
prebend at Canterbury with a pension of £300 a year.
The influence of Roman Catholic scholarship perhaps consti-
tuted the most potent stimulus to the prodigious efforts of pro-
testant erudition in this period. In the latter half of the sixteenth
century, Jesuits had regained France and southern Germany for
Rome, and protestants were in peril of their lives. Jesuits had
taken the lead in polite letters and had trained themselves in
classical style. Yet the whole course of their studies, ‘however
deeply grounded in erudition or embellished by eloquence, had
one perpetual aim—the propagation of the Catholic faith. Jesuit
colleges were the admiration of every scholar. Three years'
work was devoted to philosophy, and four years' drill was given in
theology. Thus were trained the combatants who gained back
France and part of Germany to Rome, and bid fair, at the
beginning of the seventeenth century, to extirpate protestantism
everywhere. Towering above the army of disputants thus
produced, cardinal Bellarmine swept the field in controversial
theology. In these controversies, England was not unrepresented,
but English writers found it increasingly necessary to equip
themselves further in specialistic learning and dialectical skill
in order to meet their opponents. The war was carried on in
England by William Whitaker, the great Calvinistic scholarly
churchman of queen Elizabeth's reign, and, in the same reign,
and in that of James I, by Matthew Sutcliffe, afterwards dean
of Exeter; by John Rainolds, king James I, Lancelot Andrewes
and Francis Mason. On the Catholic side, one of the most dis-
tinguished English disputants was William Rainolds, brother of
John Rainolds.
Inconsiderable in point of learning as some of these theo-
Bet
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Art
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42"
23


## p. 310 (#326) ############################################

310 Scholars and Scholarship,
Scholarship, 1600—60
logical disputations may be, the controversies largely determined
the line of direction of scholarly effort. It is significant that, in
1610, James I incorporated a college to be called by his name at
Chelsea. Matthew Sutcliffe gave considerable funds to the pro-
ject, and was appointed provost. Its occupants were to be men
of war,' reserved for polemical studies. Besides the study of
divinity, two historians were to be maintained, 'to record and
publish to posterity all memorable passages in Church and
Commonwealth. ' The college, ultimately, was seized by parliament
during the interregnum. Samuel Hartlib, in 1655, in a letter to
John Worthington, master of Jesus college, Cambridge, laments
its confiscation. 'Bishops and Deans are gone,' he says. It
would be a scandal, if 'we betray or destroy an incomparable
engine already prepared. . . for the defence of the Truth. '
But a still higher stimulus to protestant learning was provided
in 1588—1609 when the greatest of Roman Catholic researchers,
cardinal Baronius, produced his twelve folios of Annales Eccle-
siastici:
"The whole case,' says Mark Pattison,‘of the Romanists and especially the
supremacy of the See of Rome was here set out in the form of authentic
annals. . . . The Annales transferred to the Catholic party the preponderance
in the field of learning which ever since Erasmus had been on the side of the
innovators. ?
It became the object of protestant learning to devote itself to the
effective criticism and refutation of the statements and argu-
ments of Baronius. No mere reliance on scriptural texts could
meet the emergency. Learning could only be fairly and finally
met by learning. Zealously English scholars strained themselves
to the utmost. John Rainolds, president of Corpus Christi
college, Oxford, attempted, from the puritanic side, the task of
refuting Baronius in 1602. All English efforts, however, pale into
insignificance beside the work of Isaac Casaubon, De rebus sacris
et ecclesiasticis exercitationes XVI ad Baronii annales (1614).
Next to Joseph Scaliger in Leyden, who died in 1609, Isaac
Casaubon was regarded as the most learned scholar in Europe,
and his residence in London from 1610 to 1614 proved the
attractiveness to his scholarly mind of the theological attitude
of men like Lancelot Andrewes. Casaubon’s residence in England
was an incalculable stimulus to the industry and research of the
new 'Anglican' school that was rising over the heads of the
puritan groups.
Whilst Casaubon was admired by the protestant world for his


## p. 311 (#327) ############################################

Casaubon
311
classical and patristic scholarship, there was not a little mis-
giving that he lost his opportunity in his Exercitationes of
refuting the doctrinal theology of Baronius, and it was feared
that he had failed to return the undermining attacks of Jesuits
on protestant bulwarks. But Casaubon was not a gladiator like
Scioppius. He had gone through fiery torments of indecision in
taking the one side rather than the other. In the inner sanctity
of his conscience, the cause of truth was enshrined. The older
ideal of imitation, both in form and in substance, of the great
classical writers of antiquity had now passed. It was essential
for those engaged in theological conflict on an intellectual plane to
know. But knowledge, which goes to the root of matters, must
use both a trained judgment and the results of independent
enquiries into the ideas and thoughts as well as the surroundings
of the ancient world, if it is to represent a solid basis for the
thought of the present. To the keenest scholars of the seven-
teenth century, among whom Casaubon was conspicuously the first,
the foundations of theological truth necessarily had to be sought
in the earlier centuries of the Christian era. Casaubon had
devoted his faculties, heightened and refined by almost in-
credible application, unparalleled even in that age of classical
scholars, to critical work in respect of the writings of Strabo,
Athenaeus, Persius and Polybius. On all these, he brought to
bear a knowledge of classical antiquity which seemed at once
universal in its comprehensiveness and selective in its adequacy
for the point in hand, so much so that his commentary on Strabo
has not been superseded.
Casaubon only lived to complete the first half of the first
volume of his criticism of Baronius's mighty tomes. Much of the
800 folio pages is occupied with a re-tracing of Baronius's tracks,
correcting and rebutting, point by point. Constructive work,
indeed, there was, in the form of dissertations. But the essential
significance of the history of seventeenth century scholarship is the
object-lesson which its productions furnish, providing students in
the Bible studies, in patristic learning and in church history with a
standard of research, intellectual persistency, scholarly apparatus
and equipment.
The dissatisfaction of English controversialists with Casaubon's
method of critical correction rather than of concentration on
doctrinal disputation was made manifest in the effort of Richard
Mountague, who, in his Analecta Exercitationum ecclesiasticarum,
1622, 'went over the same ground again, to show how Casaubon


