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Medieval studies ... no. 10.

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(i). The Monastic Legend - - . ij. ntt
(j). Guelf and Ghibelline - - - i/- „
*(3). SiDE-Li©Btts ON THS Franciscans- • - 6d. „
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(6). The Truth about the Monasteries - - Out of print
*(fl). Religious Education before the Reformation - 6rf. rut
(8) Priests and People in Medieval England • i/- ,,
(9). The Failure of the Friars - - - - (>d. „
(10). Monastic Schools in the Middle Agbs - - 2/6 „
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MEDIEVAL STUDIES, No. X.

MONASTIC SCHOOLS IN
THE MIDDLE AGES.

(A Paper read before the International Congress of Historical
Studies, April 7th, 1913, and reprinted, by kind
permission, from the Contemporary Review of
June, 1913, together with an Appendix of
Illustrative Documents.)

BY

G. G. COULTON. M.A..
Late Birkbeck Lecturer in Ecclesiastical History at Trinity College, Cambridge.

PRICE 2s. 6d. NET.

London ;
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MONASTIC SCHOOLS IN THE MIDDLE AGES.

WE may sometimes read the complaint that monastic history
suffers from a lack of documents ; but I trust that I may start
with the full assent of such an audience as this, in pointing out that
there is no class of mediaeval society about which the documentary
evidence is so full and so varied as about monks and nuns. Yet
in very important fields of monastic history, as Professor Savine
has pointed out, we are still practically where the antiquaries of
the seventeenth century left us, in spite of the vast accumulations
of printed matter which have since appeared. I venture, therefore,
to claim your attention to a question which has been very
imperfectly treated in England, and not really done justice to
abroad, despite its capital importance not only for past but for
contemporary history. What did pre-Reformation Europe (and
more especially England) owe to the raonasteries as educational
centres in the strict sense of the word ? It goes without saying that
prospective monks and nuns, oblates and expectant novices, owed
to the parent house, in most cases, whatever teaching they ever
enjoyed. But what schooling did monasteries give to the
population outside ?
I will begin with the nunneries, since in this scholastic depart
ment we hav^^nore varied evidence for them than for the men's
houses; and evidence which, perhaps, affords a key by which we
can unlock the -rest of the problem. When Robert Aske, in 1536,
undertook to justify his rebellion against Henry's recent measures,
including the suppressing of the monasteries, he pleaded that " in
" the nunneries their daughters were brought up in virtue."
Whose daughters ? The daughters of gentlemen, a significant
limitation which has been sadly neglected by most writers on this
subject. This was curiously emphasised in the Journal of
Education for 1910, when Mr. A. F. Leach attempted to check
current theories by a reference to documentary facts. " Not a single
" case of a poor girl boarded in a nunnery," wrote Mr. Leach, " has
" yet been produced " ; to which his opponent retorted by pointing
out that this was the first time that anyone had dared to print such
things in the English language. This retort, I believe, is as true
as it is essentially irrelevant. While foreign scholars of the Roman

MONASTIC SCHOOLS IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 3
Church, from Mabillon down to Denifie of yesterday and M.
Robert of to-day, have not only taken great pains to marshal
facts, but have also shown clearly that there are two sides to this
question, English scholars have raainly copied from each other,
and not always copied correctly.
The theory that poor girls were taught by the nuns first appears,
I believe, in an anonymous and frankly partisan manuscript
written two generations after the Suppression, which offers no
evidence, while it contains gross and demonstrable errors. (Cole
MS. XII., in British Museum.) Its first appearance in print is,
I believe, in Thoraas Fuller, a churchman who had little sympathy
with Puritanism, who wrote more than three generations after the
Suppression, and who has not a single document to quote for his
assertion. From that time forward, however, it has been accepted
as a coraraonplace. Fuller's words have been copied from one
generation to another by writers who have even less sympathy with
Puritanism than he. They are loosely paraphrased by Collier, who
again produces no evidence. Then Tanner, usually a diligent
antiquarian, founds his assertions as to mediaeval nunnery schools
upon Fuller and Collier, and supports thera by three quotations
frora raediaeval docuraents, not one of which will bear examination.
Bloraefield evidently relies upon Tanner; Taylor and the new
editors of the Monasticon upon Bloraefield ; all is raere repetition,
without a shred of fresh evidence. Finally, the raost accredited of
modern writers quotes Taylor, and makes a show of producing
sorae proof, which, however, is only a confused raisinterpretation
of the docuraent which Taylor and Dugdale happen to raention in
the next sentence. The result of this has been seen ; in 1910 one
of the strongest arguraents against Mr. Leach is this of
presuraptuously differing frora Dugdale, Fuller, and Tanner, not
one of whom had, on this particular point, produced a single shred
of evidence which was' not based upon some raisinterpretation or
misquotation. Indeed, Fuller is even cited as an authority upon
minute details, on the plea that, " he raust have known, frora
" persons who had lived in touch with the monastic system of
" education, a good deal about the curriculum." Yet Fuller, as a
raoraent's study of the dates will show, had precisely the same
opportunities of picking up first-hand evidence on this point as I
have enjoyed concerning the taking of the Bastille in 1789. It is
even more grotesque when the sentimental antiquary Aubrey's
assertions are put forward (I again quote textually) as those of
"alraost an eye-witness." Aubrey saw the dissolution with the
same eyes (so far as dates are concerned) with which many here
present see the Battle of Bunker^ Hill. Even more curious,
perhaps, is the legend of Abbot Whiting's educational activities at

4 MONASTIC SCHOOLS IN THE MIDDLE AGES.
Glastonbury, as told in modern books which pass for standard
authorities. To the present day (apart from Mr. Leach's too brief
contributions to this subject), the reasoning runs in effect thus:
" We all know that poor children were taught by the nuns; that
" has been taken for granted for centuries, and needs no proof.
" The poor, then, were certainly taught; and, if we can cite a few
" cases of well-born girls in addition, we have thus proved a com-
" plete system of feraale education for all classes in the Middle
" Ages." Yet, in fact, the whole question of the nunnery-school seeras to
have been at bottom a financial question ; a privilege frora which
the poor were almost necessarily excluded. Teaching was one of
the few ways in which ill-endowed convents could make a little
money ; and it is extremely important to note that the first raention
of school-girls in episcopal registers is by way of restriction or
absolute prohibition. Nuns were forbidden to teach, as they were
forbidden lo raake raoney in other irregular ways: by taking in
boarders en pension, by admitting fresh sisters in consideration of a
sraall lurap sura of ready money, by doing private needlework for
sale', or by begging about for their livelihood. In each case the
thing was contrary to all strict ideals; the transaction raight be
comraercially sound, but it was spiritually unsound; it dragged
back the votaries into contact with the world frora which they had
fled ; and therefore both the author of the Ancren Riwle, and .^Ired
of Rievaux, who wrote immediately for anchoresses, but argued on
principles equally applicable to nuns, as explicitly forbade the
teaching of children as St. Caesarius of Aries had forbidden it. To
the nun even more than to the monk spoke those words of St.
Jerorae which were echoed frora mouth to mouth down the Middle
Ages : Monachus non docentis sed plangentis habet officium.
Boniface VIII.'s Bull Periculoso enforced the Benedictine rule of
claustration upon the female, with a literal severity which had never
been applied to the male. The atterapt to carry out this strict
claustration did, in fact, constantly fail, but it was seriously and
repeatedly made, and is sufficient to explain why the nunnery-
school appears in visitatorial records, first, as a thing to be for
bidden, and only later as a thing which has fought its way through,
and raust therefore be tolerated under certain restrictions.
And, whatever we may think in general of the struggle between
nuns and legislators, in this matter of schools our sympathy must
be wholly with the ladies. Side by side with the Benedictine theory
of claustration stood another Benedictine theory — that of the
financial independence of the convent. Yet already in the thir
teenth century, as episcopal visitations show very clearly, a large
proportion of the nunneries had fallen into, or were verging upon,

MONASTIC SCHOOLS IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 5
insolvency. The struggles of mediaeval visitors to keep down the
nuraber of nuns, and to keep up the number of monks, form a very
striking and instructive contrast. In earlier days, nobles gave
lands when they gave their daughters; but, from the end of the
twelfth century at least, great people were everywhere making a
mere convenience of the nunneries, not only as refuges for their
superfluous daughters, but as lodging-houses for their wives. The
rougher sort took convent hospitality by force, the gentler majority
paid for it ; but even the paying guest was anathema to the monastic
disciplinarian. We find the attempt to keep outsiders away from
the convents as early as the sixth century, in the Rule of Caesarius
of Aries. Statutes and visitors forbade the practice from century
to century; statutes and visitors went on forbidding; some lodgers
got special leave from the Bishops, but many more came without
leave. Between such lodgers and school-girls the disciplinarians
often make no distinction whatever; the injunction is that all
secular persons are to be excluded. But often, again, the
phraseology is more explicit, and expressly forbids scholars.'
The earliest visitations I know of are those of Odo Rigaldi, " the
"model of good life," the ex-professor of Paris, the friend of
St. Louis and Bonaventura, and one of the three mainstays of the
great reforming council of Lyons in 1274. His diary of visitations
extends from 1248 to 1269, and contains eighteen notices of school
girls or schoolboys, always in nunneries. It is improbable that
there were raany cases unnoticed ; for his later habit is to take notes
of the whole population of a convent — nuns, lay-sisters, and
servants. Every one of these eighteen notices runs in terras of
absolute prohibition, with one exception, which is probably due to
a raere clerical oversight. A good example is that of Villarceaux in
1268. " Thereare nineteen nuns, four lay-sisters, and four common
" maid-servants. We prescribed, as we had done in other cases,
" that the nuns should utterly put away all secular ladies or girls
" (domicellas seu puellulas seculares), if any were in the house;
" and that they should suffer neither one nor raore of such girls to
" dwell there, except such as were to become nuns."
Moreover, a closer study of these prohibitions reveals two very
iraportant facts : —
First, time does not soften, but only hardens the Archbishop's
determination in this matter.
Secondly, the prohibitions are in inverse proportion to the
temporal prosperity of the convent. The Abbaye aux Dames at
Caen was one of the great nunneries of Christendom, with sixty-
five Religious and a very handsome income. Here is no trace of
schoolgirls ; nothing worse than pet dogs and pet squirrels, which
Odo, like other visitors, expelled. On the other hand, Villarceaux,

