No More Learning

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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## p. 318 (#334) ############################################

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


## p. 322 (#338) ############################################

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. In the language of Freeman, 'it was the one act' in
Edward's reign 'in which the public good was at all thought of,'
and the king, ‘of his own act, applied a part of the revenues of the
suppressed colleges and chantries to the foundation of that great
system of grammar schools which bear his name. ' The preamble
of the royal charter given to the school at Louth (the town where
the Lincolnshire rising in 1534 first broke out), in the fifth year
of his reign, may be cited as an illustration of the convictions by
which Edward, throughout, was actuated :
"We have,' says this document, 'always coveted, with a most exceeding,
vehement, and ardent desire, that good literature and discipline might be
diffused and propagated throughout all parts of our Kingdom, as wherein
the best government and administration of affairs consists; and therefore,
with no small earnestness, have we been intent on the liberal institution of
Youth, that it may be brought up to science, in places of our Kingdom most
proper and suitable for such functions, it being, as it were, the foundation
and growth of our Commonwealth2. '
In some cases, indeed, as, for example, at Bedford and at Morpeth
(both 1552) and at St Albans (1553), the initiative proceeded from the
mayor and burgesses of the community. In others, a like design was
carried into effect only through private benevolence, as at Whit-
church (1550) and at Leeds (1552); while, in not a few cases, the
,
endowment was altogether inadequate and eventually died out, and
the school with it. But, after due allowance for such deductions,
it remains undeniable that, in this, the twentieth century, the
foundations at Bath, Birmingham, Bradford, Bury St Edmund's,
Chelmsford, Crediton, Grantham, Lichfield, Ludlow (in Shropshire),
Norwich, Sherborne, Skipton, Tonbridge, Wisbech, are to be seen as
not merely existing, but, for the most part, flourishing, institutions,
1 Baker's Hist. of St John's College (ed. Mayor), 1. 374.
2 Carlisle, N. , Endowed Grammar Schools, I, 822.


## p. 331 (#347) ############################################

Schools of Edward VI .
а
331
standing in direct connection with the universities, and dignified
by the names of a long succession of distinguished men whom,
in the course of the three centuries and a half that have elapsed
since their creation or re-endowment by the youthful Edward,
they have educated within their walls. The endeavour that has
been made to represent Edward himself as a mere tool in the
hands of his ministers, and the numerous endowments that still bear
his name as having been so largely absorbed by the cupidity of
his courtiers as altogether to nullify their legitimate application,
is, indeed, substantially rebutted by the above enumeration.
During the reign of Mary, there followed a marked diminution
in the number of new foundations; but the grammar schools at
Oundle (1556), Repton (1557) and Brentwood (1557) received their
charters, these being the most noteworthy examples, and the two
latter having been endowed by private benefactors. Soon after
the accession of Elizabeth, however, the movement acquired fresh
force under the influence of Burghley and archbishop Parker, and
upwards of one hundred and thirty free grammar schools trace
back their beginning to her reign. With the accession of James,
his able minister Salisbury might plausibly have urged, amid the
financial disorder with which he had to contend, that, so much having
recently been done, the further endowment of new centres might
be left to a more convenient season. This course, however, the
evidence shows, neither he nor his successor was inclined to pursue;
and, although the monarch himself had no more notion of economy
than Edward, and his reign lasted only half as long as that of his
immediate predecessor, the number of schools founded during the
period was, proportionably, greater. But, inasmuch as, in the
.
southern and eastern counties, the want had already, to a great
extent, been supplied, it was chiefly in the west, the midlands and
the north, that the new foundations rose, and these, again, for the
most part, where neither monastery nor chantry had previously
existed-although at Repton it had been the design of the founder,
Sir John Port, to found a chantry school.
In the meantime, in the capital itself there had risen up those
great schools which, alike in their conception and administration,
presented a singular contrast to the exclusiveness and immobility
of Eton and Winchester. Erasmus had given it as his opinion
that there was no better guardian of such institutions than the
married citizen, the cives conjugati, a point with respect to which
his varied experience of seats of learning, both abroad and in
England, certainly entitled him to be heard, and a view to which
V
TE
po
1.


