;^^,,.vvoi**®*^"''''»'«'^-^r, PRINCETON, N. J. Shelf I BR 754 .C6 L8 1887 Lupton, Joseph Hirst, 1836 A life of John Colet, D. D dean of St. Paul's and EDITIONS OF DEAN CO LETS WORKS. JOANNIS COLETI OPUS DE SACRAMENTIS ECCLESI^E. A Treatise on the Sacraments of the Church, by John Colet, D.D., now first published, in the original Latin, with an Introduction and Notes. 1867. Price 4^. bd. JOANNES COLETUS SUPER OPERA DIONYSII. TWO Treatises on the Hierarchies of Dionysius, by John Colet, D.D., now first published, with a Translation, Introduction, and Notes. 1869. Price \2s. JOANNIS COLETI ENAR RATIO IN EPISTOLAM S. PA ULI AD ROMANOS : An Exposition of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, delivered as Lectures in the University of Oxford about the year 1497, by John Colet, D.D., now first published, with a Translation, Introduction, and Notes. 1873. Price \os. 6d. JOANNIS COLETI ENARRATIO IN PR IMAM EPISTOLAM S. PAULI AD CORINTH lOS : An Exposition of St. Paul's P'irst Epistle to the Corinthians, by John Colet, M.A., now first published, with a Translation, Introduction, and Notes. 1874. Price los. 6d. JOANNIS COLETI OPUSCULA QU^EDAM THEOLOGICA. Letters to Radulphus on the Mosaic Account of the Creation ; On Christ's Mystical Body the Church ; Exposition of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans (ch». i.-v.), &c., by John Colet, D.D., now first published, with a Translation, Introduction, and Notes. 1876. Price \2s. * ^* The above are out of print. THE LIVES OF JEHAN VITRIER, WARDEN OF THE FRANCISCAN CONVENT AT ST. OMER, AND JOHN COLET, DEAN OF ST. PAUL'S, LONDON. Written in Latin, by Erasmus of Rotterdam, in a Letter to Justus Jonas. Translated, with Notes and Appendices. 1883. Price 4J. 6d. GEORGE BELL AND SONS. LIFE OF DEAN COLET. J0ANN£5C0JLETV5' y^um cohsAimiag ex.culie Co^^Jj^ £^rL>r^ <77 doctos inicr vaftljunui jama >jff^ ■ jq J-'r,f'i %V KK.tnwJi^ in. HoUjiuVs'Hcr^Stujia.' 16tC. A LIFE JOHN CO LET, D.D., DEAN OF ST. PAUL'S, AND FOUNDER OF ST. PAUL'S SCHOOL. WITH AN APPENDIX OF SOME OF HIS ENGLISH WRITINGS. J. H. 'L UPTON, M.A., Siiriiiastcr of St. PaiiVs ScJiool, and formerly Fellow of St. Johii's College, Cambridge. LONDON : GEORGE BELL AND SONS, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN. 1887. CHISWICK press:— C. VVHITTINGHAM AND CO., TOOKS COl'KT, CHAN'CERY I.ANE. TO THE RIGHT REVEREND JOHN WILLIAMS, D.D., BISHOP OF CONNECTICUT. My dear Bishop, In dedicating this Life of Colet, by permission, to yourself, I am linking together two names which have been before associated. No one in the United States appreciates the work of our Founder more highly than you do ; few have done more to make it known and honoured among your countrymen. When, in the summer of 1884, after an interval of forty years, you came on an important mission to London, it was one of your first cares to visit Dean Colet's school, then just housed afresh in its stately home in the western suburbs. As you stood before the ancient bust of the Founder, your visit might well have seemed to you something of a pilgrim- age. Nearly four centuries had rolled away since Columbus first set foot on the island shore of San Salvador. Those centuries passed, the land whose outskirts were then discovered had become a mighty nation ; and one of its bishops was standing before the image of an English contemporary of Columbus, a pioneer, in the world of religion and letters, with a faith as strong and a vision as far-reaching as his. In the presence of such memories as those raised by the names of Columbus and Colet, the petty differences of the hour, that may spring up between two great branches of one common stock, will fade into their proper insignificance. You have generously forbidden me to express, by the use of any formal titles, my sense of the honour due to the successor of Vi DEDICATION. Bishop Scabury. But I may at least say how gratified I am at being allowed to send forth this imperfect work under your auspices, and at the opportunity thus afforded me of testifying to my regard for yourself, and also of adding one more link, however slight, to the bonds of good feeling and friendship between our two countries. I remain, my dear Bishop, With every sentiment of respect, Yours most faithfully, The Author. St. Paul's School, West Kensington, W., March 2isf, 1887. PREFACE. THE Life of Dean Colet has been often written, and still more often attempted. His first biographer was his contemporary and friend Erasmus ; and had the sketch left by him, in a letter to Justus Jonas, been fuller and more com- plete, it would have superseded the necessity for any other. But through the neglect of those who should have supplied the requisite details, Erasmus was not able to fill up his out- line. During the next two centuries there appeared at inter- vals various short memoirs, taken almost entirely from that of Erasmus. These need not be specified here. At length, in 1724, there was published by subscription what has been re- garded as the standard Life of Colet. The materials for it had been collected, with characteristic care and industry, by Dr. White Kennett, afterwards Bishop of Peterborough ; and these were given to Dr. Samuel Knight, Prebendary of Ely, an old scholar of St. Paul's School, to arrange and complete.^ This work was reprinted in 1823, with some additions and corrections, by the Delegates of the Clarendon Press, aided by a liberal grant from the Mercers Company ; but the editor's part was by no means carefully performed. During the last twenty years much has been done to make Colet better known to us. Till then, his name was all but ^ The volume containing Bishop Kennett's collections for the work is preserved in the British Museum (Lansdowne MSS., vol. xcvi.), and from an inspection of it, and of Dr. Knight's letter of acknowledgment prefixed, a fair estimate may soon be made of the value of their respective shares in the task. The rough draft of Dr. Knight's " Life " is also in existence, being a small quarto marked "Add. 46(7)" among the Baum- gartner Papers in the University Library of Cambridge. viii PREFACE. unheard of in the annals of his country. He is not so much as once mentioned, I beHeve, in the histories of Hume and Lingard. Now, no history of England leaves him unnoticed ; and in what is perhaps the most popular of all, Green's " His- tory of the English People," an importance altogether excep- tional and unique is assigned to the part he played. The chief credit of this change is due to Mr. Seebohm's " Oxford Reformers," which first showed Colet to us in the true great- ness of his character. If the publication of his own writings during that period has contributed at all to the same result, I have good reason to be gratified. The weight now deservedly attached to the public acts and recorded opinions of such a man is due, not merely to the traits of a singularly lofty character they display, nor to a sense of gratitude for his eminent services in the cause of education, but also to the peculiarity of his position as Dean of St. Paul's from 1504 to 1 5 19. In such an ofiice, held at such a critical time, he formed a connecting link between the old and the new. He publicly preached against the worship of images, and was charged with heresy by his diocesan, though acquitted by his archbishop. He was the attached friend and spiritual adviser of Sir Thomas More, who seems now on the road to canonization ; and no less the friend of Erasmus, some of whose works have been placed on the Index. He sought to end his days with the Carthusians of Sheen, a community that had its martyrs along with Bishop Fisher, and yet he left not a penny to any monastic house, or to any chantry-priest to say masses for him after death. He died in the communion of the Church of England as it then w^as ; while yet, by his public expositions of Holy Scripture, and by his avowed opinions on the non- exaction of tithes, on community of goods, on the wealth and secular occupation of prelates, on the unlawfulness of war, the misuse of offerings at shrines, and other topics, he was suspected, and not altogether without reason, of sympathizing with the followers of Wiclift*e. On these grounds it is not likely that the writings of Dean Colet, now that they have once been made known, will be PREFACE. ix suftered to relapse into obscurity. There is much in them, no doubt, of a Platonic or mystical character, remote from the practical