6 MONASTIC SCHOOLS IN THE MIDDLE AGES.
Bondeville, and Bival have startlingly bad raoral records and are in
continual pecuniary embarrassments; and at these three convents
the Archbishop eleven times inhibited the presence of schoolgirls.
But this was not for the girls' sake ; if only they would come to stay,
he was willing to adrait fresh nuns wherever there was roora.
Villarceaux was, perhaps, the worst of the whole batch ; yet here,
in 1257, while ejecting the children (pueros masculos etfeminas), he
expressly excepts one girl who is intending to take the veil. His
objection is to school-children as such; and indeed he had here
no choice. The Provincial Council of Rouen, in 1231, had
coraplained in its fourth statute of the indiscipline of Benedictine
nunneries, adding: " Let the boys and girls, who are wont to be
" brought up and taught therein, be altogether cast out." This
disciplinary objection to school-children appears equally plainly in
the English episcopal visitations. A good raany of these are
suraraarised in different voluraes of the Victoria County Histories —
often badly summarised, but generally well enough on this
particular point. The English visitors object soraetiraes to grown
up boarders, sometimes (without specification) to secular folk in
general, and soraetiraes explicitly to boys and girls. At Elstow, for
instance, in 1359, Bishop Gynwell ordered the reraoval of all but
boys under six and girls under ten, and gave the stock reason of
the raediceval disciplinarian, " because, by the living togrther of
" secular women and nuns, the contemplation of religion is with-
" drawn, and scandal is engendered." I have no tirae fully to
trace these English visitation notices, which are nuraerous; but
they seem to show clearly two other currents of thought besides
that which I have already noted. First, apart from their obvious
interference with convent routine, these pupils endangered one of
the Three Substantial Vows of the Religious, the rule of absolute
personal poverty. Therefore visitors soraetiraes insist that, if
boys or girls are allowed at all, the profits raust go to the cora
munity (or, less logically, that no individual nun should keep more
than two or three pupils) ; just as Odo Rigaldi was obliged to insist
that, if hens were kept, the eggs should be fairly distributed.
Secondly, visitors are sometiraes ready to allow a coraproraise with
the outsider where the pecuniary consideration is sufficient. At
Nun-Appleton, for instance, in 1489, the Bishop forbids all seculars
" but if they be young children or else old persons by which avail,
"by likelihood, may grow to your place." In fact, during the
later fifteenth and earlier sixteenth century, English visitors show
as clear a tendency towards relaxation as German visitors, with
the Council of Bale behind them, show towards a fight for the
original strictness. Johann Busch, only a few years before this
Nun-Appleton case, was reforming two convents in Saxony. In

MONASTIC SCHOOLS IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 7
one, he tells us, the nuns had muddled away nearly all their endow
ments, and lived " on their own incoraes and on what they could
" raake by teaching secular girls." In the other, he thus describes
his reforrairig measures. " First of all we ejected . . . the
" secular schoolgirls . . . from the convent, lest they should
" hinder the claustral discipline and devotion of the nuns." A
German Benedictine Provincial Chapter of 1456 had already com
manded the exclusion of all secular girls from all houses, because
" they are a burden upon the convents and ruin the discipline." It
is remarkable that Janssen seems to know nothing of this, as of
sirailar raonastic raatters raentioned in authors from whom he
quotes. He does not venture even to hint, I believe, at anything
like systeraatic boys' schooling in the raonasteries — I except, of
course, the not strictly raonastic Brethren of Coramon Life. Of the
nuns he says in a single footnote, " In their books of accounts we
" find hundreds of names of young girls, who were educated by
" nuns." He gives only two references to pefriodicals which,
unfortunately, are not in the British Museum ; and nobody who has
not gone into this matter can realise how much is constantly built
upon a few stray notices by a man whose mind is already made up.
The story of the cellaress's accounts at Carrow Abbey is almost as
curious a chapter in legendary historiography as the already men
tioned story of poor girls flocking to the nunnery schools. Mr.
Walter Rye, in his Carrow Abbey, has at last printed Norris's
excerpts from the nuns' accounts ; and you will find that, among all
the 280 persons who are recorded to have boarded with the nuns of
Carrow during forty-six years (an average of six a year), not one
can be clearly shown to be a schoolgirl. Twenty-nine, on the con
trary, were certainly grown-up men and women, including the very
Lady Margery Wetherby upon whom Tanner supports his
sweeping statement as to schoolgirls, and from whom, again, a
modern writer succeeds in deducing all kinds of conclusions about
the length of the mediaeval school-term, the coraparative cost of
school fees and boarding fees, the amount of schooling given to a
maidservant, and so on ! English nunnery accounts, while they
show that girls were sometimes kept, show also how few there were.
Sometimes none are mentioned at all. Miss Power, who has
glanceid through all, and transcribed a great many, of the twenty-
one rolls from St. Michael's Stamford, covering twenty-one
different years frora Edward l.'s reign to Henry VI.'s, has found
no trace of schoolgirls. At Grace-Dieu, again, the notices are very
rare. Nuns were reported in few convents at the Dissolution ; in
the Valor Ecclesiasticus not a single nunnery pleaded its pupils
among the charities which would entitle it to obtain relief from
taxation. That shows that nobody, during all those centuries, had

8 MONASTIC SCHOOLS IN THE MIDDLE AGES.
left to the nunneries any definite endowment for education ; a fact
which of itself would cast grievous doubt upon the " poor children "
theory. Again, not a single anti-Lollard apologist, I believe,
whether Woodford or Walden or Pecock or Sir Thomas More, ever
ventured to plead that raonks or nuns were in any way justifying
their existence by systeraatic educational work. Moreover, in
other places where we could hardly raiss some mention of the
raonastic school systera, if any such had existed, it is conspicuously
absent. There is no hint of it in Pierre Dubois's De Recuperatione
terrce Sanctce. Hurabert de Roraans, again, in his De Eruditione
Predicatorum, gives hints for serraons to every possible class of
inmate of a Religious house. We come at last to a chapter headed
Ad Puellas ques nutriuntur cum Mulieribus Religiosis. It deals
exclusively with the velandce, with girls waiting to take the veil,
and gives no hint of secular scholars. Romances, again, seldom
deal with the subject; in Fraulein Helene Jacobius's recent
exhaustive essay she has not half-a-dozen specific instances to
quote out of three centuries; and Chaucer's well-known reference
to the Miller's wife does not carry us far. Further, in that mass of
1,200 faraily docuraents which we call the Paston Letters, there are
a good raany references to education, and a good raany references
to raonasteries, but not one hint, I believe, of raonastic education.
Nor is the general evidence on this point exclusively negative.
Edmund Dudley, in his Tree of the Commonwealth, makes state
ments which agree in general purport not only with the preamble
to Henry VIII.'s Act for founding new Bishoprics out of sup
pressed monasteries, but also with the words of a strong anti-
Lollard writer. I refer to the Oxford Chancellor Thoraas Gascoigne,
who, writing in 1450, complained with strong and frequent
eraphasis that the raonasteries, by their appropriations of parish
endowraents, had done irreraediable harra to education. More
over, when he, or Netter of Walden, or Abbot Tritheim, describe
the varied occupations of conscientious and hard-working
Religious, they say nothing of school-teaching ; and Busch, in his
triuraphant enuraeration of the activities of his reformed monasteries
— activities which even included the erection of sawmills — preserves
the same significant silence. In the face of these facts, it is difficult
to avoid the conclusion that the few nunnery-schools which we
know of shortly before the Suppression fonned probably quite a
considerable proportion of those which actually existed. A very
small substratum of fact would suffice to justify Aske's plea, which
is that of an honest but extreme partisan under trial for his life. He
naturally caught at every straw ; and, if there had been an average
of one or two small nunnery-schools per county, that would be
quite enough to account for his assertion on the one hand, and
Gascoigne's apparent contradiction on the other.

MONASTIC SCHOOLS IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 9
I raust deal far raore briefly with the boys' schools, for which
there seeras, on the whole, less evidence than for the girls', though
the subject has been treated by scholars like Dachery, Mabillon,
and Ziegelbauer. The evidence has been sumraed up by Dom
Berli^re in the Revue Benedictine for November, 1889. This
suramary, however painstaking and valuable, is far frora faultless.
The author had evidently not verified all his references, even the
raost important. Coming to Italy, he excuses himself from
advancing further proofs of monastic educational activities, because
" Giesebrecht a r6uni des textes en faveur de I'existence d'^coles
" accessibles k la jeunesse laique, et n'h^site pas k admettre que la
" jeune noblesse italienne allait g^n6ralement 6tudier dans les
" cloitres." This sentence is taken alraost verbally from Montalem
bert, who hiraself cannot possibly have read the treatise to which
he so confidently appeals. What Giesebrecht really says is the
exact contrary ; that the laity of Italy, though better educated than
elsewhere in Europe, did not go to the raonastic schools, nor did
the best masters, as a rule, teach in such schools. Several of Dom
Berli^re's other references entirely fail to bear out his assertions;
and he believes in the raonastic origin of Oxford and Carabridge,
though he writes four years after Father Denifle had given the
death-blow to that and similar legends. However, the residuum
shows twenty certain and five doubtful cases where the schola
externa is explicitly referred to, with about as many which imply
the same by recording how sorae particular outsider owed his
education to a monastery. The second list is naturally far from
exhaustive : I could add further instances myself. But the first list
represents pretty fully all the evidence that two and a half centuries
of Benedictine study have succeeded in unearthing from the records
of eight centuries of European monasticisra ; and, when we have
raade full allowance for records which must have perished, the
facts seem very scanty ; nor can we legitimately deduce more from
them than three conclusions. First, at times or in places where the
monks weref in a frankly missionary position, they modified their
ideal of seclusion to the extent of keeping schools, especially for
young heathen nobles — just as they modified the Rule in other
ways to suit missionary conditions — ^witness St. Gregory's letters
to Augustine of Canterbury. When whole populations were
spiritually starving, even the shewbread from the altar must be
given to the laity. Charles the Great's famous capitulary of 789
seems to mark the last flicker of this missionary age. Secondly,
kings' sons were sometimes sent to be looked after in great abbeys,
and nobles' sons even in lesser abbeys; but we cannot build very
much upon this. It was a tradition of chivalry to send the boy to
some other Court ; and a great abbot's house was a Court ; more-