## p. 332 (#348) ############################################

332 English Grammar Schools
subsequent history lends considerable support. The civic founder
assumed, indeed, in relation to education, an attitude in singular
contrast to that of the courtly despoiler. ‘Like as a father pitieth
his children,' so the wealthy merchants of London, roused, it
may be, in the first instance, to a sense of their duty by appeals
from divines and philanthropists, proved equal to a great
occasion, and gave liberally of their substance to the institution
and maintenance of those historic foundations which have en-
titled the memories of John Colet, Sir Thomas White and Thomas
Sutton, to take rank with those of the noblest benefactors of
their country. The school founded (1509) by dean Colet, with
William Lily for its master, still used the Aeditio, or accidence,
compiled by the former and the Latin Syntax of the latter? (both
in 1509 and in English), as well as the less elementary Syntax
written by Lily in Latin (1513), compilations which may, indeed,
be regarded as the original of all the sixteenth and seventeenth
century Latin grammars in use in the schools of England; while
Nowell's Catechism, either in its longer or its abbreviated form-
the choice between the Latin and the English version being left to
the discretion of the master-may be said to have been the cor-
responding manual of religious instruction for nearly the same
period, its use, in one form or the other, being made imperative on
all schoolmasters by the canons issued under Bancroft's auspices
in 1604. Meanwhile, St Paul's school had continued to prosper until
it became the pride and admiration of London. Its catholicity-
its doors being open 'to the children of all nations and countries
indifferently'—the discernment manifest in every detail alike of
its curriculum and of its discipline, together with the sound sense
and scientific insight which had guided the construction and arrange-
ment of its new buildings, had won for the school an almost un-
rivalled reputation, which was further enhanced when Richard
Mulcaster? was appointed to the office of highmaster. His suc-
cessor, Alexander Gill the elder, numbered John Milton among his
pupils, and deserves mention here as one who, in his Logonomia
Anglica, showed that he was well read in the poets of his day.
Under the same auspices, and with the same governors, had been
founded (1541) the Mercers' school, which rose on the site of the
ancient hospital of St Thomas of Accon, one of the once famous order
1 For an account of these two manuals, see Foster Watson's English Grammar
Schools to 1660, chap. xv. See, also, ante, vol. II, pp. 427-430, as to the curriculum
in English schools.
2 As to Mulcaster, see ante, vol. III, pp. 435, 436.


## p. 333 (#349) ############################################

Westminster
333
pi
ac
33
2
of the Knights Hospitallers. The house of that order had been closed
in 1538; but, three years later, it was opened as a free grammar
school, and already reckoned Colet, Sir Thomas Gresham and
Davenant (afterwards bishop of Salisbury) among its alumni;
while, to quote the language of Carlisle, it subsequently 'vied, both
in number and eminence with the greatest schools in London and
in the disputations of scholars on festival days? . '
At Westminster, the existence of the school might be traced
back to the fourteenth century, the roll of the treasury of queen
Eleanor's manors recording, in the year 1386—7, a payment to
the master of grammar and 22 boys; but Henry VIII first
established it on a definite basis. During the reign of Elizabeth,
the school had been brought into direct relation with Trinity
college, Cambridge; and, in 1575, Gabriel Goodman, dean of
Westminster, had succeeded in introducing some novel provisions
in the regulations laid down by his predecessor, among them
that relating to the admission of scholars, whereby it was now
enacted that no boy should be admitted under the age of eight
or allowed to stay after eighteen-limitations rendered necessary
by the fact that parents would sometimes send their children
when scarcely over five. Gabriel Goodman, notable as having
been a member of three Cambridge colleges in succession, and
a benefactor of the university, was, throughout his life, an active
promoter of education and learning. In his capacity of dean, he
may, indeed, seem somewhat dwarfed in comparison with his two
successors—bishop Andrewes, and the last of the ecclesiastical
lord chancellors, John Williams. But, both the latter had some
cause to be grateful to their predecessor for his thoughtful
bequest of that pleasant college retreat at Chiswick, where the
elms which he had planted afforded to subsequent generations
grateful shade in summer and 'a retiring place' from infection
when the plague visited the capital. Of Andrewes, Hacket tells us
that he never walked to Chiswick for his recreation without a
brace of the young fry; and, in that way-faring leisure had a
singular dexterity to fill those narrow vessels with a funnel; while,
at the college itself, he often
sent for the uppermost scholars to his lodgings at night, and kept them with
him from eight till eleven, unfolding to them the best rudiments of the Greek
tongue, and the elements of the Hebrew Grammar, and all this he did to
boys without any compulsion of correction; nay, I never heard him utter so
much as a word of austerity among us.
efilet
1 Endowed Grammar Schools, II, 42.