concerns of life ; but there is much also that is in- stinct with latent energy, and in which we may trace the workings of an earlier movement than that of Luther, the first throes of a birth that had begun years before the passionate outbursts of Henry VIII. But it is not for their controversial value alone, as helping to explain or to justify the great religious changes of the six- teenth century, that I would call attention to those writings, with which it is now for the first time possible fully to illustrate the Life of their author. How important they are for that purpose the copious extracts which follow may sufifice to show. That, however, is not all. There is in some of them a beauty and a value above all controversies. I know not how anyone, for instance, can read the " Lytell proheme to the boke," which he prefixed to his School Grammar, without admiring alike the soundness of his judgment and the tenderness of his disposi- tion. And thus I have thought it might prove a not altogether thankless task, to print in the Appendix both his School Statutes, and the Catechism with which this " Lytell proheme " is connected, and also his Convocation Sermon, and the " Order of a good Christian man's life." Some of these have been reprinted before, but not with that fidelity to the originals which they deserve, and which is here attempted. It is some reward for time and labour spent on such a sub- ject as this, that one feels oneself to have been in good com- pany ; to have often listened, in spirit, to the talk of Colet and Erasmus, of Lily and More. It is some reward also, to have been brought into correspondence with others of kindred tastes, the stores of whose more abundant information are never grudgingly imparted. I have endeavoured, in the following pages, to profit by suggestions received at different times from the late Rev. J. H. Blunt, the late Mr. J. R. Green, and Mr. F. D. Matthew, the learned editor of Wiclifte. To Mr. Seebohm above all, as my acknowledgments have been often made before, so must they now be repeated once again. Our X PREFACE. fellow-work, if I may presume so to call it, began just twenty- years ago, and seems likely to end together, with the publica- tion of the third edition of his " Oxford Reformers " in the early months of this year. My obligations in more special cases — as to the " Registrum Statutorum " of Dr. Simpson, and to the " Admission Registers of St. Paul's School " of Mr. Gardiner — will be found recorded in their proper place. For the portrait of Colet prefixed to this work, a reproduction of the early engraving in Holland's "Heroologia" (1620), the reader's thanks and mine are alike due to the publishers. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. Birth and Parentage. PAGE The Hale, Wendover— Henry Colet— State of England in 1450 — The City of London— Sir Henry Colet Lord Mayor — Dame Christian i CHAPTER IL At School. St. Anthony's Hospital— St. Thomas of Aeons — Defective state of education four centuries ago — Schoolbooks in use — Latin Grammars 15 CHAPTER IIL At the University. Magdalen College — State of Oxford in Richard IH.'s time— Con- trast between then and now — University buildings — Studies : the Trivium and Qiiadrivhim — Platonic influences ... 27 CHAPTER IV. Foreign Travel. Journey through France and Italy — Other English travellers — Pos- sible routes — Florence — the Platonic Academy — Savonarola and Ficino — The Papal Court — Preparation for the work of preaching 45 CHAPTER V. Lectures at Oxford. Novelty of the proceeding — Extant manuscripts of the Lectures — Character of Colet's Expositions — Comparison with others of the same period — Extracts from them — Invectives against abuses — Strained opinions on the study of Classical authors — On celibacy — I deal hierarchy — Opinions on controverted topics — Genuine goodness of the writer 59 CONTENTS. CHAPTER VI. Incidents of Life at Oxford. PAGE Friendliness to younger students — Influence on those about him — Letter to the Abbot of Winchcombe — Wolsey — More — Intro- duction of Erasmus — Discussion at Prior Charnock's table — On Christ's Agony in the Garden — Allegorical interpretations — Answer of Erasmus to Colet's appeal — His work bearing fruit . 8S CHAPTER VII. Church Preferments. Abuses then prevalent — Benefices held by Colet— Comparison with others — His disposal of his income Ii6 CHAPTER VIII. Deanery of St. Paul's. The old Cathedral of St. Paul — Secularizing of the building — Spirit of the Cathedral clergy — Reforms needed — New statutes framed — Higher ideal of divine service and of school-work — Divinity lectureship, how discharged — Attempts at amend- ment — Colet's own sermons — Lollards frequenting them — More one of his hearers — The Dean's table — His household — His scholars 124 CHAPTER IX. Foundation of St. Paul's School. St. Paul's (Cathedral) School already in e.xistence — What it might have become — What it did become — Revival — Difficulty of always distinguishing the two schools — "Children of Paul's" — State of the Cathedral School a cause of Colet's foundation — Magnitude of his design — The number of the scholars — The Governors — The subjects of instruction — The first High Master — The Founder's ordinances — His prayer for the school's welfare 154 CHAPTER X. Sermons on Public Occasions. Convocation Sermon of 1511-12 — The hearers of it — Extracts from the sermon — Resemblance to Latimer's — Sermon before the Court in 1513 — Fighting under the banner of Christ — Unlaw- fulness of war — Colet summoned to Greenwich— Hopes of his enemies — Interview with the King — Installation of Wolsey in 1 51 5— Colet's sermon at Westminster — His prayer for the new Cardinal 178 CONTENTS. CHAPTER XI. Incidents of Life at the Deanery. PAGE Cornelius Agrippa studying under Colet's guidance— Renewed efforts of his enemies — Prosecution by the Bishop of London — Relief found in the companionship of Erasmus — Pilgrnnage to Canterbury— Shrine of St. Thomas a Becket — Foreshadowings of a Reformation 199. CHAPTER XII. Approach of the End. Preparation for retiring from public life — The Carthusian monas- tery at Shene — Discipline of its inmates — Visitations of the plague — Colet's ill-health — His last letters— His duties at St. Paul's discharged by Pace — Last will and testament — His death 215 CHAPTER XIII. Colet's Monument. Interment in St. Paul's — Fate of his monument — Busts and Por- traits — Proposed memorial 236 CHAPTER XIV. Writings not previously noticed. Letters to Radulphus " — Colet's views of the Mosaic record of the Creation — " Order of a good Christian man's Life " — Its popu- larity — Extracts from it 246 CHAPTER XV. Concluding Remarks. Erasmus's Life but an outline — Details to be filled in — Colet's character — Its defects, real or supposed — The story of the flogging in school — Abiding influences of his life and work — Estimate of them from different points of view . . . . 237 Appendix A. Statutes of St. Paul's School 271 Appendix B. Colet's " Cathechyzon," and Extracts from his Accidence 285 XIV CONTENTS. PAGE Appendix C. Convocation Sermon 293 Appendix D, " Order of a good Christian man's Life " , . 305 Additional Notes. (i) On the Pedigree of the Colet Family 311 (2) On Colet's connection with the Monaster)- at Shene . . .312 Index 313 Errata. 29, n. I, and p. 36, n. 2, for Broderick read Brodrick. 67, 1. 4,/<3r Battisto read Battista. 175, n. 7., for Innocent's read Innocents'. 177, n. ^,for at the end of Appendix A read in Appendix B. 179, n. \.,for Appendix B nvzrt' Appendix C. 223, top line,/^'r twenty read thirty. 264, n. 2jor 593 readi^^i. PEDIGREE OF THE COLET FAMILY. Robert ColIell,=j='l/i"y'"-". Thomas Colletl=i> William Collell r= John Colil.'= F James Collett .Sir Henry ColIctl,=pC/im/M«. knight, Lo : raaior dau. of of London, who Sir John had 22 children, KnrvtI. ob. 1505. 'coUf, Ion. ok ^Kalh, rim. IVillmm Col,I^K.il,r,„'. J'h\i Colli. John Colletl,- „/ mndo^tr. 1 cytiien and loHm.VIlI. 1 merserof younge. iirl Colil,^ lohn.Jiff,,}., Ed.'l'r. Alic.inn. John COLET, Tl, rZrtob': "' 1519. rim ThomajC Colli. John Coltl.'