10 MONASTIC SCHOOLS IN THE MIDDLE AGES.
over, kings and queens and nobles raade a convenience of abbeys
everywhere; some royal princes were born in them. Thirdly, and
lastly, a certain nuraber of clergy, especially of the higher clergy,
had enjoyed a conventual education. And this is by far the raost
iraportant factor — ^at any rate, for the centuries iramediately
preceding the rise of Bologna and Paris. An era of monastic
theological schools did precede the university era. But even these
schools (always making allowance for the gaps in our information)
must have been relatively few, and apparently contained, as a rule,
a small number of scholars. A liraited class of serious theological
students frora outside would not interfere much with monastic
discipline ; and the generous ardour, which so frequently drove
monks to break through formal trararaels and work directly upon
the outside world, would find its proper scope here. But all this is
very far frora the current theory (of which Montalerabert is a typical
exponent) that raonastic schools worked regularly and widely upon
the raass of the population. Even if we admit all Dom Berli^re's
instances, including the doubtful cases, there is still no specific
evidence for the poor laity, except in the case of St. William of
Dijon : indfeed, nearly all the evidence iraplicitly excludes them
except under raissionary conditions.
So rauch for the positive evidence as to boys ; on the other hand,
the negative evidence is very strong. Charles the Great in 789
attempted to set up a system of monastic schools for outsiders, but
only for clerical outsiders; we cannot read raore than this into the
capitulary; and Louis the Pious reversed this policy in 817, for
bidding all schools in monasteries except for oblates — i.e., for
boy-monks. Thenceforward, throughout the vast Frankish
dominions at least, good monks would obey the law against
teaching for conscience' sake, while indifferent raonks had no
teraptation to break it for the sake of a sraall fee which, however
welcome to bankrupt nunneries, offered little attraction to the raen.
St. Peter Daraian congratulated Abbot Desiderius and the raonks
of Monte Cassino on the perfect discipline of their monastery, in
these words: " Among other flowers of virtue which I espied in
" that rich field which the Lord hath blessed, was this, that I found
" there no school for boys, who oftentimes weaken strict holiness "
— scepe rigorem sanctitatis enervant. Other great monastic
reformers took the same view. St. Caesarius of Aries and St.
Benedict of Aniane had long ago forbidden schoolboys and school
girls in their Rules. Cluniacs, Carthusians, Cistercians, Gilber
tines, the Canons Regular of St. Jacques de Montfort, and (I
believe) the Praemonstratensians, all declare against boys ; and it
has probably never been asserted that the Friars held scholce
externce for children. In fact, both Mabillon and Ziegelbauer

MONASTIC SCHOOLS IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 1 1
explicitly note that the raonastic school, such as it raay have been,
practically dies out with the rise of the Universities. Again, even
Denifle's industry could discover only two scholcB externcp, in
Europe at the end of the twelfth century, and he emphatically
repudiated the monastic origin of University schools. The reforms
in monastic education decreed by Cleraent V. give no hint of
boys frora outside : Benedict XII. plainly discourages thera. And,
if we turn from theory to practice, visitation records show
that, so far from struggling to teach raore than the law allowed,
the raonks constantly neglected to do even so rauch as it explicitly
coraraanded; for we find raany houses in which even the young
raonks had no grararaar-raaster ; while the lists of great monasteries
which neglected to send their small statutory contingent of
students to the universities are very startling.
Lastly, I come to the evidence of the Valor Ecclesiasticus, taken
on the eve of the Suppression. Professor Savine's excellent study
breaks down here, simply because he is misled by the current
tradition. A man cannot do all the work for hiraself on every
point of a very wide field ; and Professor Savine is not to be blamed
if he relied too much on what seemed to have been done — and had
really been left undone — by four centuries of English scholarship.
Mr. Leach, in the Journal of Education for October, 1910, has dealt
with this evidence. Here and there boys of good faraily were wards
of the Abbot : as at Lilleshall, where the coraraissioners note the
presence of four boys, and put down their tutor araong the servants.
Sometiraes, again, a choir-school is raentioned ; a few boys, seldom
so raany as ten, who were trained to sing in the Lady Chapel. Once
or twice (as at Winchcombe and Sherborne) the Abbot paid for
three or four boys at the local grararaar-school — not, it must be
noted, of his own charity, but siraply as trustee of moneys which
had been left to the monastery for that purpose. One or two cases
can be naraed where an Abbot, like any other wealthy raan, had
even founded a grammar-school himself; but we must contrast
these with other cases, as at Reading, where the monastery had got
the credit of founding a school, but had really been a stepraother
to it, after the fashion later followed by Edward VI. And, lastly,
we can point definitely to something like a dozen almonry-schools.
These were sraall schools (twelve and thirteen seem favourite
nurabers), kept in the alraonry at the abbey gate, and certainly
open to, if not reserved for, the poor in the raodern sense. Here,
again, the monks had not always supplied the money; the Durham
almonry-school, which had as many as thirty boys, had been
endowed by laymen. But this subject has been admirably treated
by Mr. Leach in his articles on the Westminster and Durham
almonry-schools in the Journal of Education for January and

12 MONASTIC SCHOOLS IN THE MIDDLE AGES.
October, 1905. These boys soraetimes did menial work for the
raonks; and, raaking liberal allowance for other almonry-schools
of which all record raay have perished, we raust still say that they
taxed but a sraall fraction of raonastic endowraents, and only helped
a corresponding fraction of the outside world. It was the Council
of Trent which brought something like an educational system into
Continental society ; and in England the real improvement seems
to have begun about the same tirae.
Since the days of Odo Rigaldi and Boniface VIII., God has
fulfilled Himself in many ways. The canonical prohibitions against
monastic dowries were practically abandoned ; and this contributed
much to put nunnery finances upon a sound footing. The growing
orderliness of society rendered it less and less necessary to maintain
that great gulf which had once been fixed (in theory at least) between
the cloister and the world. New Orders, which arose at the Counter-
Reformation, took up teaching as a regular part of their work ; this
necessarily reacted upon the older Orders ; and men who wrote in
the seventeenth century, seeing something like a systera of monastic
education around them, imported the ideas of their own time into
mediseval history. It was a generous error on the part of men like
Fuller, but it was also, and even mainly, a careless error. Fuller's
younger contemf>orary Van Espen, the great Belgian canonist,
shows a clear appreciation of the change which the Counter-
Reformation had brought into monastic schools; but Van Espen
had studied deeply in mediaeval sources; he admits facts which
he had seen, while Fuller jumps to hypothetical conclusions.
Generosity in history is a great virtue ; everywhere we get nearer
to the truth by erring, if we must err, on the generous side. But
the same is true of politics. In politics we all recognise the
individual's temptation to be generous with the public money; are
we not equally tempted sometimes to show our own generosity at
the expense of public facts ? No reasonable and educated person
will attempt to deny the vast services rendered to civilisation by
many centuries of monasticisra. On the other hand, no good monk
of the past would have wished to claim credit for things which
formed no part, as a rule, of his proper vocation. St. Bernard him
self took this view ; for his own youngest brother was taught not
by monks but at an ordinary school until the time came for him
to present himself as a novice at Clairvaux; and it was from St.
Bernard that I first learned, thirty years ago, that sentence of St.
Jerome's which we must not exaggerate, but which we have no
right to forget : Monachus non docentis sed plangentis habet
officium.

APPENDIX I,

NOTES TO THE TEXT.
It will be seen that, if this paper is necessarily somewhat controversial,
the notes are even more so. I say necessarily, because it is almost
impossible to tread anywhere within the wide field of monastic history,
in which I have been working for a good many years, without stumbling
at every 'step upon fundamental differences of opinion and flatly con
tradictory assertions. Moreover, I have here to grapple with the added
difficulty that the most popular writers, while professing a loyal homage
to medieval evidence, very often neglect to produce the actual docu
ments, or even to give definite references. Of our really distinguished
historical scholars, the large majority escape from controversy by
quietly avoiding the whole subject ; so that there is probably no field
of equal importance in the world's history which can boast -so vast a
mass of unexplored, or at least unexploited, sources. Even among
those who have given serious attention to the subject, many seem to
shrink from publishing conclusions which, to a generation that has
made little advance since the seventeenth century, must needs seem to
savour of paradox. One of my reasons, therefore, for choosing this
particular subject was an anxiety to compare notes with other scholars
who might be studying the same documents from different standpoints.
My own conclusions being mainly negative, this seemed a golden oppor
tunity for eliciting positive and contradictory evidence from such British
or foreign Religious as might honour me with their presence. Only one
Religious spoke, the Rector of Fribourg University, who has made a
special study of Church Schools in the Middle Ages, and whose indepen
dent verdict (printed by his kind permission at the end of these notes,
from an autograph risumi which he sent me) strongly confirms mine.
If on some points he speaks even more decisively than I have done, it
must be noted that he is confining himself to a period ending roughly
about the middle of the thirteenth century ; he, therefore, says nothing
about the reforms of Clement V. and Benedict XII., the slow growth
of some sort of nunnery-school system in spite of official prohibition
or discouragement, and the rise of the choir-school and almonry-school
in the few greater monasteries.
Although I have not interrupted my text with numerical references
to the notes, it is hoped that these may easily be followed by the italicised
catchwords and the headlines at the top of the pages referring to pages
of the text.

14 NOTE I, PAGE 2.
Note i, p. 2. — Professor Savine. See Oxford Studies in Social and
Legal History. I. 76, sq.
Prof. Savine writes : " The antiquaries of the time of Elizabeth and
James — Camden, Cotton, Speed, and Weever — were the first to make
use of these figures [of the Valor Ecclesiasticus] ior historical purposes ;
and, unless I am mistaken, our knowledge of the subject has not
advanced beyond the point reached by them." He points out how
Dugdale really goes back to Cotton, and Tanner-Nasmith to Dugdale.
" Hume — Blunt — Dixon, Dr. Gasquet, Mr. Archbold, Prof. Kovalevsky,
all take their totals of Church and monastic income from Speed,
Dugdale, and Tanner." Collier, Burnet and Lingard give only
slight variations, and vouchsafe no reference ; " figures for which the
authority is unknown do not inspire one with much confidence." Stubbs,
he adds, seems to have shirked the question altogether. — (P. 79, note 3.)
Note 2, p. 2. — Robert Aske. Reply to Interrogatories, written in his
own hand [Letters and Papers of Hen. VIII., ed. Gairdner, vol.
12, p. 405, No. 901).
" Also the Abbeys was one of the beauties of this realm to all men
and strangers passing through the same ; also all gentlemen much
succoured in their needs with money, their younger sons there succoured,
and in nunneries their daughters brought up in virtue." For the suc
couring of gentlefolk and their sons we have much independent evidence ;
the apologist Pecock frankly admits this to have been profitable to the
monks from a pecuniary as well as from a higher point of view
(Repressor. R.S. II., 549) ; while the sterner Gascoigne repeatedly
condemns it as worldly wisdom and spiritual folly {Lib. Veritatum, ed.
Rogers, pp. 72, 115, 222 ; cf. Abp. Peckham to Prioress of Stratford,
Registrum, R.S. I., 356, and Savine, I.e., p. 262).
Note 3, p. 2. — Journal of Education, Dec., 1910, and Jan., 1911.
The subject is discussed in a series of numbers of that journal ; first,
in June, 1909 (Mr. de Montmorency's article), and then from July, 1910,
to February, 1911.
Note 4, p. 3. — Mabillon, &c.
See especially M. G. Robert's valuable thesis for the Doctorate of
Theology at Fribourg, Les Ecoles et I'Enseignement, &c. (Paris :
Lecoffre, 1909, pp. 16-22). M. Robert very definitely combats the
received tradition of monastic activity in general education ; and Father
Gabriel Meier had already expressed almost as plain doubts in 1889
(Historisch-Politische Blatter, vol. 103, p. 809).
Note 5, p. 3.— Cole MS. Quoted in Abbot Gasquet's Henry VIII. and
the English Monasteries, 1889, vol. II., p. 500.
" They taught the unlearned that was put to them to be taught : yea,
the poor as well as the rich, without demanding anything for their
labour, other than what rich parents were willing to give to them of
mere devotion." A document unearthed by Mr. de Montmorency from
the early Chancery Proceedings shows, on the contrary, that nuns very
naturally went to law about unpaid school-fees like other people.
(Bundle XLIV., 227, a.d. 1470, or thereabouts, quoted in Journal of
Education, June, 1909.) This MS. is, in fact, simply Cole's transcript
of an anonymous document which has no authority but such as might