## p. 334 (#350) ############################################

334
English Grammar Schools
Of Williams himself, his biographer tells us that
he was assiduous in the school, and miss'd not sometimes every week, if he
were resident in the College, both to dictate lectures to the several classes,
and to take account of them. The choicest wits had never such encourage-
ment for praise, and reward 1.
Under Williams's successor Laud, further regulations were intro-
duced, among which the most noteworthy was that whereby
the best scholars in the seventh forme were appointed as Tutors to reade and
expound places of Homer, Virgil, Horace, and Euripides, etc. . . . at those times
wherein the scholars were in the schole, in expectation of the Master
The Merchant Taylors' school, founded in 1561, was a no less
conspicuous example of civic liberality and generosity of spirit
than was St Paul's—its statutes, indeed, being little more than a
transcript of those given by Colet to the earlier foundation, and its
scholars, in like manner, being admissible from 'all nations and
countries. ' Within five years of the time when the school was
first opened, on a site between Cannon street and the Thames, it
had already acquired additional importance by the fact that Sir
Thomas White, a member of the company's court, having recently
founded the college of St John the Baptist at Oxford, proceeded,
on drawing up certain additional statutes for the society, to enact
that forty-three scholarships on the foundation should be restricted
to scholars from Merchant Taylors', such scholars to be 'assigned
and named by continual succession,' while, at the same time, he
retained the nominations in his own hands. This measure
suggested, obviously, by the example of the founders of Winchester
and Eton—was at once productive of a considerable increase in
the numbers. In certain additional statutes for his college, the
founder had also directed that, in elections to scholarships, poverty
should weigh in favour of a candidate, and 'Tobie Matthew,' the
president of St John's, had, consequently, sought to evade the
obligation to elect forty-three scholars entirely from a school
in which a lower class element was, at first, undoubtedly large.
He grounded his defence on the plea that the college itself was
depressed by straitened resources. Fortunately, however, sundry
bequests for the specified purpose of aiding poor students after-
6
1 Hacket, Life of Williams, 1, 45.
2 See the account of the daily routine of a Westminster schoolboy's life
(c. 1610—20), printed, from a transcript preserved in the State Paper office, in G. F
Russell Barker's Memoir of Richard Busby (1895), pp. 77–82. The transcript is said
to be in the handwriting of Laud, who was a prebendary of Westminster from 1621
to 1628.


## p. 335 (#351) ############################################

Merchant Taylors'
335
wards fell in, and served, to some extent, to alleviate the pressure;
while the institution of examinations, to be held three times in the
course of the year, did much to raise the school in public estima-
tion; and the company itself, assembled in court, was able to
declare that Merchant Taylors' was 'a schoole for liberty most free,
being open expressly for poore men's children, as well of all
nations as for the merchaunt tailors themselves? ' In 1607, a
banquet, honoured by the presence of the king, when prince Charles
was admitted a freeman of the company and Ben Jonson composed
an interlude for the occasion, seems to have ushered in a period of
growing prosperity, which lasted unbroken until the destruction of
the school buildings in the great fire of 1666. It was not all
parents, however, who could contemplate with equanimity the
prospect of their offspring being educated along with those of the
poor; and when, within a few years after the above banquet,
Thomas Farnaby, a former postmaster of Merton college, well
acquainted with the educational system of the Jesuits, opened a
school in Goldsmiths' alley, it was soon sufficiently obvious that he
had ministered to a genuine want. He had boarders as well as
day scholars; his class-rooms formed an imposing structure and his
whole premises were palatial; his ushers were well drilled in their
special work. His numbers, consequently,soon rose to three hundred,
of whom the great majority were the sons of titled families. He
was himself an excellent classical scholar with a European reputa-
tion. At the royal request, he compiled a new Latin grammar
avowedly designed to supersede the labours of Lily, and also brought
out, in 1612, an annotated text of Juvenal and Persius which went
through numerous editions, and was followed by other classical
authors. It was about the same time, that John Brinsley, at
Ashby-de-la-Zouch, propounded, in his Ludus Literarius, a new
mode of translation, and invested the teaching of grammar with
unprecedented importance by his elaboration of methods. His
austere, though not harsh, discipline inspired parents with more
than usual confidence; but, unfortunately, his puritan sympathies
brought his flourishing school under the episcopal ban, and he was
fain to retire to London.
The majority of the grammar schools throughout the country
1 Staunton, Great Schools of England (ed. 1869), p. 177.
• See Autobiography of Sir John Bramston, the younger (himself one of Farnaby's
pupils), Camden Soc. Pub. (1845), p. 101.
• Foster Watson, in his English Grammar Schools (pp. 262—7), has supplied us
with a detailed comparison of Brinsley's method with that of Roger Ascham.