^Kalhi liliun and dau. o "un'don, IvZ'l I7-24//0/. r///. Willyam C whoe dyed llett. William Collett, T= Arthur Collelt. Mychaell Collet. Katherine ElSth aadAnne John Coin.' o/lheHali, op^j^Hm. lle'lt, the elder, without issue. Willyam Collett^ Iheyonger. | wlllyal ; Nalhaniell'Coll ,t. JohoCollett. Henry Collet. Lastly Collet,. Joane Collet , John, and Jeffry, his place here s ' The will of this John Colet, dated May 5, 1461, wal proved Oct. 27lh, 1461. As he names a brother Thomas, a wife Alice, and ; rertain. See Knight's " Life," p. I n. i " This John Colel is placed here on the authority of an extract from a will in Doctors' Commons (" Reg. Dogett, fol. 4. B.") sent by Browne Willis to Bishop Kennett, April 2- Tlic Itfsiator describes himself as son of Thomas Colet, anS brother of William and John. To be buried in St. Lawrence Jewry. Bequeathes to the church of Wendover, where he to pray for his soul. Further bequests are " to njy uncle, Sir Henry Colet Knl. &c." and to " my Lady dame Christian Colet." He leaves lands in Wendover and Hal I Robert, See Kennetl's MSS., vol. xcvi. (Lansdowne, 1030). ful. 4. due to his Ln I i wife Katherin. tsof this John Colet signed to him. njcclurally. being described as *' son ol Robert Colet of the Hale aforesai ;pelt} a i Pedigrees desc LIFE OF DEAN COLET. CHAPTER I. BIRTH AND PARENTAGE. The Hale, Wettdover. — Henry Co let. — State of England iii 1450. — The City of London. — Sir Heiiry Colet Lord Mayor. — Dame Christian. A PLEASANT English homestead is that of the Hale, near Wendover, Bucks, the birthplace of Dean Colet's father. Sir Henry Colet. The traveller who would visit it, starting from Aylesbury, as the writer did one day at the end of August, 1883, finds himself in a rich and fertile country. Far away behind him stretches the Vale of Aylesbury, with its cornfields and pastures, and the road he journeys by has broad fringes of grass, as if the luxuriance of nature could hardly be kept under by the footsteps of man. In front of him, to the right and left, are the long lines of the Chiltern Hills. At their foot on the west side, just where the slopes cease to be wooded, stands the little town of Wendover, which once returned two members to Parliament, and has numbered John Hampden among its representatives. The road to the Hale runs through it, past the old grey church of St. Mary, and so onwards over a spur of the Chilterns. From the heath- clad summit of the hills a glorious expanse greets the eye ; and nestling in a sheltered corner, at the foot of the south- eastern slope, just beyond a field all aglow with yellow char- lock, the old manor-house of the Hale is seen. The path to it is a narrow lane, winding between high banks interlaced with roots of trees. B 2 LIFE OF DEAN COLET. The house itself is a plain, roomy structure, only two storeys high, but broad, and flanked to the left by outbuildings. Three tall Scotch firs, with the lower branches lopped off, so as not to obstruct the view, keep guard like sentinels in front. The present building, to judge from the date on a water-pipe, was erected in 1748. The old house which it replaced is said to have stood a little more to the right, under Green Hill, in what is now known as the Nut Warren. A few fragments of the older masonry still remain. Whether these go back to the time of Sir Henry Colet, or not, the writer is unable to say. When seen in 1883, the house had a neglected look about it. Three years before, the property had been bought of its pre- vious owner, Mr. Robert Stratfold Collet, by a neighbouring landowner, Alfred de Rothschild, Esq., and a caretaker of his was then in occupation, pending the arrival of a new tenant.^ But even in this transition state there were many things to show how enjoyable such an English country home might once have been. The spacious " house-place," with its floor of red brick, opening into a kitchen, where a wide chimney, un- confined by any range, spanned a fire of pine logs, burning sleepily in the August afternoon, seemed to recall visions of warmth and hospitality in bygone days. Many a bluff farmer, coming in well-satisfied from the neighbouring market, many a tired shepherd, after a long day on the breezy uplands, had had his story or his laugh under the old rafters. Changed as the Hale undoubtedly is, with its George II. date upon the front, there are features in the scenery around ' The direct descendants, in the male line, of the Colcts of Wendover came to an end in 1 750 with Robert Collet— as the name was then spelt. His nephew, Robert Stratfold, succeeded to the estate, and assumed the name of Collet. The grandson of this Robert Stratfold Collet— Thomas Stratfold Collet— dying in 1857, left the property (then 380 acres) to Robert Stratfold Collet, the son of his youngest brother Henry ; and from him, as stated above, it finally passed into other hands in 1880. For information on these matters the writer's best thanks are due to Miss Marian Collet, of Rickmansworth. Sec also Sheahan's " Bucking- hamshire," vol. i., p. 208. A good photograph of the Hale is published by Mr. Payne, of Aylesbury. BIRTH AND PARENTAGE. 3 which we may believe its ancient owners would still have re- cognized. The Chiltern Hills are there, as of old. The steep pathway up the slope behind the Hale, leading to Tring, with its wild strawberries and bowers of hazel, and the splendid vistas between the pine woods and beeches towards the sum- mit, are probably but little altered since the day when Henry Colet roamed over them as a child, gathering health and vigour for the busy life that lay before him. It is not easy to trace the earlier links of the pedigree of the Colet family. Henry, the future Lord Mayor, appears to have been the third son of Robert Colet, of Wendover, having two elder brothers, Thomas and William, or Thomas and John, and a younger brother, James. Several of the name, and probably of the same family, are mentioned about this period as engaged in commerce. In Blythborough Church, Suffolk, was a monument to a William Colet, merchant of that place, who died in January, 1503-4.^ A John Colet, citizen and mercer of London, is also met with, whose will was proved October 27th, 1461. Without delaying further over details of genealogy, it will thus be seen that it was natural for young Henry Colet to be sent to London when the time came, and begin life as a mercer's apprentice. The fact of his having relations engaged in that calling would make the way easier for him. As the year of Sir Henry Colet's birth can be only approxi- mately fixed, the exact time at which he left Wendover for London must be also a matter of conjecture. The date of his death is approximately given by the probate of his will, Octo- ber 20th, 1505, and by the election of an alderman to succeed him in the ward of Cornhill, after his decease, on November 6th, 1505." It is thus pretty certain that he died in the fall of ^ Weever's " Funeral Monuments," p. 761. A list of some of these early Colets is given below in the note following Appendix D. - " The Accounts of the Churchwardens of the Parish of St. Michael, Cornhill," edited by W. H. Overall (p. 218), a work containing much valuable information relating to the City. In Weever's " Funeral Monu- ments," 1631, p. 540, the date upon his monument in Stepney Church is 4 LIFE OF DEAN COLET. 1505. Moreover, as he was elected an alderman, for the ward of Farringdon Without, in 1476, when he may be presumed to have reached middle life, it is probable that he died at a good age, even if he had not completed his threescore years and ten. We can hardly be far wrong, therefore, in fixing his birth between 1435 and 1440. It would thus probably be between 1450 and 1455 that young Henry Colet went up to London to learn the art and mystery of a mercer. It is not easy to over-estimate the greatness of the changes that were going on alike in England and in the civilized world at large during the years through which the city life of Henry Colet extended. He, still more truly than his distin- guished son, may be said to have seen the end of the old and the beginning of the new. The son was a young man, pro- bably still at Oxford, when the Middle Ages came to a close at Bosworth Field. The first mayoralty of the father was in the very year after that battle ; and his crowning distinction as a citizen thus coincided with the establishment of the Tudor dynasty. The two lives together overlap a period of history as pregnant with results as almost any that this country has passed through. Just about the time when Henry Colet arrived in London came the news of the fall of Constantinople — a loss which proved in one sense the greatest gain, for it opened the reservoirs of knowledge, and let the streams of Greek learning flow over and fertilize the West. Only two years before his son breathed his last, Luther had nailed his theses to the church door at Wittenberg, and the struggle of the Reformation had begun. While the father was an alder- man and the son a boy at school, Caxton brought the first printing-press into England. Both witnessed the expulsion of the Moors from Spain, the first doubling of the Cape of Good Hope, and the momentous discoveries of the Cabots and of Columbus. The world was enlarged, in their time, by the addition of America and of the Indies, East and West. At home they both saw the end of the long and desolating given as 15 10, but this, if correctly copied, must have been an error, for the reasons given in the text. BIRTH AND PARENTAGE. 