## p. 312 (#328) ############################################

312 Scholars and Scholarship, 1600—60
ought to have done it but could not. Mountague and the Greek
professor of Cambridge, Andrew Downes, had been among the
coadjutors of Sir Henry Savile in the production of the wonderful
eight volume Eton edition of St Chrysostom's works (1612).
Savile had collected MSS of Chrysostom, and, with Casaubon’s aid,
he had had the MSS in the Royal library of Paris collated, and
had organised the revision of the text by the most learned Greek
scholars in England, himself defraying the cost of production,
computed at £8000. No edition of a Greek author, in England or
in Europe, in the first part of the seventeenth century, could vie
with this work in the splendour of its production. Casaubon and
Savile, though not on good terms personally, were united by the
publication in England of two of the greatest works of scholarship
of the age, and in the inauguration on the highest plane of that
patristic study which constituted the chief feature of English
scholarship in the period 1600—60.
Throughout the period, works of learned men, whether divines or
laymen, abound in allusions disclosing a knowledge of the Fathers,
the councils and ecclesiastical history. Calamy, a member of the
Westminster assembly, is said to have read through St Augustine's
works five times, and to have thoroughly mastered the Summa
of Aquinas. Thomas Holland, the Oxford professor of divinity,
was familiar with the Fathers 'as if he himself were a Father
and in the schoolmen as if he had been a seraphical doctor. '
Henry Jackson, a country rector in Gloucestershire, collected
several of the works of Abelard from ancient MSS, and revised
and collated them ; but, in 1642, his collection was scattered by
parliamentary soldiers. Archbishop Ussher, at 20 years of age, ,
resolved to go through all the Fathers by himself and 'to trust no
eyes but his own. ' He took eighteen years over the task, “strictly
confining himself to read so much in a day and suffering no
occasion whatever' to divert him from it. Laymen as well as
divines were close students ; physicians, lawyers, schoolmasters
knew the Fathers, at least for the purpose of embellishing their
writings. In the directions which James I issued to the universities
in 1616, students in divinity were
6
to be incited to bestow their times in the Fathers and Councils, Schoolmen,
Histories and Controversies, and not to insist so long upon Compendiums
and abbreviations as the grounds of their study in Divinity.
Thus, the spread of patristic learning in England in the first half
of the seventeenth century is not to be judged merely by the


## p. 313 (#329) ############################################

Classical Scholarship 313
incidental scholarship shown by Anglican divines. It also per-
vaded many puritan divines; it characterised many of the leading
preachers, like Jeremy Taylor. Different as the subjects of these
writings are, Robert Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy,
Sir Thomas Browne, in his Religio Medici, William Prynne, in
his Histriomastix (who quotes testimony from 71 Fathers and 55
synods) show that writers found in the Fathers a court of appeal
with an authority generally recognised, and the literature of the
period revels in multitudinous quotations patristic as well as
classical.
The higher criticism which now is occupied with the Bible
then lavished its learning on the Fathers. For, though John
Daillé, the most learned French pastor in patristic knowledge, in
his Usage des Pères, 1628, deprecated absolute reliance on this
authority, the subject was acknowleged, by all interested in
scholarship, to be of profound relative importance, and only to
be transcended by a thorough knowledge of the Scriptures them-
selves, which, again, depended upon light thrown on them by
patristic studies.
The seventeenth century entered into a noble heritage of
accumulated knowledge of the classics. The sixteenth century
had been a period of acquisition and ingathering of knowledge
of classical authors; and grammars, rhetorics and logics, together
with phrase-books, colloquies, vocabularies and dictionaries,
collections of adages, apophthegms, epigrams, proverbs, emblems,
synonyms, were rapidly produced. Not only were the whole of the
available literary remains of Rome and Greece thus presented,
but they were broken up into such a systematic analysis that
every detail was at hand for the synthetic process of composition
modelled on the style of Cicero or Demosthenes. With marvellous
skill and prodigious research, analytical and inductive methods
were applied more and more daringly to writing on topics concern-
ing Roman and Greek antiquities, as well as on medieval and
modern history and contemporary events and interests. As the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries had developed style and form
in writing the classical languages, the seventeenth century entered
into assured possession of literary instruments for the treatment
of all kinds of material of investigation and enquiry. In the
earlier part of the seventeenth century, works of importance,
however long and recondite, were written in Latin, not merely
from the love of masterful pedantry, but for the absolutely
practical reason that Latin was the international language of


## p. 314 (#330) ############################################

314 Scholars and Scholarship, 1600—60
6
well educated people'. A typical instance was Bacon, with his
Novum Organum and De Augmentis Scientiarum, the latter of
which was an expansion of the treatise in English named The
Advancement of Learning. The publication of books in both
Latin and English thus marks a transition stage in the move-
ment from Latin to English, as the medium for communication.
But it will be remembered that Copernicus, Gilbert, Harvey,
Newton, announced their scientific discoveries in Latin, not
because they were profound classical students, but because Latin
was the common language of scientific writers at home and abroad,
as it was the ordinary language both for speech and writing between
scholars, scientific people, professional men and diplomatists.
The erudite Savile was Latin secretary to queen Elizabeth.
In 1644, the title of the office was changed to 'Secretary for
Foreign Tongues to the Joint Committee for the two Kingdoms,'
and, as already stated, it was under this designation that John
Milton assumed the post in 1649. Though this is a sign of the
coming change, when the French ascendency in Charles Il's reign
was to lead, eventually, to the substitution of that language in the
sphere of diplomacy, it is not to be supposed that the change
was a tour de force. It had been silently prepared for in the
close rapprochement of England with French protestants and in
the inter-relations already described. Yet, in 1659, John Pell,
on a mission in Germany, spoke Latin to a burgomaster 'who
told me he had given over speaking in Latin these 50 years,'
and answered in High Dutch. Edward Leigh, in his Advice on
Travel (c. 1660), still requires gentlemen to be well equipped in
conversational Latin. Academically, the ideal of Latin-speaking was
well preserved. Brinsley, in his Ludus Literarius, 1612, expects
school lessons in grammar to be conducted by questions and
answers in the Latin language. Disputations and orations were
in this language, not only in universities but, also, in grammar
schools. Casaubon conversed in Latin with James I and with the
bishops ; university plays were often in Latin ; and sermons had
to be in the same tongue for degrees in divinity. In 1635, Cor-
nelius Burgess preached in Latin to his fellow puritan ministers in
London. In fact, Latin occupied very much the position that
mathematics now assumes on the modern side of a public school,
in relation to physical science studies. It provided the necessary
equipment for other studies, and the school curriculum was framed
1 In 1635, Sir Francis Kynaston published a translation into Latin of Chaucer's
Troilus and Criseyde, for the use of foreign readers.
6