NOTE 6, PAGEz. 15
come from its internal credibility. (Gasquet, I.e. II., 322.) Abbot
Gasquet is compelled to point out a serious misstatement in it ; and it
is strange that he can accept as accurate such statements as " They
[the monks] never . . . took in or improved any commons." The
author was, by his own confession, a boy at the date of the Dissolution,
and apparently wrote only in 1591.
Note 6, p. 3. — Thomas Fuller.
" They [the monks] were tolerable tutors for the education of youth,
there being a great penury of other grammar schools in that age ; and
every convent had one or more therein, who, generally gratis, taught
the children thereabouts. . . . Grammar was here taught, and music.
Nunneries also were good she-schools, wherein the girls and
maids of the neighbourhood were taught to read and work, and some
times a little Latin was taught them therein." {Church History. Bk.
VI., sect. II., division V., §§ 4, 5.) The whole context shows that
Fuller is writing with a purpose ; dissatisfied with female education in
his own day, he contrasts it, after the too frequent fashion of moralists,
with an imaginary past.
Note 7, p. 3. — Collier.
' ' The abbeys were very serviceable places for the education of young
people : every convent had one person or more assigned for this busi
ness. Thus the children of the neighbourhood were taught grammar
and music without any charge to their parents ; and in the nunneries
those of the other sex learned to work, and read English, with some
advances into Latin ; and particularly the nunnery at Godstow, in
Oxfordshire, was famous upon this account, and for breeding young
gentlewomen, and others, to improvements proper to their condition."
{Ecclesiastical History. Pt. II., Book III., ad init.) The reference to
Godstow is doubtless taken from Burnet, who writes : ' ' Though the
visitors interceded earnestly for one nunnery in Oxfordshire, Godstow,
where there was great strictness of life, and to which most of the young
gentlewomen of the country were sent to be bred, so that the gentry of
the country desired the king would spare the house, yet all was uneffec-
tual. " {Hist, of Reformation, ed., Pocock, I., 378.) With this testi
mony, given at a date when the Dissolution had already become a burning
party question, and evidence on either side must be closely scrutinised,
I deal below at the end of note 34.
Note 8, p. 3. — Tanner {Notitia Monastica. 1744. Pref., p. xxxii.).
" They were schools for learning and education ; for every convent
had one person or more appointed for this purpose ; and all their neigh
bours that desired it might have their children taught grammar and
church music without any expense to them." [References to Fuller,
Collier, &c. ; also to Council of Cloveshoe, which in fact says nothing
whatever about the education of secular children.] " In the nunneries
also young women were taught to work, and to read English, and some
times Latin also. So that not only the lower rank of people, who could
not pay for their learning, but most of the noblemen and gentlemen's
daughters were educated in those places." [Further refs. to Fuller,
Collier, and Burnet : the note then continues :] ' ' Abp. Greenfield
ordered that young gentlewomen who came to the nunneries either for

i6 NOTE 9, PAGE 3.
piety or breeding, should wear white veils, to distinguish them from the
professed, who wore black ones. [II. Kal. jun., anno pontif 6. M. Hutton
ex registr. ejus, p. 207.] In the accounts of the Cellaress of Carrow, near
Norwich, there is an account of what was received pro prehendinationibus,
or the board of young ladies and their servants for education : ' rec. de
domina Margeria Wederly prehendinat, ibidem xi septimanas xiij^ iv^ ;
pro mensa unius famulae dictae Margerise, per iij septimanas, viij^ per
sept.' " There are here two mistakes, of course, in the word printed
prehendinat ; but Tanner's book was first written before he was twenty-
two, and the second edition, in which this note occurs, was published
by his son from the father's papers. But writer or editor has singled
out one of the Carrow boarders whom we can prove to have been not a
schoolgirl, but a married lady, as the very title domina ought to have
suggested to him. (See note 25 below.) Blomefield, our only other
authority for education at Carrow, writes : " This nunnery for many
ages had a been a school, or place of education for the young ladies of
the chief families of the diocese, who boarded with and were educated
by the nuns." {History of Norwich, 174.1, p. 865.) His only references
are to Fuller (whom he quotes at length) and Tanner. Taylor, who is
often quoted, has simply copied Blomefield.
Tanner's remaining reference, to Abp. Greenfield's register, is even
more inaccurate than those to Cloveshoe and Carrow. Mr. A. F. Leach
has obtained a transcript of the actual passage from Greenfield's register.
It contains nothing about " piety or breeding," or schoolgirls, but deals
with grown-up women {mulieres) who sometimes came to live a semi-
monastic and almost parasitical life, like that of the modern Oblate,
without taking the actual vows of a nun {Journ. Ed., Dec., 19 10) ; it
is, in fact, only a repetition of .A.bp. Giffard's prohibition in 1267.
{Register. Surtees Soc., p. 147.)
Note 9, p. 3. — Monasticon, Ed. Caley, 1813, IV., 69, accurately repeat
ing from Taylor. Abbot Gasquet writes {Henry VIIL, ^c, II.,
221) : —
" Carrow, in Norfolk, for centuries gave instruction to the daughters
of the neighbouring gentry ; and as early as a.d. 1273 a papal prohibition
was obtained from Pope Gregory X. restraining the nobility from crowd
ing this monastery with more sisters than its income could support."
[Ref. to Taylor, Index Monasticus viii.] As Mr. Leach rightly points
out, the document thus quoted has nothing whatever to do with school
girls, and the writer was evidently misled by its place in Taylor and
Dugdale.Note 10, p. 3. — Fuller and Aubrey. See de Montmorency in Journ. Ed.,
June, 1909. Gasquet, English Monastic Life, p. 177.
Fuller was born in 1608, Aubrey in 1626 ; and there could scarcely be
a better testimonial to the weakness of the traditional case than this
attempt to represent them as quasi-contemporary witnesses. Moreover,
Aubrey's evidence is intrinsically of the flimsiest description. He
assures us, for instance, in the same context, that " there were no
apothecaries or surgeons " before the Reformation ; and " no ale
houses or inns then, unless upon great roads. When they had a mind
to drink, they went to the friaries. " " Then were the consciences of
the people kept in so great awe, by confession, that just dealing and
virtue were habitual." "It is most probable that then was a golden

NOTE IO, PAGE 3. 17
age." {Wilts. Topogr. Collections, ed. Wilts. Archaeol. Soc, 1862,
pp. 9, II, 12, 13.) His own editor confesses, " The truth is that upon
the more serious labours of parochial history — the long investigation of
evidences, the thoughtful comparison of them, and the drawing of
correct conclusions from them — Aubrey was either unable or unwilling
to enter. " {Ibid, p. viii.) His assertion as to schoolgirls rests confessedly
upon oral communications from ' Old Jacques,' a sort of ' oldest
inhabitant.' As Aubrey was born just ninety years after the Dissolu
tion, and must have been at least ten years old to understand what
Jacques was talking about, while the old man cannot be presumed to
have been less than ten years old when he himself counted ' three score
and ten ' of the Kington nunnery-women spinning or sewing in the
meadow, this brings old Jacques to the ripe age of no before he can
have informed Aubrey to any purpose whatever. If, however, we try
to mend matters by assuming that both eye-witness and auditor had
grown out of their teens, and were so much the more capable of reporting
correctly the thing seen and the thing heard, we must then imagine an
' Old Jacques ' of 130 communicating with an Aubrey of 20 ! Finally,
by supposing that Aubrey had never spoken with Jacques at all, but had
the whole story at third-hand over that wide gulf of years, we not only run
counter to Aubrey's own implications in the text, but exaggerate, if
possible, the absurdity of the modern contention that the Wiltshire
antiquary was " almost an eye-witness." He only began his " Collec
tions " in 1659 (preface, p. i) ; and, even if on other points his testimony
had been far more credible, we could build little upon him here.
Moreover, the schoolgirls themselves are not in Jacques's evidence
at all. The old man said, " he hath seen forty or fifty nuns ... he
said the number of them was often seventy " {I.e., p. 144). Even Aubrey
cannot swallow this, but argues that " in all, with lay-sisters and widows,
old maids and young girls, there might be such a number." Aubrey
did not know the actual number of nuns at the priory ; he left it blank.
But ' ' Tanner, from the martiloge of this house, says, in the time of
Henry VII. there were a Prioress and eight nuns ; but that just before
the Dissolution there were but four." (Dugdale-Caley, IV., 398.) It
was poorly endowed, and most unlikely to support many servants or any
lay-sisters ; at every step we are met with improbabilities, and at this
particular point Aubrey's only reason for bringing in these girls is his
desire to import some degree of credibility into the old man's otherwise
incredible story. The rich convent of St. Mary's, Winchester, with
twenty-two nuns and four novices, had thirteen lay-sisters by foundation
(i.e., with an endowment of their own), and 26 schoolgirls. {Ibid., II.,
456.) Otherwise, lay-sisters are not often met with in the lists of
convent inmates.
It may be well to enter a caveat here against another believer in Aubrey
— the anonymous author of a book published in 1904 under the title of
" English Monasteries, by F. S. A." The author withholds his name,
and the whole book is a curious jumble of fact and fiction, though it
claims to rest upon " a close and absolutely candid study of the whole of
the episcopal act-books of several of our more important English sees,
and of a great variety of monastic records, as well as of all that has been
printed pertaining to England's old religious houses." It is, in fact, a
rdchauffd of anonymous articles in the Church Times, one of which has
been reprinted as a Catholic Truth Society pamphlet. The author seldom
gives references, and it is not worth while to deal with his assertions in
detail.