5 Wars of the Roses and the estabhshment of the New Monarchy. But it is needless to recall further the great events which were taking place in the world around, to show how stirring was the age in which the lot of the elder Colet was cast. Enough has been said to show that, however dreary and depressing may have been the state of things at home, there was still a freshness and a grandeur in the changes abroad, such as could hardly fail to stimulate the mind of one in his position, to enlarge his views, and make him feel the dignity of being "a citizen of no mean city." Certainly, to a thought- ful Englishman, a Londoner especially, engaged in the peaceful pursuits of commerce, the state of things around him must then have seemed discouraging enough. The recent loss of Nor- mandy and Guienne had reduced the English possessions in France to the solitary town of Calais. The Kentish men, those most nearly affected by the altered relations with France, had risen in insurrection ; and, after the defeat of the king's forces at Sevenoaks, London had been held by a body of insurgents 20,000 strong. " And from that tyme (the iiij day of Juylle, 1450) unto the morowe viij of belle," writes the old chronicler,^ " they were ever fyghtynge uppon London Brygge, ande many a man was slayne and caste in Temys, harnys, body, and alle ; and monge the presse was slayne Mathewe Goughe and John Sutton aldyrman. And the same nyght, a-non after mydnyght, the Captayne of Kentte dyde fyre the draught brygge of London ; and before that tyme he breke bothe Kyngys Bynche ande the Marchelsy, and lete owte alle the presoners that were yn them." The Wars of the Roses were dragging on their seemingly aimless, hopeless course, with battles which drenched the soil of England with the blood of its bravest nobles and its stoutest ' " The Historical Collections of a Citizen of London in the Fifteenth Century" ("William Gregory's Chronicle"), edited for the Camden Society by James Gairdner, 1876, p. 193. From this interesting contem- porary record several of the particulars which follow have been derived. Gregory was Lord Mayor in 145 1-2. 6 LIFE OF DEAN COLET. yeomen. As each party in the strife prevailed in turn, the heads of opposing chieftains were struck off and sent to adorn the battlements of some country fortress, or the parapet of London Bridge. So plentiful was the grisly crop to be seen on one occasion at the latter spot that, as the chronicler re- marks, " men called hyt in Kente the harvyste of hedys." The stubborn contests of Wakefield and Towton would appear only crowning examples of the general savagery of manners. A craftsman and his apprentice fall out, and the quarrel is settled by a fight within the lists at Smithficld. The master is slain by his man, " and dyspoylyde owte of hys harnys, and lay stylle in the fylde alle that day and that nyght next folowynge. And thenne aftyrward, by the kyngys com- maundement, he was drawyn, hanggyde, and beheddyde, and hys hedde sette on London Brygge, and the body hynggyng above erthe besyde the towre." ^ A woman at Westminster kills her husband, and is "brentt at Toure-hylle." On the same spot, in 1467, a heretic is burned for having " dyspysed the sacrament of the auter : hys name was Wylliam Balowe, and he dwellyd at Walden." A grocer in Cheapside, living at the sign of the Crown, says jocularly that "he will make his son heir to the Crown " (meaning his own property) ; and for this simple jest, uttered when men were making merry at Edward IV.'s accession, the unhappy punster must lose his head.^ And yet, though the affairs of the realm seemed so un- promising — though the old nobility were having their ranks thinned by war and proscription, till there were none left to stand between the power of the throne and the common people — though the change of sovereigns was only from one who was a puppet in the hands of those about him to one who would have all others to be puppets in his hands — yet still " " Gregory's Chronicle," p. 187. At p. 202 is a most ghastly story of an encounter between a " fals peler " (informer) and a "true man," near Winchester, carried on with all the formalities of a tournament, but of such a nature that the reader would sicken at the details. - Harrison, " History of London" (17S6), p. 117, after Stow. BIRTH AND PARENTAGE. 7 there was a steady upgrowth all the time of what was to prove an enduring benefit to the nation. If Edward IV. was as arbitrary as his predecessor was imbecile, so that, as Hallam says, " his reign is the first during which no statute was passed for the redress of grievances, or the maintenance of the sub- ject's liberty," he had yet discernment enough to foster the growth of trade and commerce, and to encourage the enter- prise of London citizens. He increased the privileges of the Mayor and Corporation. Of the City Guilds no fewer than seven received their charter of incorporation in his reign, and among them some of the most important in the number. The Mercers had been incorporated as far back as 1393, but the Merchant Taylors date their corporate existence from 1466, and the Clothworkers from 1480. In the short reign of Richard III. we see alike the importance attached to the support of the citizens of London and the anxiety of the king to secure it by enactments favourable to their commerce. A little incident preserved by the chronicler already mentioned will show as well as anything what the popular conception was of the dignity attaching to the office of first magistrate of the City of London, and will illustrate the nature of the position which Sir Henry Colet had to fill. About Midsummer, 1464, a banquet had been prepared at Ely House, Holborn, on the occasion of making some new serjeants-at-law. To this the Lord Mayor had been invited, as well as some of the nobility. " And at denyr tyme he come to the feste with his offecers, agreing and acordyng unto hys degre. For with yn London he ys next unto the kyng in alle maner thynge. And in tyme of waschynge the Erie of Worseter was take before the mayre and sette downe in the myddys of the hy tabylle. And the mayre seynge that hys place was occupyd hylde hym contente, and went home agayne with owt mete or drynke or any thonke, but rewarde hym he dyd as hys dygnyte requyred of the cytte." And the story goes on to say how the offended mayor and his brother aldermen withdrew to their own hall, and there, without any special trouble or preparation, were " sette and servyd also 8 LIFE OF DEAN COLET. sone as any man couthe devyse, bothe of sygnet and of other delycatys inowe ; " so that when officers had come from the givers of the feast, now sensible of their mistake, bringing dishes from the Holborn table as a peace-offering, their leader was ashamed to deliver his message, " for the present was not better thenn the servyse of metys was by fore the mayre and thoroughe owte the hyghe tabylle." But the Lord Mayor received the messenger with dignified courtesy, so that " he hadde love and thonke for hys massage, and a grette rcwarde with alle." " And thus," ends the chronicler, with honest pride, " the worschippe of the cytte was kepte, and not loste for hym. And I truste that nevyr hyt schalle, by the grace of God." ' It does not lessen the significance of this little passage of arms, to observe that the Earl of Worcester, who was desired to take precedence of the Lord Mayor, was no other than John Tiptoft, certainly one of the most remarkable men of his day, one who united a character of ruthless severity on the battlefield with an intellectual grace that extorted the admi- ration of ^neas Sylvius himself." But while such outward marks of deference as this might easily be claimed by the heads of the Corporation of London at a time when we find Lord Mayors to have been Privy Councillors — as was the case with Geoffrey Fielding in 1452 — it is of more importance to observe that the citizens of London were then, as they long continued to be, foremost in promoting the spread of educa- tion. It was from four of the clergy within the City walls that a petition to parliament first came, in 1447, setting forth the " lack of grammar schools and good teachers in the City of London, and praying leave, which was granted them, to establish schools, and appoint competent masters, in their respective parishes of Allhallows the Great, St. Andrew Hol- born, St. Peter Cornhill, and St. Mary Colechurch." ' Nor ' " Gregory's Chronicle," as above, p. 222. ^ It will be noticed in what high terms Green speaks of Tiptoft's ability (" Short History," p. 292). ^ Brewer, " Life of Carpenter," 1856, p. 62. BIRTH AND PARENTAGE. 