## p. 315 (#331) ############################################

Latin Scholarship
315
with a view to relieving the university from its teaching. The
curriculum consisted of Pueriles Confabulatiunculae (children's
Latin talk), colloquies, catechisms in Latin and Greek, systematic
grammar, translation and re-translation, and the whole round of
vocabularies, the making of Latins, letter-writing (on the model
of Cicero's Epistulae, proceeding to those of modern writers-
Politian, Erasmus, Ascham, Manutius, Lipsius—and the composi-
tion, concurrently, of original epistles), themes, with full equip-
ment of adages, apophthegmata, flores, phrase-books; then making
verses, and, finally, the glory of sixth form work, producing and
declaiming original orations. Thus, the school discipline in Latin
was never more complete than in the first half of the seventeenth
century. For, in all the above divisions of work, a bewildering
collection of text-books had accumulated, and the foreign ap-
paratus of Latin study was more prominent in English schools than
the text-books written by Englishmen. Nothing, perhaps, better
illustrates the progress of Latin studies than the increase in size,
exactness and comprehensiveness, of Latin dictionaries, say from
that of Elyot's Dictionary in 1538 to Holyoke's posthumous
monster Dictionary of 1676, or, indeed, from the first edition
of Francis Holyoke in 1617 to the final form given to it by his
son in 1676.
If the output of critical scholarship in Latin by English
scholars in this period be relatively small, it is accounted for by
the fact that excellent editions of Latin classical writers had
already been provided in foreign editions, as, for instance, in the
Elzevir texts. What was accomplished was, therefore, rather in
the way of selection and compilation from the research work of
foreign Goliaths of scholarship.
The highest Latin scholarship was centred in its practical use
in writing, as, for instance, in the works of Ussher, Gataker and
Selden. As showing a fluent control over rhythm, metre and
style, English writers made a high bid for excellence, in the
persons of such Latin poets as Owen, Barclay, Dempster, Milton,
May and Cowley? .
If Latin, then, was a necessity, Greek, also, was a pressing accom-
plishment, for a large constituency besides the professor and
scholar. Nor were Greek experts so few as is often supposed.
In The Authorised Version of the Bible (1607—11), adequate
See the account of John Barclay's Argenis and Euphormionis Satyricon (ante,
vol. iv, pp. 254 ff. ). The anonymous ' Nova Solyma (1648), with its remarkable
scheme of education, deserves mention.


## p. 316 (#332) ############################################

316 Scholars and Scholarship, 1600—60
scholarship in Greek was available in Thomas Ravis, George Abbot,
James Montague, Thomson, Savile, Perin, Harmar, William Barlow,
Hutchinson, Spencer, Fenton, Rabbett, Sanderson, Dakins. Of
the other translators employed on the Old Testament Apocrypha,
John Duport, Downes and Bois were of still greater renown for their
knowledge of Greek. J. Bass Mullinger remarks on the low
state of Greek in English universities in the latter part of the
sixteenth century. He names Whitaker, Dering, Gabriel Harvey,
Aylmer, as almost alone proving that Greek at Cambridge was
‘not extinct.
' It was otherwise in the period 1600—60. Andrew
Downes, professor of Greek in Cambridge from 1585 to 1625,
published lectures on Lysias: De Caede Eratosthenis (1593) and
on Demosthenes: De Pace (1621). Francis Hicks, a gentleman of
Worcestershire, made Greek his study and recreation, and pub-
lished a translation into Latin, with notes, of select dialogues of
Lucian, 1634. John Price, one of the greatest scholars of the
period, professor of Greek at Pisa, showed great learning in his
commentaries on the New Testament, illustrated by references to
Greek and Latin Fathers (1646—7). In 1636, Gerard Langbaine
published his notes on Longinus. In 1637, John Harmar, regius
professor of Greek at Oxford, issued his etymological Greek lexicon.
In 1652, Thomas Gataker produced his Marcus Antoninus, Greek
text, with Latin translation and commentary. Finally, in 1661,
Joseph Caryl, Thomas Cockayne, Ralph Venning, William Dell,
Matthew Barker, William Adderley, Matthew Mead, Henry Jersey,
all nonconformist ministers, jointly published a Greek-English
dictionary of all the words in the New Testament.
This list is only representative of the types of works in Greek.
But we must take into account the undoubtedly deep knowledge
of Greek possessed by Gataker (who had been taught by Bois),
overshadowed as it is by his Hebrew and other oriental studies;
by Ussher with his expert knowledge of Greek geography,
astronomy and other Greek material for chronology, his treatise
on the origin of the Greek Septuagint and the editing of two
ancient Greek versions of the Book of Esther ; by Selden, the
great dictator of English learning, in his Marmora Arundeliana,
1628, in which he was helped by Patrick Young and Richard
James ; by John Hales and the Cambridge Platonists ; by John
Milton ; by Philemon Hollandand the other translators.
1 Although Philemon Holland cannot be regarded as a scholar in the same sense as
Salmasius in Plinianae Exercitationes (1629), his translation of Pliny justifies the
attribution to him of considerable Latin learning. Holland's translation of Plutarch's
Moralia (1603) and the Cyropaedia of Xenophon (1632) show his knowledge of Greek.