i8 NOTE II, PAGE 4.
Note ii, p. 4. — Glastonbury.
This is an admirable instance of that process of " plundering and
blundering " which has been exposed by a recent critic in the Baconian
legend, and which seems really inseparable from legendary historio
graphy in any form. The source of the whole modern story is in a
confessedly garbled edition of a frankly partisan book. The De
Schismate Anglicana is a brief and bitter, but not intentionally unfair,
story of the Reformation by the Papal Nuncio and Smerwick insurgent
Nicholas Sanders, or Sander. The author was born about nine years
before Abbot Whiting's execution in 1539, and his MS. was printed at
Cologne after his death by the care of his friend Rishton. Next year, the
book was republished, " with many additions, by Father Parsons, at
Rome" (Father Pollen in Catholic Encyclopcedia, s.v. Sanders). This
1586 edition, which we may call pseudo-Sanders, is in some places quite
a different book, though the reader has no warning of the liberties taken
with the real text : it is important also to note that the Jesuit Parsons
was born seven years after Whiting's death. With regard to Whiting,
the difference between Sanders and pseudo-Sanders is clearly put by
Abbot Gasquet, writing the story of his execution. " The original
edition of Sanders simply says that the three abbots and the two priests,
Rugg and Onion, ' ob negatam Henrici pontificiam potestatem martyrii
coronam adepti sunt.' In the second and later editions this is cut out,
another reason is assigned for their death, and an obviously legendary
narrative about Whiting is inserted in the text " (Henry VIIL, &c., ed.
1889, II., 351, note). There is no word more about Whiting in the real
Sanders ; simply this recital of his name in the list of the five sufferers
(ed. 1585, p. 91). But pseudo-Sanders, in the very interpolation so justly
stigmatised by Abbot Gasquet, gives a long character of the man, in
which he writes : " Monasterium integrum ac clausum centum plus
minus religiosorum habebat ; aedibus vero separatis ac locis subvicinis,
pro abbatum consuetudine, ad trecentos domesticos sustentabat,
atque in iis multos nobilium filios. Plurimos praeterea ad
litterarum studia in academiis alebat. Hospitalitatem in omnes pere
grines exercebat quacunque causa transeuntes : ita ut 500 aliquando,
eosque equites, eodem tempore reciperet ; quartis ac sextis feriis,
eleemosynas amplas certasque pauperibus undique ex vicinis pagis con-
currentibus distribuebat ; atque haec etiam fuerat aliorum fere Angliae
coenobiorum ac Abbatum ditiorum consuetudo " (p. 176). The growth
of the legend between Sanders, born nine years before the event, and
Parsons, born seven years after it, is already striking ; and. Parsons is
demonstrably wrong in his numbers. There were only forty-eight
monks to elect Abbot Walter More in 1456 ; and the document expressly
adds, " cum non fuerint plures jus aut voces in hujusmodi electione
habentes, Joh. Grenehurst infrascripto duntaxat excepto " — who was
sick in the infirmary, and deputed a proctor. (Adam de Domerham, ed.
Hearne, p. 129.) In 1524 only forty-seven monks elected Whiting by
compromise, and fifty subscribed to the Royal Supremacy in 1534
(Dugdale-Caley, I., 7, 9) ; moreover, some of these (to judge from other
great monasteries) probably dwelt in dependent cells, not within the
clausum monasterium of Glastonbury. And Parsons has evidently taken
the same liberty with the numbers of domestici. Nobody who has
studied Dugdale with any care would accept his " three hundred "
without further inquiry ; Prof. Savine, taking an average of fifty-two
monasteries at the Suppression, finds that they included "631 religious
persons and 1,973 laymen," or, roughly, one to three (I.e., p. 221). It is

NOTE II, PAGE 4. 19
fairly obvious, then, that the zeal of Parsons doubled the number of
monks and dependents alike.
Here, however, for what it is worth, is the beginning of the story of
Whiting and education. It was next taken up by Reynerus, who quoted
all this textually from pseudo-Sanders, as though from the real Sanders,
without a hint of doubt or warning. (Apostolatus Benedictinorum in
Anglia. Douai, 1626, Pt. I., p. 224.) Next came Eyston, a Roman Catholic
antiquary who, in 1716, wrote a little book which Hearne published six
years later without the author's name, under the title of History and
Antiquities of Glastonbury (D. N. B., s.v. Eyston). After Hearne's own
long preface comes the author's preface, which stamps the amiable
enthusiast at once. " I have all along used Protestant authorities," he
writes, " excepting only where I find Protestants not concurring with
Saunders, Reyner, and Cressy " : and, again, " what [Saunders] reports,
probably, was from his own knowledge. . . . And therefore I report
from Saunders and Reyner, that there were 100 monks, or thereabouts,
in this Abbey when it was supprest, whereas Mr. Wood [Ath. Oxon,
pt. I., col. 640] says there were but forty-seven monks in the House when
Whiting was chosen Abbot, which was but sixteen years at most before
the Dissolution of the Abbey, and it is scarce credible they should
increase in so short a time to be double that number. ' ' We have already
seen what this is worth. Then, on p. 160, he describes Whiting's
abbacy from pseudo-Sanders. " His apartment in the Abbey was a
kind of well-disciplined court where the sons of noblemen and young
gentlemen were wont to be sent for a virtuous education, and returned
thence home excellently accomplished. Dr. Saunders [De Schismate,
p. 176] and Abbot Reyner [Apost., Tract I., sect. 2, p. 224] report that
Abbot Whiting in his time had brought up neer 300 after this manner,
besides others of a meaner rank which he had fitted for the Universities. ' '
Here we see pseudo-Sanders and Reyner appearing as separate authori
ties because one has quoted the other ; henceforward, this amiable
Eyston, who has done nothing but garble the two, will appear as a third
and independent authority. Indeed, it needs almost more than a legiti
mate scepticism to doubt the story as told in Dugdale-Caley, I., pp. 7-8,
with these three names at the bottom of the page ; and, whatever doubts
I had felt as to the facts, I had for some years accepted the authenticity
of the words attributed to these witnesses.
Yet it will be seen that Eyston has effected as startling a transforma
tion as Sanders did before him. The " ad 300 domesticos sustentabat,
atque in iis multos nobilium filios " does not really take us far ; he had
300 servants, among whom were many of gentle birth — steward, receiver,
and pages ; in other words, he kept the same state as a great lay-baron.
To an enthusiastic Roman Catholic antiquary, born 130 years after the
event, it is nothing to add "well-disciplined," "virtuous education,"
" excellently accomplished," as glosses of his own. The further con
version of Parsons 's 300 simultaneous domestics into " neer 300 " pupils
spread over the sixteen years of " his time," however unpardonable
scientifically, was probably not deliberate ; for the little book is written
in this random fashion from beginning to end, and would have been
neither printed nor read if it had not flattered the prejudices of a party.
The story of this evolution simply shows how small a seed of deliberate
fraud may grow, in favourable soil, into some sturdy tree of falsehood.
Of the whole narrative in Dugdale-Caley, which hundreds of readers
have swallowed without suspicion, a single vocable is authentic, the
Abbot's name. Vitingus does, indeed, stand in Sanders's De Schismate,
but not one word more.

id NOTE II, PAGE 4.
The confusion between Sanders and pseudo-Sanders, however, was
pardonable and almost inevitable. Prof. Savine (I.e., p. 242, note 3) has
no suspicion ; and nobody who does not live near a first-rate English
library can be expected to pitch upon this fraud by the natural process
of reference to a first edition, or to the not common English translation
(which, to its credit, omits the interpolations, though it affords practically
no further help in the matter). To realise the truth, one must refer not
only to the D. N. B. but to the Catholic Encyclopedia; for Parsons
himself has been cunning enough to leave nothing which might arouse
the reader's suspicion.
From 1813 onwards, then, this pseudo-Sanders, as transformed by
Eyston, has become the textus receptus. In our own day the story is
taken up by Abbot Gasquet, who has learned the real facts of the inter
polation from Father Pollen, or from some other esoteric source. In
1887, as we have seen, he was well aware of the difference between " the
original edition of Sander ' ' and the ' ' obviously legendary narrative ' '
of " the second and later editions " (cf. also I.e., p. 355, note). Yet in
1895 he first printed, and republished without alteration in 1908, a life of
Abbot Whiting in which he utilised not only this untrustworthy passage
of pseudo-Sanders, but even Eyston 's distortions of pseudo-Sanders,
without intimating the least suspicion to his readers. On p. 58 of the
first edition, and p. 34 of the second, is a panegyric beginning — " But
withal there existed at the court of the Abbot, for his household was
regulated like that of a court, a simplicity befitting the monastic pro
fession," and presently proceeding, " a combined simplicity and state
liness characterised the whole rule of Abbot Whiting, and it is no
wonder that, as we are told, during his abbacy some three or four hundred
youths of gentle birth received their first training in the Abbot's quar
ters." No references are vouchsafed, but the whole thing is described
with that subtle reinforcement of intimate personal touches which always
conveys so strong an impression of a writer's familiarity with his subject.
He has steeped himself in original documents, we say, until he knows
Whiting and his household like his own right hand. Yet, in fact, all
these apparently first-hand touches are simply imaginary ; his real
original is the tainted Eyston, upon whom he embroiders as Eyston had
embroidered upon Parsons, and distorts while he embellishes. His
" some three or four hundred noble pupils " simply rests upon Eyston 's
" neer three hundred "; which itself is a garbling of words claiming the
independent and considerable authority of Reyner, yet, in fact, copied
from Parsons — who, again, had mendaciously fathered his own
" obviously legendary " narrative upon Sanders — who himself was but
a child when Whiting died, and could havef given (if he had testified at
all) only second-hand evidence.
Abbot Gasquet further quotes " the antiquary Hearne " as saying
that " the monks of Glastonbury kept a free school, where poor men's
sons were bred up, as well as gentlemen's, and were fitted for the Uni
versities." These are not Hearne's words at all, but those of the Roman
Catholic Eyston, who gives no reference ; and the case of Richard Bere,
which the Abbot goes on to quote, proves no more than that almonry-
school which we should expect to find at a great house like Glastonbury 
a benefaction which then, as now, would often tempt the richer parent
also. But here at least is one single ray of direct light thrown upon the
question, and a too rare concession to the scientific spirit. Mr. Leach
in confining himself resolutely to contemporary evidence, and neglecting
all modern legends that can show no vouchers in medieval documents
was an even bolder innovator than Mr. de Montmorency judged him to be.