9 were the citizens of London content with securing these advantages of education for themselves. They took a leading part in disseminating them over the country. At a time like the present, when so much critical scrutiny is being brought to bear upon the Guilds and the Corporation of this ancient city, it is an act of justice to point to the good deeds in which they once at any rate were so rich. Men who have derived their education from one or other of the many grammar schools scattered over the country may yet be not prepared to learn that no fewer than nearly a hundred of these owe their foundation to the liberality of citizens of London — a fact, adds the writer from whom I borrow this statement, " which pro- bably has no parallel in any other class of men." ^ Such was the community into which Henry Colet was ad- mitted in the opening years of manhood, and over which he lived to preside. And if it was an honour to become a citizen of such a city, that honour was at least not diminished by his being made a freeman of the Mercers' Company. Not to mention the splendid services which that ancient guild have been enabled, through Colet's own bequest, to render to the cause of education, it should not, now at least, be forgotten, that it was a Mercer who brought the art of printing into this country, and that the great system of life insurance, which has spread to such vast proportions, was first established by that same fraternity.' What the steps were by which Henry Colet rose to the eminence he finally occupied, or how he prospered in business, can be inferred only from a few scattered notices which have been preserved. In 1476, we find him elected alderman of the ward of Farringdon Without, and sheriff the following year. As the Lord Mayor of that year, Humfrey Heyford, is mentioned ^ as being a " sykley man, ffeble and weke, wher- ^ Brewer, as above, Introduction, p. xi. - See, for an account of Dr. William Assheton, and the adoption of his scheme by the Mercers' Company, Jeaffreson's " Book about the Clergy," 1870, vol. i., p. 307, sqq., and " The Assurer's Handbook" (published by Effingham Wilson), 1879, p. 42, sqq. ^ In a MS. " Chronicle of London," from 12 15 to 1509, Cotton MSS., 10 LIFE OF DEAN COLET. fore he had not his mynde so fresshely," &c., it is probable that more than the usual burden of office would devolve on Colet and his fellow-sheriff, John Stokker. In 1483, he was elected alderman of Castle Baynard ward, in the room of William Stokker ; afterwards removed by prerogative to Cornhill ward ; and on October 13th, i486, the feast of the Translation of Edward the Confessor, he was raised to the mayoralty. His sheriffs were John Percyvall and Hugh Clopton.' In 1495, under date July 20th, the record is found that Sir Henry Colet, " who once honourably served the office of mayor, should not be charged again against his will ; " but nevertheless we find him mayor once more in that year, with Thomas Knesworth and Henry Somer for sheriffs." The years of Sir Henry Colet's mayoralties — 1486 and 1495 — were both eventful ones, especially the former. In January of that year there had been celebrated the marriage between Henry VII. and the Princess Elizabeth, which was looked on as a pledge of the union of the houses of York and Lancaster. On the 20th of September, shortly before the election to the mayoralty, this union had been prospered by the birth of a son, whose name, Arthur, was prudently meant to recall the ancient glories of the British race. From the Latin court- verses of the time,^ we can see how men's thoughts ran on the hoped-for return of a golden age, when " Arthur would come Vitell. A. 16, leaf 135. See also a similar " Chronicle," from 1089 to 1483, edited by E. Tyrrell, Lond., 1847, p. 146. ^ Sir Henry Colet's signature is found on an indenture preserved in the British Museum ("Add. Ch. 19540"), acknowledging, as Lord Mayor, the receipt of certain standard brass weights and measures, to be kept in the City, from Sir Robert Sutton, Under-Treasurer of England. It is dated June 27th, in the second year of Henry VII. ^ The dates here given are taken from the " Accounts of the Church- wardens of the Parish of St. Michael," before referred to, p. 218, n. •' See Mr. Gairdner's Introduction to the " Historia regis Henrici Septimi " of Bernard Andreas of Toulouse (1858), p. Ix., where some such are quoted, e.g. : — " Quicunquc Arturum vates pricdixerat olim Venturum reducem, maximus ille fuit," &c. BIRTH AND PARENTAGE. II again." It needs no imagination to picture to ourselves the festivities of which the Guildhall would be the scene on such an occasion. Moreover, the years 1486-7 and 1495-6 were both marked by the suppression of strange pretenders to the throne. On June i8th, 1487, the adherents of Lambert Sim- nel were defeated at Stoke, in Nottinghamshire, and the up- start himself captured ; and in October, 1496, Perkin Warbeck landed at Deal, with the support of the King of Scotland, but his forces were dispersed. Under such circumstances, it is only natural to find that Henry seems to have been careful to encourage and promote his own faithful friends and followers, as well as to depress his opponents. The Dean of St. Paul's, Dr. William Worseley, was an abettor of Warbeck, and was brought to trial for sedi- tion before the Lord Mayor's court.^ Respect for the privi- leges of the Church appears to have saved him ; but we are not surprised to find that, on the occurrence of the next vacancy but one in the deanery, when the son of Sir Henry Colet was old enough for such promotion, he should be thought of, even apart from his own eminent merits. The Duke of Buckingham, a connection by marriage of Dame Christian Colet, had lost his life in a premature rising in favour of Henry Tudor, while Richard HI. was still king. Both from his official position, and from his personal attach- ment to the Tudor dynasty, Sir Henry Colet would be one to honour. And so it would appear, from various scattered traces, that benefits were showered upon him and his family. " Cor- rodies," or sustentations at the charge of religious houses, and other favours, are mentioned on several occasions about this period as bestowed on persons of the name of Colet.' But if ^ Bacon, "History of King Henry VH." ("Works," 1730, vol. iii., p. 456) ; Wharton, " De Decanis," p. 231. - See the " Materials for a History of the Reign of Henry VH." (Rolls Office Series), vol. i., p. 457 : " Grant to Robert Colet of two corrodies, the one within the monastery of St. Benet, the other within the monastery of St. Oswald, CO. Lincoln," August 22, i486. A John Colet receives, between March and November, 1487, no fewer than four such corrodies ; two at Abingdon Monastery, and one each at Bardeney, Lincoln, and St. Benet 12 LIFE OF DEAN COLET. Colet or his family received such marks of approbation from the king, he was neither unable nor unwilling to show himself a good friend in return. Owing to the support which Perkin Warbeck received from Flanders, commercial intercourse be- tween that country and our own had been prohibited, and the trade of the merchants on both sides had in consequence begun to suffer. The inconvenience came to be so strongly felt, that negotiations were set on foot between Henry and the Archduke with a view to the restoration of commerce between the two countries. The result w^as, that in February, 1495-6, was concluded the treaty which the Flemings called the intercursus inagmis} To this convention the common seal of the Corporation of London was required to be affixed, but for some reason that body could not be persuaded to give their consent. At this juncture, Sir Henry Colet came to the king's assistance ; and his single bond, as Lord Mayor, was accepted in lieu of the guarantee of the Corporation.