## p. 317 (#333) ############################################

Greek Scholarship
317
In
Besides grammar text-books and annotations on Greek authors,
there is evidence of ready knowledge of Greek in all kinds of
writers, and indications of a not uncommon erudition. Jeremiah
Whitaker, of Oakham free school, read all the epistles in the
Greek Testament twice every fortnight. John Conant, regius
professor of divinity in Oxford, often disputed publicly in Greek
in the schools. In the period 1648–59, the disputations at
Oxford were often in Greek. Henry Stubbe, in 1651, wrote,
in Horae Subsecivae, translations into Greek from Randolph and
Crashaw. But the readiest in this art was James Duport, who
wrote Greek hexameters on the death of the vice-master of
Trinity college, Cambridge. He rendered into Homeric verse
The Book of Job (1637) and Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and The
Song of Solomon (1646), and won high recognition by these
feats.
From this brief review, it is evident, especially as to the years
immediately preceding 1660, that the attraction in Greek studies
is drawing towards Biblical literature; and Hebrew is becoming
a necessary learned language. From the time of the new
Elizabethan and Stewart foundations of grammar schools, the
three ‘holy' languages-Latin, Greek and Hebrew-had been
the aim of protestant workers in education, not only for providing
antagonists capable of meeting Catholic opponents in disputa-
tion, orally and in books, but, also, for coming 'nearer' to the
primitive times of the Christian era. Boys in school were to
learn their catechism in a Greek text, read the New Testament
in Greek, learn, if might be, to speak in Greek. The aim of
school and university, in their Greek studies, was, in the long
run, theological. Theological study required, in addition to Latin,
a knowledge of the Greek language; if possible, of Hebrew also; and
Busby, at Westminster, tried the daring experiment of adding
oriental languages (Arabic particularly). For The Authorised Ver-
sion of the Old Testament (with the Apocrypha), thirty-two Hebrew
scholars were chosen. These included that second Mithridates'in
learning, bishop Lancelot Andrewes ; Adrian Saravia, who was the
teacher of the still more learned oriental scholar Nicholas Fuller;
Lively, for thirty years regius professor of Hebrew at Cambridge ;
Chaderton, the famous master of Emmanuel college, Cambridge;
Spalding, from whom Gataker learned the rudiments of Hebrew;
John Rainolds of Oxford, the redoubtable controversialist ; Hol-
land, of the same university, "mighty in the Scriptures’; Kilby,
rector of Lincoln college ; Miles Smith, of whom Wood says that
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318 Scholars and Scholarship,
6
Scholarship, 1600—60
he had Hebrew 'at his fingers' ends, and to whom Chaldee,
Syriac and Arabic were 'almost as familiar as his native tongue';
Samuel Ward, who was the constant correspondent of Ussher in
Biblical and oriental criticism ; John Bois, who was at least as
learned in Greek as in Hebrew; and that 'eminent light' in all
learning, bishop Bilson, the great theologian, and a reviewer of
the whole translation. Cambridge and Oxford were thus fully
represented, and the needs of a great joint work of learning were
readily and adequately met by the supply of scholars.
Whilst The Authorised Version of the Bible itself marked an
era, the progress of oriental learning was carried to far greater
heights in the succeeding half century. William Bedell read the
Greek Fathers and historians in Greek, attained 'no mean skill'
in the Syriac, Arabic, Chaldee and Hebrew tongues, wrote (as
already mentioned) an English grammar for Italians to read
English divinity, and produced the Old Testament in Irish when
he became bishop of Kilmore and Ardagh. James Ussher, arch-
bishop of Armagh, investigated, by inductive and comparative
methods, a basis of universal chronology. With indefatigable zeal,
he worked on the antiquities of Irish history, collected and col-
lated oriental MSS, was permeated with patristic knowledge and
did much original critical work in editions of several of the early
Fathers—Polycarp and Ignatius and St Barnabas. He was a
voluminous correspondent with all great researchers into an-
tiquity-classical, hebraistic, early Christian and oriental. In
short, he was one of the very greatest of English scholars. Thomas
Gataker, puritan rector of Rotherhithe, wrote his Cinnus, sive
Adversaria Miscellanea and learned commentaries on books of
the Old Testament, and established for himself as high a repu-
tation for oriental scholarship abroad as in England. John Selden,
in his De Dis Syris (in Latin), 1617, investigated the history of
the idol deities mentioned in the Old Testament, and made his
work a comprehensive enquiry into both Syrian and other heathen
theologies. Joseph Mede, an encyclopaedic scholar in mathe-
matics, physics, botany, anatomy and astrology, was, also, a pro-
found 'Hebrician,' and added to the store of scholarship in
Egyptology and in the origin of Semitic religions. Brian Walton's
great polyglot Bible, in progress from 1652 to 1657, must rank as
the highest peak of English co-operative scholarship in a period
which was remarkable both in its wealth of eruditional effort and
in the significance of its concentration of deepest learning on the
Bible centre. This stupendous polyglot Bible uses altogether nine