NOTE 12, PAGE 4. 21
Note 12, p. 4. — Ancren Riwle, Camden Soc, 1853. Tr. Morton, p. 423.
" An anchoress must not become a schoolmistress, nor turn her
anchoress-house into a school for children. Her maiden may, however,
teach any little girl concerning whom it might be doubtful whether she
should learn among boys, but an anchoress ought to give her thoughts
to God only." Aelred, Abbot of Rievaulx, Regula Inclusarum, in Migne
P.L., vol. 32, col. 1453 : cf. vol. 195, col. 702. " Pueris et puellis
nullum ad te concedas accessum. Sunt quaedam inclusae, quse in
docendis puellis occupantur, et cellam suam vertunt in scholam. Ilia
sedet ad fenestram, ista in porticu residet. Ilia intuetur singulas, et inter
puellares motus nunc irascitur, nunc ridet, nunc minatur, nunc percutit,
nunc blanditur, nunc osculatur, nunc flentem vocat pro verbere propius,
palpat faciem, stringit collum, et in amplexum ruens nunc fiiiam vocat,
nunc amicam. Qualiter inter haec memoria Dei, nisi saecularia et
carnalia, etsi non perficiantur, moventur tamen, et quasi sub oculis
depinguntur? Tibi utique duae illae [ancillae] sufficiant ad colloquim
et ad obsequium." The last sentence but one seems corrupt, though its
general sense is clear enough. For Ccesarius of Aries see note 42 here
below. Note 13, p. 4. — Jerome adv. Vigilant, c 6.
Quoted by St. Bernard Epp. 89 and 365, and embodied (with reference
to preaching) in two chapters of Gratian's Decretum (Pars II., Causa
VII., Q.i., c. 45, and P. II., c XVL, Q.i., c 4).
Note 14, p. 4.— Boniface VUL, in Sext Decret., lib. III., tit. XVI.
" Periculoso et detestabili quarundam monialium statui
providere salubriter cupientes, . . . sancimus universas et singulas
moniales, praesentes atque futuras, . . . sub perpetua in suis
monasteriis de cetero permanere clausura. " This was, of course, an
absolute enforcement of the principle moderately stated in chap. 66 of
St. Benedict's rule, but more violently insisted on by his orthodox com
mentators ; see Martene's Commentarius in Regulam, p. 864. A
generation earlier than Boniface, the Legate Othobon had attempted to
enforce almost as strict a claustration in England, ' ' lest, by repeated
intercourse with secular folk, the quiet and contemplation of the
nuns should be troubled. . . . And we strictly command, in virtue of
holy obedience and under appeal to the awful day of doom, that duly-
appointed visitors of nunneries cause these statutes to be observed."
. . . " Cause to be observed! " echoes the canonist John of Ayton,
after reciting this decree and alluding to Boniface's reinforcement of it :
" Cause to be observed! But surely there is scarce any mortal man who
could do this ; we must therefore here understand ' so far as lieth in the
prelate's power.' For the nuns answer roundly to these statutes, or to
any others promulgated against their wantonness, saying, ' In truth
the men who made these laws sat well at their ease, while they laid such
burdens upon us by these hard and intolerable restrictions ! ' Wherefore
we see in fact that these statutes are a dead letter, or are ill-kept at the
best. Why, then, did the holy fathers thus labour to beat the air? Yet,
indeed, their toil is none the less to their own merit ; for we look not
to that which is, but to that which of justice should be." (Lyndwood,
Provinciale, 1679, P*- ^I-> P- 'SS-) The best justification for the ladies
who pleaded for some masculine liberty in this respect, may be
found in the man's argument as voiced by the Monk Idung, of St.
Emmeram. He b^ins with the usual medieval emphasis on feminine

22 NOTE 15.
frailty, of which (as he points out) the Church reminds us in her collect
for every Virgin Martyr's feast — " Victory . . . even in the weaker
Sex." Then comes the usual quotation from St. Jerome with its refer
ence to Dinah, which Idung is bold enough to clinch by a detailed allusion
to Danae. This, of course, is little more than the usual clerkly ungal-
lantry ; but it is followed by a passage of more cruel courtesy. The
monk must needs go abroad sometimes on business, as for instance, to
buy and sell in markets ; " but such occupations as these would be most
indecent for even an earthly queen, and far below the dignity of a Bride
of the King of Heaven." (Liber IV Qucestionum, in Pez, Thes. Nov.
Anecd., tom. II., pt. 2, pp. 521 sq.)
Note 15.
In 1 5 16, Maurice, Lord Berkeley, joined eleven others of like rank
in obtaining from the Pope, inter alia, the privilege " to enter into any
nunnery, et cum monialibus conversari, dummodo ibidem non pernoc-
tent." J. Smyth, Lives of the Berkeleys (Bristol and Gloucs. Archaeol.
Soc), vol. II., p. 204. Compare also the document which Abbot Gasquet
mistakenly refers to schoolgirls at Carrow : Dugdale-Caley IV., 69, 71.
Bishops sometimes granted special licences for ladies to board at nun
neries, e.g., Drokensford's Register (Somerset Record Soc), pp. 81,
165. Dame Elizabeth Yaxley, in i.<;3o, directed " that her servants
should be boarded with the said Lady Prioress [of Carrow] for one month
after her decease, paying i2d. a week each." W. Rye, Carrow Abbey,
p. 52.
Note i6, p. 5. — Ccesarius of Aries in Migne, P.L., vol. 67, col. 1114,
§ 34-
" Matronae etiam sseculares, vel puellae, seu reliquse mulieres [aut
viri] adhuc in habitu laico, similiter introire prohibeantur. "
Note 17, p. 5. — Odo Rigaldi, see his Regestrum Visitationum, ed.
Bonnin, 1852, pp. 60, 146, 217, 220, 282, 305, 324, 380, 412, 419,
486, 571, 572, 602, 610, 615, 636.
The one exception is Bondeville, p. 410. In Odo's first ten years (1248-
57) he registered only five such prohibitions ; the last eleven years of his
diary (1258-68) give thirteen cases.
Note 18, p. 6. — Villarceaux.
The convent contained twenty-three nuns and three lay-sisters. The
first visit (p. 43, a.d. 1249) revealed eleven cases of incontinence among
these twenty-six inmates, the fellow-sinners including a prior in one case,
priests in five cases, a clerk in lower orders, a knight, and a carter. He
adds ' ' priorissa ebria est fere qualibet nocte. ' ' At the next visitation, in
1 25 1, there were only fourteen in the house ; the other six were absent —
two of them on punishment, and one because she had got married (p. 1 17);
Succeeding years seem to have brought more improvement here than at
Bival ; yet it is evident that the house was not really well-disciplined in
1257 (p. 281). It is noticeable that the great Jean Gerson had a low
opinion of convent schools. His only allusion to them, so far as I know,
is in the 1606 ed. of his collected works, vol. II., col. 629 : Dubitaverirn
prorsus, si non deteriores mores trahunt aliquando pueri et puellse hac
occasione in parentum domibus et religionum et scholarum contuberniis,
quam f acturi erant in prostibulis lenonum vel meretricum. " In Erasmus's

NOTE 19, PAGE 6. 23
non-satirical works, again, I know of only one allusion : he writes in
his Christiani Matrimonii Institutio (Opp. ed. 1703, vol. V., 716, c.)
" Sunt qui puellarum absolutam educationem existimant, si usque ad
nuptias sic inclusae teneatur, ut nee adspiciant nee adspiciantur a viris ;
quum interim vivant inter stultas et ineptas mulierculas, unde plus
hauriunt corruptelae, quam si cum viris agerent."
Note ig, p. 6. — Council of Rouen in Martene, Thesaurus, vol. IV., col.
175 sq., § IV.
" Propter scandala quae ex monialum conversatione proveniunt,
statuimus de monialibus nigris ne aliquod depositum recipiant in domibus
suis ab aliquibus personis ; maxime areas clericorum vel etiam laicorum
causa custodicB apud se minime deponi permittant. Pueri et puellae qui
ibi soient nutriri et instrui penitus repellantur. " See the whole para
graph, and the next.
Note 20, p. 6. — Gynwell. Vict. Count. Hist., Beds., vol. I., p. 355.
The same reason is given for his prohibition of boarders of all kinds
at Heynings in 1351. (Register, fol. 34, § 5.)
Note 21, p. 6. — Odo Rigaldi, I.e., p. 550 (St. Aubin, 1266).
" Precepimus quod omnes galline et pulli pariter nutrirentur et in
communi haberentur, et ova ex eis provenientia monialibus equaliter
ministrarentur. " Cf. the injunctions to the nuns of St. Helen's, Bishops
gate, A.D. 1439 (Dugdale-Caley, IV., 554). " Also we ordain and enjoin
that no nun have nor receive no children with them into the house fore
said, but if that the profit of the commons turn to the avail of the same
house." At Godstow, in 1358, Bp. Gynwell ordered that no nun should
take pupils beyond " deux ou une femelles " (Register, fol. 100) ; at
Farwell, about 1367, the Bishop forbids the nuns to keep more than one
pupil each. (TVilliam Salt Collections, vol. VIIL, p. 119.)
Note 22, p. 6. — Nun-Appleton. Dugdale-Caley, vol. V., p. 654.
This spirit of compromise is curiously shown in the latitude constantly
granted to people of good family : cf. Gynwell's injunctions to the nuns
of Heynings in 1351 (I.e., §4). " Et pour ceo que nos avons entendu
graund destourbance de vostre religion estre fait par gente seculers qui
entront vostre cloistre et quoer, nos vos chargeons que vos ne soeffrez
desore nul home seculer, hormis vostre patroun ou autre graunt seignor,
entrer vostre cloistre ne tenir illeoqes parlaunce ou autre dalliance od nul
soer de vostre meson par qar vostre silence ou la religion pourrait estre
enbleme." Visitors very commonly make the same exception when they
forbid the presence of secular folk in monastic refectories ; e.g., Eng.
Hist. Review, Oct., 1912, pp. 732 (ignobiles personae, &c.), and 739
{laid ignobiles, &c.). This deference to worldly utility, however natural,
helps to explain (a) how the convent schools successfully resisted epis
copal prohibitions or restrictions ; and (b) why all the evidence yet pro
duced seems to refer to well-to-do children only.
Note 23, p. 7. — Busch. Liber de Reformatione, ed. K. Grube, 1887,
pp. 610, 644.
For the Chapter of 1456 see Trithemius, Opp. Pia. Mainz, 1604,
p. 1051.