- It is not every Lord Mayor who would thus become a surety for his sovereign's performance of his contract, " under plegge and bonde of all my goodes present and to come." While thus acting the part of a public-spirited citizen. Sir Henry seems to have been a liberal promoter of Church work also. In the "Accounts of St. Michael," before referred to, there is mention made (p. 218) of a will made by him " touch- ing the gyfte of the voyd piece of grounde in the Churche yarde to the Parson, Churchwardeyns and Parisheoners of the parishe aforsaid." And he was one of the " principal people " to whom letters were sent in 1505, shortly before his death, for contributions towards the rebuilding of St. Mary's, Cam- in Holme (//'., vol. ii., pp. 128, 156). On July 20, 14S6, a "John Colet, clerk," receives a grant for life, " in consideration of his good and virtuous disposition, of the free chapel of St. Margaret the Virgin, in Hilberworth, Norwich Dioc, void, and in the gift of the crown" {ib., i., p. 513). That this last was the subject of this memoir is clear from the list of his eccle- siastical preferments. ' Bacon's " Hist, of Henry \'II.," as before, p. 469. - The document is printed by Knight from the Cotton MSS. (Vitellius, A. 16). BIRTH AND PARENTAGE. 1 3 bridge.' He was, at the same time, strict in the execution of justice. On the 25th of March, 1495-6, in the course of his second year of office, it is recorded that there " stood upon the pyllery in Cornhyll a cowper named John Camelyn, for bruyng of wynes, and for chaungyng of wyne greke into Candy butts, wherthrugh wyne Grekes wer sold for malveseys." " But we must not delay too long on these incidents of the official life of Sir Henry Colet, interesting as they may be for an illustration of the manners of the time. An event that concerns our purpose more nearly, and which has been already alluded to by anticipation, was his marriage, about 1465, with Mistress Christian Knyvet, or Knevet, of Ashwellthorp, in Norfolk. This family was considered to be of Danish extrac- tion, but Camden and Leland derive the name from Dunevit, or Dunnevit, a town in Cornwall on the Tamar.' Sir John Knevet, of Ashwellthorp, had married Elizabeth, sister and heiress of Sir John Clifton, Knt, of New Buckenham, in Nor- folk. His only son and heir, Sir John Knevet, married, first, Alice, daughter of Reginald, Lord Grey of Ruthyn, and, secondly, Joan, daughter of Humphrey Stafford, Duke of Buckingham. His daughter Christian became the wife of Henry Colet, and after her husband's knighthood was known as the good Dame Christian. The match must have been a most advantageous one for young Colet. Her family on both sides was highly connected. Her brother was son-in-law to the Duke of Buckingham. Her father was sheriff for Norfolk and Suffolk, and had acquired by his marriage with the Clif- ' See Cole's MSS., vol. ix., leaf 58, under "St. Mary Major in Cambridge." ^ Cotton MSS. (Vitellius, A. 16), above quoted, leaf 158. Cretan wines, under the names of malmesey and muscadine, were largely imported into this country at the period referred to. Immoderate indulgence in these " luscious Greek wines " is assigned as one of the causes which made the sweating sickness so fatal in this country. See Hecker, " Epidemics of the Middle Ages " (tr. by Babington), p. 187, n. ^ Burke, "Extinct and Dormant Baronetcies" (1S44), p. 293. The pedigree given by Burke on the next page may be corrected in some particulars from Blomefield's " Hist, of Norfolk " (1739), vol. i., p. 294, from which most of the statements in the text are taken. 14 LIFE OF DEAN COLET. ton heiress a fine property, including Buckenham Castle. Her kinsfolk and connections would no doubt be friends of in- fluence for her husband in the civic offices that were in store for him. But of much more consequence than this were the qualities of head and heart which Dame Christian possessed. She is called by Erasmus " insigni probitate mulier," and between her and the lively Dutch scholar there seems to have been a feeling of mutual regard. In a letter written in 15 12, her son speaks of her as in grief for the death of a servant of his, " who died at her house, whom she loved as a son, and for whose death she wept as though he had been more than a son."^ A still later letter, written to Erasmus in 15 16, is dated from Stepney, at the house of his mother, " who still lives in a charming old age, often making cheerful and plea- sant mention " of his correspondent. It has often seemed to the writer, now that the beneiits of Dean Colet's foundation are to be applied, in part, to the education of girls, that some lasting memorial should be raised, in connection with that application, to perpetuate the name of the good Dame Christian. In one respect, and in one only, as it would appear, the marriage was not a prosperous one. Out of an unusually large family, only one, the eldest child, survived to grow up to maturity. John, the first-born of eleven sons and as many daughters, was the only one who grew up to manhood ; and his venerable mother survived even him. What was the cause of this mortality we are not told.^ In any case, the sight of it may have helped to give a yet austerer cast to the naturally serious disposition of the future Dean ; and, in particular, to foster in his mind the strong preference he often expresses for a celibate life. ' Scebohm's " Oxfoid Reformers," p. 251. - One child, Thomas, was buried in New Buckenham Church : " Hie jacet Thomas filius Henrici Collet, civis et aldermanni Civitatis London., qui obiit die Nativitatis See Maree [su] 1479." — Blomefield's " Norfolk," ubi sup., p. 271. CHAPTER 11. AT SCHOOL. SA Anthony's Hospital, — St. Thomas of Aeons. — Defective state of edu- cation four centttries ago. — Schoolbooks in use. — Lati7i Grammars. IT is a matter for regret that much uncertainty hangs over what should be an interesting chapter in the Hfe of Colet, his education at school and at the university. Strange as it may seem, it cannot be definitely ascertained where he, to whom school-teaching owes so much, was himself a learner. It is commonly supposed that he w^ent to the school of St. An- thony's Hospital, Threadneedle Street ; ' and, after that, to Magdalen College, Oxford. But both statements rest on little more than conjecture. St. Anthony's, from its repu- tation, and the school attached to St. Thomas of Aeons," from its connection with the Mercers' Company, would be likely to attract one in the position of Mr. Alderman Colet, when thinking of sending his boy to school ; but that is all that can be said. Before giving a short account of each of these, it is worth while trying to realize the scantiness of the means of educa- tion within reach of Londoners about the middle of the 1 See Dr. Bliss's note to the article on Colet in Wood's " Athenae." The statement in Knight (" Life," p. 8), that we have no reason to doubt that he was educated " in that school which bare the name of his parish," is ambiguous. The parish of St. Anthony, or St. Antholin, Budge Row, in which Sir Henry Colet lived, had nothing to do with the Hospital above referred to, in Threadneedle Street. - Carlisle, in his " Endowed Grammar Schools," ii., p. 48, places Dean Colet at the head of the list of eminent scholars, who, to use his words, " seem most certainly to have been educated in this school." But this, like the other, is only a matter of conjecture. l6 LIFE OF DEAN COLET. fifteenth century. This cannot be done without some efifort We must, of course, sweep away from our mental view the great schools of modern London. St. Paul's must go, as not founded till 1509 ; so must Westminster (in its present form), as not founded till 1560; so must Merchant Taylors, which sprang up the year after, and the Charterhouse, which followed half a century later. The City of London School, which many might think the most recent of all, had a germ or nucleus even then existing. This was the bequest of John Carpenter, Town Clerk of London in the reigns of Henry V. and Henry VL, for the " finding and bringing up of four poor men's children with meat, drink, apparel, learning at the schools in the universities, &c., until they be preferred, and then others in their places for ever." ^ But this slender begin- ning was but as a runlet to the future river. All these, then, must go. Instead of them, it cannot be denied, there were certain schools which we must try to recall to mind. Every cathedral, and, as a rule, every large monastery, had its school. Three, in particular, we read of as flourishing in London as far back as the reign of Stephen — the cathedral school of St. Paul, the abbey school of St. Peter, Westminster, and a third, which is conjectured to have been at St. Peter's, Corn- hill.' But, from whatever causes, schools appear to have become few and ill-supported by the middle of the fifteenth century, and not in London only, but in other parts of England as well' And so, as was briefly stated before, we find that in 1447 a petition was presented to parliament by four of the London clergy, setting forth the scarcity of good schools and teachers in London, and praying for leave to ^ Brewer's "Life of Carpenter" (2nd ed.), p. 72. From so small a beginning was developed, in 1835, the present noble institution, in which the writer had the honour of being an assistant-master,. 