## p. 336 (#352) ############################################

336
English Grammar Schools
continued to recruit their numbers from a certain definite area,
represented by the parish or the county in which they had been
founded, according to the conditions prescribed in their respective
charters. Generally speaking, the free school-by which we must
understand 'a school in which learning is given without pay'L
was open to the sons of all freemen within the specified limits. A
public school, on the other hand, was open to the whole kingdom,
and, in some cases, to scholars of other nationalities, and thus,
almost necessarily, involved payment, at least for maintenance or
board. Of the gradual change of the former into the latter, the
foundation of John Lyon, a yeoman of Harrow, affords a remark-
able illustration. In the year 1571, he had procured a charter for
a free grammar school in the village of Harrow-upon-the-Hill, at
which children of the village were to receive gratuitous instruction.
In 1590, having duly endowed the same, he appointed six governors
and created four exhibitions, two at Oxford and two at Cambridge,
of the value of five pounds each. But it was not until the middle
of the seventeenth century that this modest beginning expanded
into a project for attracting the sons of well-to-do parents to a
centre which, by virtue of its healthiness, proximity to the capital
and excellent system of instruction, offered an unprecedented
combination of advantages; while its unrestricted extension was
facilitated by the full discretion originally conferred on the
governors to modify the statutes as they thought fit.
The free school founded at Rugby, in 1567, by Laurence Sheriff,
'citizen and grocer of London,' remained, for a long time, in like
manner, comparatively obscure, being much hampered by the
founder's revocation of a money grant, and deriving, for many years,
but a slender revenue from that 'Conduit Close,' on the outskirts
of London, which afterwards developed into an El Dorado.
1. It has been denied that this was the meaning of “free (grammar) school,” Lat.
libera schola grammaticalis, as the official designation of many schools founded under
Edward VI,' but see Murray's Dictionary, s. v. ' Free,' 32 b, for the evidence in favour
of the affirmative. We have also to bear in mind how largely, in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries, teachers, even at the universities, taught gratis, and, more
especially, the Jesuits. A passage cited by Leach, A. F. , in his English Schools at the
Reformation, p. 82, shows clearly, however, the sense in which the term was accepted
in the year 1548, a chantry priest being there described as licensed 'to kepe & gramer
scoole half-free, that ys to saye, taking of scolers lerning gramer 8d. the quarter, and
of others lerning to rede 4d. the quarter,' that is to say, receiving payment of only &
moiety.
? See Letter from Samuel Butler, D. D. , to Henry Brougham, Esq. , M. P. , 1821, in
which the writer, himself master of Shrewsbury, assumes the correctness of the above
definition. Printed in Baker's History of St John's College (ed. Mayor), 11, 933—4.


## p. 337 (#353) ############################################

Shrewsbury and Christ's Hospital 337
6
The annals of Shrewsbury present us with a complete contrast.
Endowed by Edward VI, at the joint petition of the burgesses of
the town and the gentlemen of the county, its charter remained
in abeyance throughout the reign of Mary; and it first rose into
repute under the rule of Thomas Ashton, fellow of St John's
college, Cambridge, in the reign of Elizabeth. Ashton was himself
entrusted with the compilation of the statutes, wherein it was
enjoined that, in all admissions, the 'godliest, poorest, and best
learned' should be preferred. Shrewsbury, moreover, had the
whole of Shropshire at its back, and the first register of admissions
(1562), containing two hundred and eighty-nine names, among them
sons of knights and esquires, showed the proportion of 'strangers'
to 'townsmen’ to be unusually large. In 1564, Philip Sidney
and Fulke Greville were admitted on the same day; and, under
John Meighen, a layman, who filled the office of headmaster more
than half a century (1583—1635), the numbers rose rapidly, so
that Camden, in 1586, could venture to declare that Shrewsbury
was 'the best filled school of all England. ' The relations main-
tained by Shrewsbury school with St John's college help us to follow
its subsequent history; and, from the correspondence that went on
between the two foundations, we learn that the fortunes of the
school, in the reign of James I, passed through a period of decline:
so much so, indeed, that, in 1627, the bailiffs report that the masters
are resigning, “to the generall grief of the Towne,' and that the
school is 'in very great decay. '
Of the five schools which rose within the city walls of the
capital, none appealed more strongly to civic sympathy than that
of Christ's Hospital, especially designed for ‘young fatherless
children,' who were to be admitted to receive both maintenance
and education in the ancient buildings which had formerly given
shelter to the suppressed community of the Grey Friars. The
foundation, along with the other royal hospitals, had been
marked out for endowment both by Henry VIII and by his son,
and it was only eleven days before the death of the latter
that the young king signed the charter whereby the governors
were to be allowed to receive land in mortmain or to acquire it
to the value of 'foure thousand marks by the yeare. But, to
quote the words of its historian, Christ's Hospital owed its
start, as it has owed its steady continuance in well-doing, to
the generosity of the citizens of London'; and the pressing
needs of the poorer London population may be discerned in the
1 Annals of Christ's Hospital (ed.