## p. 319 (#335) ############################################

Hebrew Scholarship
319
different languages, Greek, Hebrew, Samaritan, Chaldee, Syriac,
Arabic, Ethiopic, Persian, Latin, though no part of the Bible is
given in more than six or less than three languages simultaneously.
In addition to texts, there is a vast body of apparatus, e. g. treatises
on weights and measures, geographical charts, chronological tables
and prolegomena, Chaldee Targums; and one of the six folios
consists of various readings and critical remains. Brian Walton,
the editor, afterwards bishop of Chester, published an introduction
to oriental languages, but was by no means the most learned scholar
assisting in the polyglot. Among the collaborators were Ussher and
Selden, already mentioned; John Lightfoot, the greatest Hebrew
scholar of that age; Abraham Wheelock, first lecturer in Arabic
combined with (Anglo-Saxon at Cambridge, and an acknow-
ledged scholar in Persian; Samuel Clarke, architypographus of
Oxford university, 'inferior only to Pococke in Eastern learn-
ing. Finally must be mentioned Meric Casaubon, son of Isaac
Casaubon, who published classical commentaries on Marcus
Antoninus (1643), and Epictetus (1659), and had written in 1650
a commentary on the Hebrew and (Anglo-Saxon languages.
Curious as the combination of Old English and Hebrew may
seem, it marks the two new directions of English research in
the period, the joy of the discovery that Britain, too, had
antiquities and an ancient church history. From various sources,
the conviction gathered strength that there were more ancient
civilisations than Greece, which threw light on the classics and on
Jewish history. The supply of Hebrew grammars, even of English
production, was adequate ; and, in 1646, Edward Leigh’s Critica
Sacra was published, the best Hebrew lexicon which had yet been
produced in England. In 1644, an ordinance of the Lords and
Commons, 'after advice had with the Assembly of Divines,'
required, amongst other qualifications of candidates for the
ministry, 'that trial be made of skill in the Original Tongues by
reading the Hebrew and Greek Testaments and rendering some
portions of them into Latin. '
Sixteenth century classical studies had provided huge quarries
from which the seventeenth century dug out further materials; but,
with their instruments sharpened and improved by practice, scholars
proceeded to undertake pioneering operations on a wider scale.
The pedagogical maxim of 'turn all knowledge to use was now
more sedulously followed. The knowledge of Hebrew and oriental
languages developed with amazing rapidity, even as scientific
studies advanced by leaps and bounds, after Bacon's summons to


## p. 320 (#336) ############################################

320 Scholars and Scholarship, 1600—60
make good the deficiencies of past ages in the world of knowledge.
In both cases, however, this splendid progress was due to the inces-
sant and life-long toil of classical humanists and grammarians in
perfecting methods of enquiry and research, in firing the imagina-
tion with re-constituted empires and literatures and in framing
standards of evidence. The intellectual recovery of Roman and
Greek literature and antiquities had shown the way for discoveries
in ancient life and institutions, and had taught men how to treat,
for purposes of illustration and comparison, the civilisations of
Hebrew and the other oriental peoples, our own Old English
antiquities and those of ancient Ireland. The investigation of
those languages, literatures and institutions made necessary an
enquiry into ancient times, and scholarly methods were required
for this. In this respect, scholars like Gataker, Selden, Wheelock
and Ussher obey the traditions of Budaeus, Casaubon and Scaliger,
though in other directions, and often non passibus aequis. But,
in the case of English scholars of this period, there is this differ-
ence-the scholarly aim in all directions was subservient to the
religious interest.
In the universities, theology' was the chief subject, and, as
J. Bass Mullinger says, with few exceptions, secured the attention
of all those who contended for intellectual distinction, for popu-
larity and for the prizes of high office and social influence. ' The
colleges of the university, whether of medieval or of later founda-
tion, were theological in their intention. The seven liberal arts
still remained as a survival, the quadrivium of arithmetic, geo-
metry, music and astronomy finding a centre in Gresham college,
London, with gentlemen and, especially, physicians, as students.
The trivium subjects of rhetoric and grammar were at least started
at school, and were developed, together with logic, at the university;
and the dialectical method was the acknowledged traditional
and current discipline of academic training, whether in law, physic,
or theology. Often, the student in law or physic took a keen
interest in theology. Accordingly, theology had full sway in the
universities, and, as students left the university, their knowledge of
Greek and Hebrew became contributory to the great divinity stream.
Venn has shown that, in 1630, one out of 3600 of the male
6
1 Even in mathematics, which might be expected to be detached from theological
associations, the odium theologicum found vent. Sir Charles Scarborough was a
student of mathematics at Caius college, Cambridge. The head of that college saw
him reading Clavius upon Euclid, observed è Societate Jesu on the title, and said :
By all means, leave off this author, and read protestant mathematical books. '
6


## p. 321 (#337) ############################################

University Studies
321
population of England and Wales proceeded to Oxford or Cam-
bridge as against one in 9000 today, and the influence of academic
traditions may be judged by the fact that, in the admissions to
one college (Gonville and Caius) in Cambridge, in ten years, as
many as forty schools are to be found named in the county of
Norfolk. Grammar schools (public and private) were particularly
numerous in this period, and managed to cast a Scriptural and
theological colour around ordinary instruction. Never was there
in the annals of the English church a more eloquent, pious and
erudite band of Anglican theologians than at this time'. In
fact, Selden tells us of his own time : ‘All confess there never was
a more learned Clergy. The university, however, in the time
of the commonwealth, was held by some puritans to be a need-
less, and, indeed, harmful, training-ground. Milton, himself a
university man, was disgusted with university methods and curricula.
He saw no need for the training of ministers in disputations, to
confute papists, involving the reading of Fathers and councils,
'immense volumes and of vast charges. ' A minister's library
could be adequately furnished for £60, though some shame not
to value a needful library at £600. A minister can receive his
education at any 'private house,' instead of at the university. "Else
to how little purpose,' he goes on, are all those piles of sermons,
bodies and marrows of divinity besides all other sciences, in our
English tongue; many of the same books which in Latin they
read in the university ? ? ' Already, the private teaching of men
like Gataker, raising ‘schools of the prophets,' had begun, and,
after the act of Uniformity, was to grow and prosper until, in
the eighteenth century, it provided an education, which Milton
had seen to be possible, better than the universities in their
decadent state could afford.
Milton's anti-university view, held, he suggests, by the 'first
reformers of our religion,' was the accepted commonplace, for the
most part, of the various sectaries into which puritanism had been
broken up in the commonwealth. The Calvinistic theocracy
could be traced in the Word of God as revealed in the Bible,
and all other knowledge was needless. The two parties of the
learned supporters of patristic studies—those who felt the necessity
of a scholarly background for Scripture teachings, and those who
held all knowledge outside of the Word of God as “trash'--repre-
sented the whole body of the nation (with the exception of those
1 See ante, chap. VI.
? Likeliest Means to Remove Hirelings out of the Church, 1659.
E. L. VII. CH. XIII.
21