1S59-1864. * Carlisle, as before, p. 42. ^ See the petition of William Byngham, Rector of St. John Zachary, to Henry VL, in 1439, '" favour of a sort of training-school he had established at Cambridge, whence scholars might be sent in turn " to those places where grammar schools had fallen into a state of desolation." — Brewer, as before, p. 67. AT SCHOOL. 17 establish such in their respective parishes. These were— All- hallows the Great, St. Andrew Holborn, and St. Mary Cole- church. The gist of their complaint appears to have been, that the teachers were too few to do justice to the number of scholars seeking instruction. " For wher," say they, " there is grete nombre of lerners and few techers, and al the lerners be compelled to go to the few techers, and to noon others, the maisters waxen riche of monie, and the lerners pouerer in connyng, as experyence openlie shewith, agenst all vertue and ordre of well publik." ' Their petition was granted ; and though no relic remains at this day of three out of the four, the fourth, the one established in the parish of St. Mary Cole- church, still flourishes, at a little distance from its original site, as the Mercers' School. We can now understand how this last-mentioned school should have been likely to divide with St. Anthony's the choice of one in Henry Colet's position. It was not, indeed, till after the grant made by Henry VHI. in 1542, by which the col- legiate property of St. Thomas of Aeons passed into the pos- session of the Mercers' Company,^ that the school attached to it came to be known by their name. But there had been a connection between the two from an early period. When the sister of Thomas a Becket, Agnes, the wife of FitzTheobald de Heli, had, conjointly with her husband, founded the hospital and chapel that were to keep her brother's name in memory, the fraternity of the Mercers were appointed as patrons. Their hall and chapel closely adjoined the hospital.^ Gilbert a Becket himself had been a mercer, and his house is said to have stood near the Cheapside entrance of the modern hall. The very name of Aeons, a corruption of Acre, bore witness to the tradition that from that city had come his Saracen ^ Quoted by Brewer from " Rotuli Parliamentorum," vol. v., p. 137. ^ Herbert," History of the Livery Companies," i., p. 263. The grant was in consideration of a sum of ^969 17^. dd. ^ The great fire of 1666 destroyed these buildings, which, had they still existed, would have been among the most interesting in London. The present chapel is partly on the ancient site, but has little historical interest in itself. C l8 LIFE OF DEAN COLET. bride. So that, even as early as the year 1476, or thereabouts, there was a connection between the Hospital School of St. Thomas of Aeons and the Mercers' Company, such as might naturally have weight with a member of that company in choosing a place of education for his son. It would be difficult at this distance of time to pronounce on the respective merits of these two schools, or to determine precisely what kind of teaching was given in each. Both were gradually developed. The hospital called after St. Anthony^ was originally established, in the place of a Jewish synagogue, about the year 1231. The foundation was at first for a master, two priests, a schoolmaster, and twelve poor men. In the reign of Henry VI., a Dr. John Carpenter ■ was master of the hospital ; and about 1442 the king endowed it with certain property for the maintenance of five scholars in the University of Oxford, such scholars to have the benefit, before going to Oxford, of a previous training in grammar at his newly-founded College of Eton.' The king's foresight in thus preparing feeders, as we should now call them, for his splendid foundation at Eton, is worth noticing. In 1474 Edward IV. further augmented St. Anthony's, on the model of the parent institution at Vienne in France. But soon after the hospital became annexed to St. George's, Windsor ; and though the school continued into the reign of Elizabeth, the rest of the property was not left to wait for the inquisition of Henry VIII. The story of its dissolution, as told by Stow, is so instructive, and may be thought such a typical one, as to deserve quoting. " One Johnson," he says, "a Schoolmaster here, became a prebendary of Windsor ; and then, by little ^ I retain the popular fomi of the name. St. Antony, sometimes called the Great, was reputed the father of monasticism in Egypt. He died in 356, at the age, as is generally stated, of 105. ^ Confused by Timbs, " School-days of Eminent Men," 1858, p. 48, with the Town Clerk of that name before mentioned. Probably they were relations ; for the latter leaves a bequest by his will to " Master John Carpynter, warden of the hospital of St. Anthony." The bequest was a book on architecture. See Brewer, ubi sup., p. 137. ' Stow's " Survey," by Strype, 1720, vol. i. (bk. ii.), p. 120. AT SCHOOL, 19 and little, followed the Spoile of this Hospitall. He first dis- solved the Quire, conveyed away the Plate and Ornaments, then the Bels, and lastly put out the Almes-men from their Houses, appointing them portions of 12 pence the week to each. But now I heare of no such matter performed : for their houses, with other, be letten out for rent, and the Church is a preaching-place for the French nation, who hold it at this day of the church at Windsor." ^ Still, in spite of such an antici- pator of Henry, the school of St. Anthony was largely attended as late as 1562, when two hundred children from it, " all well be-seen," marched in procession from Mile End to Austin Friars.^ And a courtier of Elizabeth's, who was in attendance at Kenilworth in 1575, accounts for his scholarship by saying, " I went to school, forsooth, both at Poules and also at St. Antonies ; [was] in the fifth Forme, past Esops Fables, read Terence, Vos isthcBC mtro aiiferte, and began with my Virgil, Tityre tii patiilce. I could [= knew] my Rules, could construe and pars with the best of them." ^ The anecdote is interesting, both as showing us in faint outline what the course of study was, and as indicating the estimation in which St. Anthony's School was then held.'' Of St. Thomas of Aeons some account has already been given.' The Sir John Neel who, with three others of the London clergy, petitioned parliament in 1447 for the establish- ment of additional schools, was master of the hospital. Both he and William Lichfield, rector of Allhallows the Great, were among the friends of John Carpenter. But of the fortunes of ' It is instructive to compare with this the article in the " Times " of Dec. 24th, 1885, headed, "The Demohtion of the Charterhouse." ' Stow, " Survey," p. 130. ^ lb., p. 120. * St. Anthony's claimed William Latimer, Sir Thomas More, and two archbishops— Heath, of York, and Whitgift, of Canterbury. See Johnson's "Life of Linacre," 1835, p. 20. ^ See above, p. 17, and comp. Carlisle, ii., p. 44 ; Herbert, i., p. 263. The list of eminent men who, as Carlisle says, " seem most certainly to have been educated in this school," wants authentication. He places Sir Thomas Gresham among them ; but Gresham's biographer (Burgon, "Life and Times," &c., 1839, i., p. 44) does not appear to be aware of it. 20 LIFE OF DEAN COLET. the school connected with the hospital little is known till after the suppression of religious houses in Henry VIII. 