24 NOTE 24, PAGE 7.
Note 24, p. 7. — Janssen. Gesch. d. Deutschen Volkes, ed. Pastor, 1897,
vol. I., p. 28.
The references are to comparatively obscure local publications ; and
Janssen 's treatment of the question does not inspire special confidence.
While constantly quoting Trithemius on smaller points, he ignores his
numerous and extraordinarily frank confessions of monastic decay.
Note 25, p. 7. — Lady M. Wetherby, or Wetherly. See Mr. de Mont
morency in Journal of Education, June, 1909, and my letter of
February, 1911.
She stayed at Carrow with her chaplain as well as her maid, and in
1488 bequeathed money to her daughter, a nun in the convent. There are
few records of boarders at Carrow until the middle of the fourteenth
century, and Blomefield's " for many ages " seems to be a mere irrespon
sible exaggeration. It is probable that a large proportion of these
boarders were in fact schoolgirls and boys, but the total number of
boarders in any one year seldom exceeds a dozen ; and Norwich, it must
be remembered, was one of the most populous cities in the kingdom.
The nuns themselves, from twenty-one in 1287, dwindled to an average
of thirteen or fourteen, and numbered in 1532 a prioress, nine professed
nuns, and three novices. (Rye, I.e., p. 38 ; Jessopp, Vis. Dioc.
Norwich, Camden Soc, 1888, p. 273.)
Note 26, p. 7. — Grace-Dieu. See P.R.O., Ministers' Accounts, 1257/10.
Abbot Gasquet's long description of this MS. in his English Monastic
Life, pp. 158 sq., is not only inaccurate in detail but extremely misleading
in its general purport.
Note 27, p. 7. — Valor. See Savine, I.e., pp. 231 ff., and Leach, Journ.
Ed., Oct., 1910.
Note 28. — Woodford, &c.
See Fasciculus Zizaniorum, R.S.; Pecock's Repressor, R.S.
More's Dialogue, Answer to Tyndale, Apology, Debellation of Salem
and Byzance, and Answer to the First Part, fife., are only to be found
in the unique edition of his English Worlds (1557). I have read all
through carefully from this point of view. Netter of Walden I cannot
profess to have studied exhaustively ; but I have spent some weeks over
him in search of this and similar subjects. He could scarcely have
failed to plead the monastic school system in one or other of the following
passages : Doctrinale Fidei, Lib. II., c. xiii. -xiv. (vol. I., p. 174) ; Lib.
II., art. III., c. Ixix. (p. 361) ; Lib. IV., art. II., c. xxii. -xxxi. (pp.
528 ff.); De Relig. Sacram., tit. IX., c. Ixxviii. -xc. (vol. III., pp. 142 ff. :
ed. Venice, 1571).
Note 29, p. 8. — Humbert de Romans in de la Eigne, Max. Bibl. Patrum
(Lyon, 1677), vol. XXV., p. 482 (lib. II., c. 53). Helene Jacobius.
" Die Erziehung des Edelfraeuleins im alten Frankreich. " Halle,
1908, pp. 13, 55 sq.
Note 30, p. 8. — Chaucer.
Chaucer is, of course, satirising the snobbery of the miller's wife :
the girl who had been at a nunnery was like the modern boy who has
been to one of the aristocratic public schools. It would be easy to prove,
from Thackeray and Punch, that a startling proportion of the male
population had been educated at Eton.

NOTE 31, PAGE 8. 25
Note 31, p. 8. — Edmund Dudley wrote in 1509 :
" For verily, I fear me, the noblemen and gentlemen of England be the
worst brought up, for the most part, of any realm in Christendom ;" and
again : " Where be your famous men that were wont to read divinity
in every cathedral church and in other great monasteries? Where be
the good and substantial scholars of grammar that have been kept in
this realm before this time, not only in every good town and city, and in
other places, but also in abbeys and priories, in prelates' houses, and
oftentimes in the houses of men of honour of the temporality?"
(Tree of the Commonwealth, ed. 1859, pp. 19, 31, cf. 34-5 ; for a sane
estimate of the value of this evidence see H. A. L. Fisher's Polit. Hist.
of Engd., vol. v., p. 131). We cannot, of course, trust Dudley's refer
ence to the past as we can his description of the present ; it is part of
the false perspective which we find everywhere in an unhistorical age ;
if anything in the present seemed contrary to reason and common sense,
men assumed, as a matter of course, that this was due to decay rather
than to imperfect development. It would be difficult to find a single
medieval moralist who was not convinced that the evils he combated had
been less intolerable in his grandfather's days. It is noteworthy, also,
that in this halcyon past Dudley does not put the monks alone as educa
tors, or even in the first rank ; we know that rich citizens, prelates,
and barons not infrequently helped poor students, and his assertion carries
us no further than this in the monasteries ; it simply testifies to the
existence of a certain number of almonry and choir schools. In itself,
it does not go far in either direction, but at least it corroborates conclu
sions drawn from the silence of anti-Lollard writers, and confirms in
this field Savine's general verdict : " Notwithstanding its fragmentary
character, the evidence contained both in The Valor Ecclesiasticus and in
the Suppression Accounts leads us to regard with some suspicion state
ments concerning the immense social influence of monasticism in
England." (I.e., p. 263.)
Note 32, p. 8. —
The preamble to Henry VIII.'s Act of 1539 accuses the monks of sloth,
and gives as motives of the suppression " that God's word might be
better set forth, that children might be brought up to learning, &c. "
Statutes of the Realm, ed. 1817, vol. II., p. 728. The preamble is
doubtless as frankly partisan as Aske's statement was ; but it may help
us to strike some sort of balance, since both parties were compelled to
keep within certain limits of probability ; Aske, therefore, supplies us
with a rough terminus a quo, and the Act with a terminus ad quem.
Note 33, p. 8. — Gascoigne's Liber Veritatum, ed. Rogers, pp. 4, 74, 112,
195, 198, 222. The last runs :
" Et sic cura animarum perit, et hospitalitas, et bonum regimen in
parochiis, et exhibitio juvenum ad scholas et ad universitates. " If the
monks had been doing anything considerable for national education,
Gascoigne could not have failed to recognise that they gave back with
one hand that which (he complains) they subtracted with the other.
Note 34, p. 8. — Busch, I.e., p. 493.
Abbot Gasquet, on the contrary, asserts that " all the larger nunneries
and probably most of the smaller ones, to whatever order they belonged,
opened their doors for the education of young girls, who were frequently
boarders. In fact, the female portion of the population, the poor as well

26 NOTE 34, PAGE 8.
as the rich, had in the convents their only schools, nuns their only
teachers, in pre-Reformation times." (English Monastic Life, p. 176.)
But he only enumerates Kington, St. Mary's, Winchester, Barking,
Kingsmead, Polesworth, Nuneaton, Delapri, Wintney, Shouldham, and
Carrow, besides Grace Dieu a few pages earlier. No references are
given, as usual ; but, as this is perhaps the statement of the case for
nunnery schools which would be selected by readers as the most authori
tative yet published, it is worth while to examine the passages which
I have italicised.
All seems to be simply guesswork ; has anyone brought documentary
evidence for any of the following important nunneries — Shaftesbury,
Amesbury, Syon, Studley, or Lacock? Moreover, with regard to the
half-dozen greater houses for which we have some sort of evidence, this
is generally so fragmentary that we cannot safely infer more than an
intermittent habit of taking pupils or junior boarders. So far as the
published evidence goes, it is very probable that in England, as in
Normandy, the poorer houses were more tempted to take pupils than the
greater. To whatever order. — We shall presently see that the Cistercian and
Gilbertine Rules expressly forbade the schola externa, which therefore
grew up against the law and probably under pecuniary pressure ; this is
vital to a proper consideration of the whole question.
Frequently boarders. — Has any instance yet been produced of nunnery
pupils who were not boarders, and does not this tacit assumption of day
pupils simply rest upon the Fuller-Collier-Tanner legend?
Nuns their only teachers. — This, however exact according to Fuller
and Aubrey, neglects even the purely English evidence, and is rendered
still more improbable by the more abundant testimony against it in other
countries. The well-known statute of 1405-6 (c xvii.), dealing mainly
with peasants and townsmen of the lower-middle or lower class, enacts
" qe chescun homme ou femme, de quele estate ou condicion qil soit, soit
fraunc de mettre son fitz ou file dapprendre lettereurs a quelconque
escole qe leur plest deinz le roialme ;" and this would certainly seem
to imply that girls as well as boys were taught at the elementary schools
which we know to have been numerous in the fifteenth century. (Cf.
A. F. Leach in Encyc. Brit., XI. ed., vol. XXIV., p. 371 : where it will
be seen that the terms of foundation frequently use the general word
children.) Mr. Leach has also indicated a " magistra scolarum " at
Boston in 1404, though he doubts whether she kept an actual girls'
school ; but Mr. de Montmorency quotes a Chancery petition of about
1480 showing that a girl of seven had been attending an elementary
school of about thirty children in London. (V. C. H., Lines., II., 451 ;
Journ. of Ed., June, 1910.) The foreign evidence is more definite.
Froissart speaks quite naturally of little girls at his own elementary
school (ed. Buchon, vol. III., p. 479) ; and Ch. Jourdain brings con
siderable evidence for girls' schools in France (Excursions d, travers le
Moyen Age, 1888, 504-508). Janssen (I.e., p. 28) brings even more for
Germany ; and these analogies tend to strengthen the probabilities for
England. In many matters of culture we lagged behind the Continent ;
but the probability is that here, as there, among girls who had received
any education at all, no inconsiderable proportion had been taught in the
small and precarious elementary schools.
Finally, let us examine the list of convents which Abbot Gasquet
specifies as keeping schools. The Kington and Carrow evidence has
already been discussed. For Delapri I have found none ; and other

NOTE 34, PAGE 8. 27
readers also will probably prefer to suspend judgment until references
are given. The Grace Dieu evidence is doubtless that contained in the
MS. accounts with which the author has dealt just before at some length
(P.R.O. Ministers' Accounts, 1257/10). Here, the records of four years
give us, at the most liberal interpretation, only nineteen children, whose
total sojourn amounted to 648 weeks ; that is, an average of three pupils
all the year round, and one extra for two or three months of the time.*
There were fifteen nuns, including the prioress, which is rather over
than under the average for a nunnery at that date. I am discussing this
evidence more fully in Appendix III. Kingsmead probably comes from
the same source as the statement in Vict. County Hist., Derby, vol. II.,
by a writer who gives no verifiable reference, and is notoriously inac
curate. He says (p. 44, note 14), " Evidence of the King's Mead Priory
being used as a boarding school occurs in the private muniments of the
Curzon, Fitzherbert, and Gresley families." It is probable that we have
here, at .the most, scattered notices of boarders without definite indica
tion of status. For Shouldham the evidence again probably comes from
the V. C. H., Norf., II., 413-4 ; but of the five girls there mentioned
one was certainly a nun in the house later on, three were, primarily at
least, political prisoners, and for the fifth we have no definite evidence
either way. At Wintney the V. C. Hist., Hants, vol. II., supplies no
evidence of a school in earlier times, while at the Dissolution a complete
list of the inmates shows no children whatever (p. 151)- It is possible
that, here again, the whole fabric has been built upon a boarder whom we
know to have been a married woman (V. C. H., I.e., and Wykeham' s
Register. Hampshire Record Soc, 1899, vol. II., p. 7). For Nuneaton,
again, the V. C. H. supplies no evidence, and it is probable that the
idea is taken from p. 38 of the anonymous and untrustworthy " English
Monasteries," to which I have alluded in note 10. John of Gaunt's
Register, now published (R. Hist. Soc, vols. XX. and XXI.), enables
us to estimate this evidence. On the 31st January, 1373, John of Gaunt
sent " V de noz damoiselles d'Espaigne pur demourrer pur un temps
ovesque nostre chere en Dieu la prioresse de Noun Eton en la priorie
illoeques," and paid 13s. 4d. for their weekly expenses. (II. , p. 128.)
In August, 1374, one of these damoiselles has gone to live at Leicester
with John Elmeshalle, to whom the Duke diverts her fifth share of the
weekly allowance (231) ; in the same month he sends two deer " a noz
damoysels d'Espagne demurrantz a Noun-eton " (236). Lastly, on
December 17th, he has " entenduz que noz damoisels d'Espaigne
demurrantz a Nouneton ne voullont pas illoeques pluis longement
demurrer "; therefore, three of them are to receive the accustomed allow
ance elsewhere, while the fourth " demourrera ovesque nostre tres cher
et tres ame file Kateryne." There is no evidence in all this for a school
in the ordinary sense : the implication is rather that these damoiselles
and their guardian thought the convent a convenient boarding-house,
* Holidays, in the modern home-going sense, seem to have been almost unknown
in the medieval school, as Mr. Leach has shown in his Winchester College, with
further reference to the Eton Statutes. In this calculation I make allowance for
rather more holidays than the children were likely to get, in order to keep on the
safe side. I have, of course, ruled out " Dame Joan Scargill," who paid 2s. a
week, or four times th© sum paid by a child, and Philip Scargill, who paid eighteen
pence, and was pretty evidently the Dame's husband ; but I have included five
others on fol. 89, though they are distinctly labelled as perJtendinanies, and the
sums they pay would, in any case, have suggested boarders rather than schoolgirls.
If these were omitted (and I note that Abbot Gasquet also interprets them as
merely boarders), this would bring down the average of actual children to about
two at any given time.