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322 Scholars and Scholarship, 1600—60
who held that the true interpretation of the Bible was a direct
inspiration from God apart from any human learning) and were
united in requiring verbal knowledge of the Bible text, even if
they looked for elucidation and commentary on the doctrines
derived from it.
Large portions of the Scriptures were known by heart, not only
by ministers, but, also, by the laity, and even by children, who
were also well drilled in Foxe's Book of Martyrs and other
histories of persecutions. Whilst French Huguenot children
were trained, Spartanlike, to look forward to dying for the faith,
English children, from the earliest age, were disciplined in prayer,
in reading books of devotion and in the close knowledge of
Bible histories and Bible doctrine. Preachers, like Joshua Hoyle,
sometimes were occupied for fifteen years in expounding straight
through the whole of the Bible, taking a verse at a time.
Hoyle, indeed, started again, and went on for another ten years
in the same course. Again, Arthur Hildesham, in 1635, in the
puritan concentrative manner, gave 152 lectures on Psalm li.
Anthony Burgess, in 1656, delivered 145 expository sermons
on the seventeenth chapter of St John, and wrote an expository
commentary on the first chapter of 2 Corinthians, filling a folio of
657 pages. Gataker's Annotations on the Bible (1659) occupied
a folio volume; but that is small in bulk in comparison with some
other performances. Jeremiah Burroughs filled four volumes in
a commentary which failed to finish 13 chapters of Hosea. William
Greenhill required nearly 3000 quarto pages for Ezekiel, whilst,
for Job, Caryl was not content with less than 4690 folio pages.
- Thomas Haak, in 1657, published, in two folio volumes, a transla-
tion of the Dutch Annotations on the Bible, an outcome of the
synod of Dort, in 1618, but this large work includes a translation
of the Bible. The English Annotations, in two folio volumes,
represents the best English exegetical work of the period, in-
cluding amongst its writers Ley, William Gouge, Meric Casaubon,
Francis Taylor and, once more, the encyclopaedic scholar, Thomas
Gataker. As a work of systematic compilation, English effort
in this direction was crowned by Matthew Poole’s Synopsis
Criticorum Bibliorum (in Latin), in five folio volumes, taking in
its survey all available criticisms and annotations hitherto produced.
Poole was at work on this gigantic task 1660—76? By means
1 A Latin commentary, still larger though not so laboured, Critici Sacri, was
published in London in 1660, in nine folio volumes. The latter contains 9679, and
Poole's Synopsis 5109, double-columned pages.


## p. 323 (#339) ############################################

Summary
323
<
of compendia, abridgments, epitomes of all kinds, scripture histories,
geographies, concordances, expository lectures and sermons, the
vast accretion of Scripture learning was disseminated throughout
the land by the 10,000 clergy, not to count leaders of sectaries and
voluntary preachers.
Collections of systematic divinity in ‘marrows,' 'bodies' and
'sums' were extremely numerous and supplemented Scripture
knowledge in all directions. On the subject of church govern-
ment, innumerable treatises were written, but none approached in
solid intellectual power Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, of the
Elizabethan period, or Richard Field's Of the Church (finished
1610). In doctrinal exposition, bishop Pearson's Exposition of
the Creed (1659) must be regarded as a masterpiece of the
period.
Some of the characteristics of the time, emerging from the
whole of these manifestations of learning in patristic, classical,
oriental and Biblical culture must be briefly noted. The
medieval conception of the authority of Aristotle and scholasticism
was shattered. It was transferred in all its ingrained strength
and with infinitely increased brooding awe to the Bible. Science,
even, could not yet make effective claim to detachment and self-
contained aims. But Bacon's view of antiquitas saeculi juventus
mundi was elaborated in a learned work (1627) by George
Hakewill, a vindication of the superior culture and progress of
the modern, as against the ancient, world. A spirit of optimism
favoured both literary and scientific research, for the age realised
its control over the methods and instruments of enquiry. The
Greeks and Romans could not retain the absolute allegiance even of
scholars, for, after all, they were heathens, and the new light shed
on the Bible, and the grand vision of a theocracy on earth, made
attractive to the whole nation, learned and unlearned, a willingness
to pay the price of knowledge, within the restricted sphere of
Biblical studies. Hence, we notice psychologically, there were
developed enormous industry in learning, endurance in listening
to preachers and teachers, tenacious memory and the power of
visualising and concentrating the thoughts on Bible heroes, Bible
stories, Bible language and Bible aspirations. Scripture students
were indefatigable workers. Bishop Morton was at his studies
before four o'clock in the morning, even after he was 80 years
Matthew Poole rose at three or four o'clock, ate a
raw egg at eight or nine, another at twelve and continued his studies
till late in the afternoon. Sir Matthew Hale, for many years,
of age.
21-2


## p. 324 (#340) ############################################

324 Scholars and Scholarship, 1600—60
studied sixteen hours a day. For several years John Owen
did not allow himself more than four hours' sleep. Feats of
memory are as remarkable for their frequency as for their com-
prehensiveness, and were practised from early childhood in the
repeating of sermons, in the learning of Latin grammar and in
almost every academic discipline. Moreover, the number of
references to memory testifies to the conscious cultivation of
the art. The exercise of visualisation of the Old Testament
histories was heightened by stories of martyrs; and the family
tradition and household culture that made these events 'real as
life' in puritan homes supplied the mental basis for justifying
doctrine and precept. In short, the scholarship and learning of
this period, by their direct bearing upon the Bible, permeated
and transfigured the national life in a rare degree, giving it, in
spite of all its excesses and deficiencies, a strenuousness, sobriety,
and, on the whole, a sincerity, probably never so largely sustained,
by book learning, in any age, and rarely in any country. And
yet, of the highest and purest scholarship, it is true, as Mark
Pattison says, in reference to Casaubon :
To search antiquity with a polemical object is destructive of that equilibrium
of the reason, the imagination and the taste, that even temper of philosophical
calm, that singleness of purpose, which are required in order that a past time
may mirror itself on the mind in true outline and proportions 1.
1 Isaac Casaubon, p. 466.