's time. Stow mentions it as one of four schools — the other three being St. Paul's, St. Peter's Westminster, and St. Anthony's — from which he had heard rival disputants contend in his youth. ^ It is much to be regretted that no account of Colet's school- days has been preserved for us. Not only do we fail to meet with any notice of them in other records, but in his own later writings Colet makes little or no allusion to this period of his life. He is in this respect as reticent as Erasmus is communi- cative. On whatever subject Erasmus writes, it is always illustrated from the world as it lies about him, or through which he has passed. His reminiscences of schools are for the most part rather gloomy, being tinged by his own ex- periences. " At the present time," he writes in one place,^ " all public instruction has passed into the hands of school- masters. And though there ought to have been the greatest care in appointing them, those assigned to the post are, as a rule, a shabby, broken-down set of men, sometimes hardly in their senses. So mean the place, so miserable the pittance, you would say that pigs were being reared there, and not that respectable people's children were being taught." In London, we may hope, things were better in this respect. But, to our modern ideas, a schoolboy's life in the last quarter of the fifteenth century would seem to have been rough and hard. The interior of the school-room is familiar to us from the many woodcuts on the title-pages of old books,^ sometimes from the corporate seal of ancient schools, where such a scene is represented. There we see the awe-inspiring Orbilius seated, with birch erect in one hand, and the forefinger of the other tracing a line of the open book on his knee. Beside him is the biggest boy, reading from it, while the rest of the flock are ^ " Survay," ed. 1598, p. 55. - " Christiani Matrimonii Institutum," 1536, leaf A 8. ^ As on that of a copy of " Sulpitii verulani oratoris .... opus gram- matices," with no date beyond the imprint, " Perussie, septimo ydus Aprilis," but, I should think, of about 1490. AT SCHOOL. 21 seated on the floor, or, it may be, on little three-legged stools, gazing up with looks of admiration at the performance. Some- times, but rarely, they sit at desks, with stiff, high backs, as though for writing. But, in general, the lesson was oral. Boys learnt by hearing what the master said. The attentive ones would go over it again mentally at home, marking by a note in the margin of their text-book what they had thought most worthy of being remembered.^ The books a boy of Colet's time would be set to learn, after his "ABC book,"' would be, first and foremost, his Latin Grammar ; then, probably, Cato's " Disticha de Moribus," and, afterwards, one or more of the authors previously named by Queen Elizabeth's courtier,^ as read in his time at St. Anthony's School. The Latin Grammar in use about 1476 would as likely as not be either the " Doctrinale " of Alexander Dolensis, or the " Editio Secunda " (the " Second Part ") of ^lius Donatus, commonly called a Donat. A few words may be said about each of these once famous school-books. Alexander, surnamed De Villa Dei (Ville-Dieu), a native of Dol in Brittany, whence his common appellation of Dolensis, was a Minorite friar who flourished about 1240.^ He was the author of various works, but by far the most popular was his Latin Grammar in rhyming hexameters. It began : — " Scribere clericulis paro doctrinale novellis, Pluraque doctorum sociabo scripta meorum. Jamque legent pueri pro nugis Maximiani Quae veteres sociis nolebant pandere caris." ^ ^ See the rules, " De disciplina et puerorum institutione," appended to the " Christiana studiosse juventutis institutio " of Christophorus Hegendor- phinus, Paris, 1531 : "Si quid venustius, si quid elegantius, si quid con- cinnius dictum videbitur, annotabis indice, aut asterisco apposite." In the Library of St. Paul's School are one or two early copies of Horace and Terence with the margins thickly fringed with such index-fingers. ^ This usually contained some elements of religious instruction besides the alphabet. There is a specimen of one, of a somewhat later date, in the Grenville Library (numbered 11686). ^ Ante, P- 19- * Trithemius, " De Scriptoribus " (1546), p. 189. ^ From an edition printed at Venice in 14S2, 4to. 22 LIFE OF DEAN COLET. This may give the reader some faint idea of the style of the work ; but nothing short of an actual examination of some specimens of early-printed editions, or still older manuscript copies, can give him any conception of the laborious way in which every line, almost every word, of the text was com- mented on, first in print, and (as often happened) in manuscript notes superadded. Here, for instance, is the printed gloss on the first line alone. I must ask the learned reader's indulgence for giving it in English : — " Since the text is plain, it needs no explanation. But still, in accordance with the method to be observed in what follows, construe thus : — /, master Alexander, am preparing to write a ma7inal^ that is, a book conveying learning, for young little clerks, that is, for scholars ; as though to say, this work is not being written for advanced but for elementary students." As if this were not enough, in another edition ^ the reader's attention is directed to the first line by the printed note, " Intcntio Alexandri." And opposite it, in the copy described below,' some diligent student has improved the hint by com- posing three lines in the same leonine metre on the distinction between \hQ formal, material, efficient, and final cause of the work. His rhymes are often ingenious, as when, on the third line, he glosses, regardless of quantity : — " Tunc homo nugatur, cum falsa loquens fabulatur. Sed tunc mentitur, sibi discors cum reperitur." By the beginning of the next century, Alexander began to fall into disrepute. "Asinus Parrhisiensis " is the title applied to him by one of the speakers in the " EpistoL-c Obscurorum Virorum ;" ' and Skelton, about the same time, ridicules him as "a gander of Menander's pole." ' ' The word doctrinale, answering to doctrinatn, cannot be literally translated. Lchrbuch in German would answer to it. " Ulme, 1487, leaf a, ii. ' Brit. Mus. 12933, 1. * Ed. 1557, leaf Q 4, vers. ' Quoted in Warton's " History of English Poetry" (Murray's reprint), p. 549, n. Sec also Mullingers" University of Cambridge," part i., p. 5i5,n. AT SCHOOL. 23 Still more common in schools, perhaps, than the " Doc- trinale " was the work of ^lius Donatus, the teacher of St. Jerome. Nothing can testify more distinctly to the wide use of his treatise, " De octo Partibus Orationis," than the fact that the author's name came to be employed to express an elementary treatise, or introduction, for any other subject. " Than (then) drave I me among drapers my donet to lerne," wrote Longland in his "Vision of Piers Plowman," ^ and the title which Colet himself afterwards gave to the little Latin grammar of his own composing, " Coleti aiditio," was plainly in imitation of the " Donati editio secunda." Being a short, practical manual in prose, it would only weary the reader to give extracts from it. A similar tendency to that which crowded the lines of Alexander with glosses, perverted " Donatus " into a treatise of morals. Among the works ascribed to the Chancellor Gerson, about half a century before the school-days with which we are concerned, is a " Donatus moralizatus." ^ In it the terms of the grammarian are twisted into a religious signification, and the declension of the noun is made to stand for the declension of the soul from God. Had Colet been at school some ten or twenty years later he would have been in time for the greatly improved grammars of Holt and Stanbridge. The " Lac Puerorum," or " Mylke for Children," of Master John Holt, said to be the earliest Latin Grammar published in this country, appeared between i486 and 1496.^ Its author was master of the school attached to Magdalen College, Oxford, and therefore not to be confounded, 1 Warton, as before, p. 186, n. - " Histoire Litt^raire de la France," t. xxiv. (1862), p. 384. " Prima declinatio est ab obedientia Dei in suggestionem diaboli : per hanc decli- navit Eva,"