## p. 325 (#341) ############################################

CHAPTER XIV
ENGLISH GRAMMAR SCHOOLS
It was but slowly, and long after the reformation had been
carried into effect in England, that the transition from the
scholastic to the humanistic theory of education began to be
perceptible among the grammar schools of the country. An
endeavour has, indeed, been made in recent years to show that the
tendencies at work during the reign of Edward VI were essenti-
ally reactionary, and that nothing of much importance resulted
from the liberal and enlightened policy of Somerset. Such a
theory, however, is very far from being borne out by the evidence,
which proves that, not only were important new foundations
established under his auspices, and subsequently, by Northumber-
land, but that the views which found expression in their organisa-
tion and discipline were virtually identical with those which after-
wards obtained under Elizabeth. The great queen, although
holding the memory of Somerset in aversion, had always cherished
a sisterly regard for the youthful monarch, whose remarkable
precocity of intellect, love of learning and strong religious
convictions (harmonising, to a great extent, with her own) had
commanded the admiration and respect alike of scholars and
of politicians during his lifetime. The influences that pre-
dominated during the reign of Mary, on the other hand, had
been reactionary, and became yet more so under the joint
rule of the queen and her consort. But, so soon as Elizabeth
found herself 'supreme governor' of the church, the Edwardian
policy in relation to education was, forthwith, adopted by her as
her own-much as the Prayer Book of 1552 was again prescribed,
with but slight alterations, for use in the English ritual; and it is to
be borne in mind that Burghley had been the personal friend of
Somerset, under whom he served as an officer of the crown. Ас-
cordingly, it is in the reforms advocated during the reign of Edward,
that the subsequent designs of our most discerning legislators are
rightly to be regarded as taking their initiative, however much
they might be baffled or delayed, for a time, by the selfish aims


## p. 326 (#342) ############################################

326
English Grammar Schools
of courtiers intent on little else save their personal enrichment
and that of their families and dependents. In the rapacity of
those who should have been foremost in setting an example of
self-abnegation, the young king and his adviser encountered,
indeed, a resistance which they were but very partially able to
overcome.
The latest researches in the history of our public schools
exhibit Winchester and Eton, the two most ancient of their
number, as designed to enjoy peculiar advantages and an excep-
tional independence, while, at the same time, occupying the position
of training institutions in relation to centres of more advanced
education—the former to New college, Oxford, the latter to King's
college, Cambridge? As Winchester college had now been in
existence somewhat more, and Eton college but a little less, than
two centuries, it becomes interesting to compare the progress of
the one with the other, and that of both, in turn, with the
development of other great public schools which were subsequently
founded—that is to say, with St Paul's, Christ's Hospital and
Harrow, with Westminster and Merchant Taylors', with Shrews-
bury and Rugby: all of which, with the exception of the first-named,
represent the original design of Edward VI, as carried into effect
after Somerset's death by Northumberland and, subsequently, by
Mary and Elizabeth.
Winchester, the most ancient and conservative of all, was still
governed mainly by the statutes of William of Wykeham. It had
been distinctly menaced with dissolution by the Chantries act of
1547; but the actual result of the royal injunctions was little
more, in the direction of reform, than to make the Latin or English
version optional in the study of the text of the New Testament,
although prescribing the use of the vernacular by the scholars at
grace and at their devotions. The school continued to be recruited
mainly from the diocese of Winchester and from the midland
counties; it had educated Chicheley, Chandler (afterwards dean of
Hereford), Warham and Grocyn; its loyalty never swerved. When
king Edward visited the city in 1552, commoners and scholars had
alike composed congratulatory verses; they did the same when
the marriage of Mary and Philip was celebrated in their ancient
cathedral; and, again, when Elizabeth visited the college in 1570.
But, in 1560, the college petitioned successfully, along with Eton,
1 See ante, vol. 11, pp. 357—8.
· The features of resemblance and of direct imitation between Winchester and
Eton have already been referred to in vol. II, chap. xv.


## p. 327 (#343) ############################################

Winchester and Eton
327
>
6
to be allowed the use of the Latin Prayer Book; while the number
and importance of its converts to Rome, in the latter part of the
century, was a symptom that could not be disregarded. During
James's reign, more than one visitation, together with a series of
injunctions issued by archbishop Bancroft, clearly indicate abuses,
both in management and discipline, which betray the fact that the
financial administration by the master and fellows was conceived
on principles not a whit more disinterested than those of the
commissioners of Edward VI. Eton, on the other hand, now begins
to enter on a career of marked improvement, after a series of
depressing experiences. It had seen the lilies tremble on the
college shield, and ultimately disappear, altogether, from the shield
of the foundation at Cambridge. But the wise supervision exercised
by Waynflete, as provost, continued to operate after his promotion
to the see of Winchester, and was continued, with equal ability, by
his successor, William Westbury, promoted from the headmaster-
ship. It is scarcely an exaggeration, indeed, to assert that the
rule of the latter, which extended over a whole generation, was
the salvation of the college, for it was by Westbury's courage and
tact that the designs of Edward IV—to whom, far more justly
than to the sixth of the name, the epithet of despoiler' might
have been applied—were ultimately frustrated. Had the fourth
Edward been able to accomplish his purpose, the entire foundation
of Eton college would have become merged in that of the dean
and chapter at Windsor, and the name of Henry VI would have
disappeared as that of a founder? As it was, the progress of the
college was materially checked, for many years after; and, not
until about the time that the college on the banks of the Cam
was beginning to acquire new lustre by the completion of its noble
chapel, did something of a like prestige begin to gather round the
college on the banks of the Isis. The revenues of Eton, however,
continued to decline; although, in 1536, along with Winchester, it
succeeded in obtaining exemption from payment of tithes; and it
was only with the accession of Edward VI that any appreciable
change for the better took place. The interest shown by that
monarch in Eton affairs is probably attributable, in part, to the
fact that Richard Cox, who had preceded Udall in the headmaster-
ship (1528—34), was both the young king's tutor and almoner;
while the increase in the number of oppidans, noticeable after the
dissolution of the monasteries, may be explained by the fact that
they brought with them (although contrary to the founder's designs)
i See Maxwell Lyte, Hist. of Eton College, chap. iv.


## p. 328 (#344) ############################################

328
English Grammar Schools
a
a certain augmentation of their teachers' scanty incomes. In the
first year of Edward's reign, the college acquired certain advowsons
and estates which had before been held by the suppressed orders.
Cox's successor, Udall-described by Walter Haddon as the best
schoolmaster and the greatest beater' of his time can hardly be
said to have raised the reputation either of the Winchester where
he had been educated or of the college which he was called upon
to rule, although he so far outlived the obloquy which he encountered
as to die master of the school at Westminster. But the precarious
condition of affairs throughout the country, which menaced
every institution and every office, is also to be recognised in
the fact that the headmastership of Eton was held by no less
than twenty-one individuals during the sixteenth century. The
function of the provost was to exercise a general superin-
tendence over the financial administration and also to ensure a
due performance of the duties attaching to each subordinate
office-not excepting that of the headmaster himself. The
appointment of Henry Savile to the provostship was wrung
from the queen only by his own repeated solicitations, and, more-
over, it was a direct infringement of the college statute, which
enjoined that a candidate should be in holy orders, and vested the
election itself in the provost and fellows of King's; but, notwith-
standing, the royal intervention proved eminently beneficial in the
sequel, and Savile's claims were indisputable. He had travelled
much; he was a savant and a collector of manuscripts; and it was
chiefly through the influence of Burghley (no undiscerning patron)
that, some ten years before, he had been promoted to the warden-
ship of Merton college an office which he continued to hold, in
conjunction with the provostship, down to the day of his death.
His fine presence, great powers of work and genuine attainments
eminently fitted him, indeed, for the discharge of official duties,
and, although not free from the reproach of excessive eagerness in
the accumulation of wealth, it might be urged in extenuation that
he showed almost equal readiness to part with it again, in promoting
worthy objects. On succeeding to office, he made it one of his first
cares to restore and augment the library, the fabric of which, at
that time, was in a ruinous condition, while the collection itself had
remained very much what it was at the death of Edward VI. As a
master, however, Savile inspired awe rather than affection; with
the King's men, he was distinctly unpopular, owing to his obvious
partiality for promising 'aliens. ' The oft-cited story, preserved by
1 Lipscombe, G. , Hist. and Ant, of the County of Buckingham, 1v, 474.


## p. 329 (#345) ############################################

Sedbergh
329
John Aubrey, recording his antipathy against 'wits,' is hardly to be
taken seriously, and was probably little more than a sarcasm,
designed to convey his majestic contempt for those artifices where-
with the ingenious schoolboy, from time immemorial, has sought to
produce upon a master the impression of a painful studiousness
which has no actual existence. The men whom he promoted
to fellowships at Merton-to name only Henry Cuffe, afterwards
regius professor of Greek, Francis Mason (author of Vindex
Ecclesiae Anglicanae), Edward Reynolds and John Earle, after-
wards bishops of Norwich and Worcester respectively-together
with his discerning patronage of the then struggling study of
mathematics in Merton, certainly suggest something more than a
stolid preference for mere plodding industry over original power
and special aptitudes.
In the meantime, not a few of the newly founded grammar
schools, as they saw the endowments intended for their benefit
intercepted by the despoiler, must have heard with envy how
Winchester and Eton had escaped a like fate comparatively intact.
Of this, Sedbergh affords a noteworthy illustration. Roger
Lupton, a native of the town, and afterwards provost of Eton, had
already founded there, in 1528, a chantry, 'to pray for his sowle
and kepe a free schole. ' As, however, he saw his foundation
menaced with destruction, and, at the same time, noted the advan-
tages which had resulted from the affiliation of the above colleges
to New and King's respectively, he resolved on the institution of a
grammar school (on the site of his chantry) which should stand
in similar relation to St John's college, Cambridge. Among those
who had enriched themselves from the spoils of the dissolved
monasteries was Sir Anthony Denny, an old 'Pauline,' and also a
member of St John's; and, possibly, it was some misgiving with
respect to the sources of much of his acquired wealth that
led him, in his later years, to contemplate an act of reparation
and establish Sedbergh school on a firm foundation. St John's
still preserves the letter (1549), composed by Roger Ascham, in
which the college authorities thank the knight for his services, and,
after observing that Sedbergh has always sent up excellent
scholars, represent themselves as still by no means free from
anxiety with regard to its fate. It was not, indeed, until after
1 The sense in which the term wit' is used by Aubrey (Lives, II, ii, 525) differs,
probably, from that in which it is en ployed by Hacket (see post, p. 334), who
belonged to an earlier generation, and it may be questioned whether Savile himself
used the word. It was not until after the restoration that it came to denote ingenuity
of contrivance rather than intellectual capacity.
>


## p. 330 (#346) ############################################

330
English Grammar Schools
a
Lupton and Sir Anthony had both been dead, the former eleven
years, the latter about two, that, in February 1551, the royal grant
was issued for the establishment of a free grammar school, to which
St John's college was to nominate the master on condition that it
appropriated two fellowships and eight scholarships for ‘scollers of
Sedberg'L-an item of evidence which serves to show that, side by
side with the process of confiscation which went on during the
reign of Edward, there were other forces in operation, some of
which, at least, served not only to stay the hand of the despoiler,
but, also, to call into existence a succession of new foundations.
That the main impulse in connection with this latter movement
proceeded from the young king himself hardly admits of reasonable
doubt.