28 NOTE 34, PAGE 8.
just as we know that married ladies did. (Cf. Reg. Wykeham, I.e.;
Drokensford, pp. 8i, 165 ; Ralph of Shrewsbury, pp. 277, 278, 744.)
Abbot Gasquet's list might be extended from the nunnery accounts
of Swaffham Bulbeck (Dugdale IV., 459), and perhaps Swine (J. E. T.
Rogers, Six Centuries of Work and Wages, p. 166 ; but the accounts
to which Rogers alludes cannot now be found, and we are left in doubt
whether these were not mainly grown-up boarders). A far longer list,
on the other side, could be drawn up of nunneries in which the only
indication of children comes from the stern restrictions decreed by
visitors, who often expelled all boys, and all girls above the age of
twelve, or even of ten (e.g., Dugdale, IV., 554, and V., 654; Vict.
Count. Hist., Lines., II., 156).* The enormous preponderance of such
restrictive notices must not, of course, be pressed too hard in argument ;
there are reasons why these should have survived in larger proportions
among our records. But the whole evidence, when all allowance has been
made, strongly suggests that none but the well-to-do were taught, and
these usually in small numbers and with intermittent frequency. Against
the twenty-six simultaneous pupils at Winchester (the largest number
for which we have certain evidence in any convent), we must put the
two or three children among the fifteen nuns of Grace-Dieu. One very
important indication, however, may be found in the recently published
third volume of the V. C. Hist., 'Vorks. The hints of pupils in Yorkshire
nunneries are far more frequent than in any other county ; though here,
as usual, the notices are almost always restrictive. But the evidence
tends to confirm both Aske's plea and the limitations for which I argue
in my text. The nunneries did, it would seem, more educational
work in the North ; yet nothing, even there, corresponded to the
exaggerations of Fuller and his copyists. Before leaving this question,
it may be well to notice what seem to be the patriotic exaggerations of
the county commissions in their natural anxiety to avert the confi-scation
of local endowments. The vague testimonial to Pollesworth that these
twelve nuns had " gentlemen's children and sojourners ... to the
number sometimes of thirty and sometimes of forty or more," contrasts
with the definite statistics from St. Mary's, Winchester, which give only
twenty-six schoolgirls to twenty-two nuns (Gasquet, J^enry VIIL, Hr'c.,
II., 223 ; Dugdale-Caley, II., 456). Again, their report that Godstow
bred " most of the young gentlewomen of the county " savours of evident
exaggeration ; and the accompanying testimonial to " great strictness
of life " is equally suspicious in the face of what we know at other times
• Miss Eileen Power has kindly supplied me with a list of convents in which she
has found certain, or possible, notices of pupils, and with her permission I print
it here as fuller than my own, omitting only those already mentioned above. The
following are mentioned in the Vict. County Histories, and can be easily verified
without further reference than county and volume : Bucks. I., Burnham; Lines. II.,
Stixwould and Heynings, Nuncotham and Gokewell ; Beds. I., Elstow; Oxon. II.,
Godstow; 'Warwick, II., Pinley ; Yorks, III., Arden, Marrick, Nunburnholme,
Nunkeeling, Thicket, Wilberfoss, Yedingham, St. Clement York, Esholt, Hampole,
Nunappleton, Rosedale, Sinningthwaite, Arthrington, and Moxtry. Add to these
Wherwell (Reg. Peckham. R. S., p. 653) ; Sheppey [Ibid. p. 924) ; Romsey
(Liveing. Records, p. 104) ; Farwell (Salt Collections, vol. VIIL, p. ng) ;
Redlingfield (Norwich Visitations, ed., Jessopp, p. 139) ; Thetford (Ibid. p. 304) ;
St. Radegund's (A. Gray. Cambridge Antiquarian Society, 1898, p. 176). Miss
Power has also found slender traces of pupils, or boarders, in the accounts of St.
Helen's, Bishopsgate (P.R.O. Ministers' Accts., 1258/2), and in the following wills :
Somerset (Ed., Weaver), I., 28, Canyngton; Test. Eboracensia, I., 12, Swine, and
418, Nun Monkton (?) ; Sharpe. Cal. of Wills: Stratford (cf. Chaucer's allusion to
Stratford French). But the overwhelming majority of these notices, it must be
borne in mind, are purely restrictive, and corroborate the theory put forward in
my paper.

NOTE 35, PAGE g. 29
about this house, and the other two nunneries of Littlemore and St.
Radegund's on the outskirts of university towns. (Cf. E.E.T.S., vol.
142 (191 1), p. Ixxxi.; Littlemore in V. C. Hist., Oxford, and St.
Radegund's in Dugdale-Caley, IV., 215.) Many of the county com
missioners had both spiritual and temporal reasons for favouring the
monasteries ; and, though our sympathies must lean strongly to their
side, we cannot accept their statements at this juncture without at least
some fraction of the suspicion which must certainly attach to the asser
tions of Cromwell's visitors on the other side.
Note 35, p. 9. — Dachery, in his edition of Lanfranc, note 27 to the
Vita, chap. IV. (Migne P.L. 150, col. 84).
Mabillon and Ziegelbauer, as below, note 43.
Note 36, p. 9. — Giesebrecht, De Litt. Stud, apud Italos. Berlin, 1845.
Dom Berliere (I.e., p. 510) appeals to pp. 18, 19 ; but, as I have said,
he has evidently taken the whole reference from a note of Montalembert 's,
and, by a fate common to such unverified " conveyances," has somewhat
distorted it. (Moines d'Occident, ed. 1882, vol. VI., p. 175, n. 2 ; others
of Dom Berliere's least satisfactory references seem to have been taken
without due examination from this same source.) Giesebrecht writes, on
p. 15 : " neque alterum quod enumeratur scholarum genus, illud quod in
monasteriis fuit, a laicis fuisse frequentatum, mihi persuadere possum.
Pueros quidem oblatos et non nunquam alium quempiam
clericum his in scholis, et Ratherii verba et alia probant testimonia ;
neque tamen ultra ea progrediendum esse concedam. " A few lines later,
speaking of the Renaissance of the nth century, he adds, " sed ne tum
quidem ab exteris frequentatae esse videntur [scholae monasticae]."
Again, on p. 19, after describing the superior education of the Italian
nobles, he writes, " certa quidem conjectura augurari possumus, eos
privatas potissimum petilsse scholas doctorum, quos et ipsos ex parte
laicos fuisse diximus." Montalembert writes inaccurately and irre
sponsibly all through this chapter ; but this is, perhaps, his worst blunder.
Note 37, p. 9. — Other references.
With considerable difficulty I verified his reference to the two Austrian
writers who (as he claims, I.e., p. 510) have so clearly proved the
frequency of the " scholae externae " in that country as to render further
exposition unnecessary. Their evidence cannot be looked upon as really
satisfactory. Moreover, many of Dom Berliere's own cases break down
on examination ; here are a few examples in order. P. 501, St. Agile
was taught at Luxeuil " cum aliis nobilium virorum filiis, qui postea
ecclesiatum praesules extiterunt "; but there is nothing to show that
these future prmsules were not being brought up as monks in an oblate-
school. St. Frodobert, his next instance, was indeed taught at Luxeuil
again ; but he certainly took the vows there later on ; nor is there any
hint of any change of purpose in this, unless we may infer it from the
fact that he was already " clericus " when he entered the school. His
fourth instance, St. Boniface, speaks of monks teaching children, but
does not exclude the possibility that these were oblates ; and the same
lax reasoning vitiates other instances. In at least one case (St. Troud,
p. 507), the authority to which he refers us contradicts his statement in
the text, an error to which G. Robert (I.e.) calls attention also. On
p. 503 the evidence offered to support Montalembert 's exaggerated claim

30 NOTE 38, PAGE 9.
is utterly insufficient. P. 504, Constance of Luxeuil is extremely
doubtful ; so is (505) Hugues de Marchiennes. The priories of St. Remi,
instanced on the same page, simply furnish a case of that monopoly
in school management which was characteristic of the Middle Ages ; and
the Marmoutiers case is apparently that of an oblate with the option of
withdrawal if he changes his mind ; (cf. Dom Berliere's own note to
Cluny on p. 507.) P. 506, St. Evroul, shows us a destitute monk who
takes to schoolmastering ; but so did French imigri nobles, without
having taught before. 508 Hautmont: here there is no proof that the
" scolares pueri " were outsiders ; Tournai; the " autierme," which he
takes to be a " schola externa," is extremely doubtful ; the editor con
jectures more probably that it is connected with " altaragium," and
refers to the choir-boys. 509, Abingdon and Ramsey; on both these
points he apparently follows Miss Drane, whose uncritical spirit and lack
of proper references he has already noted on p. 501 ; from her also he
probably takes his " peut-on oublier que c'est aux moines que I'Angle
terre doit I'origine de ses deux plus celebres ecoles, Oxford et Cam
bridge? " Page 510, JRetcfeenaM, is a mere random inference ; Athenulf,
again, was rather a State prisoner than a schoolboy ; for Bernwald we
have no proof that his was not an oblate school from which a few boys
may have strayed into the ranks of secular clergy. The four Spanish
cases with which he concludes, I have been unable to verify from lack
of books.
Note 38, p. 9. — Charles the Great, in Migne. P. L. 97, col. 177, § 71.
Note 39, p. 10. — St. William, in R. Glaber (P. L., vol. 142, col. 709 ;
quoted in full by Montalembert, ed. 1882, VI. 177 note).
Here the schools are expressly stated to have been open to all ; but
St. William arranged this because he saw " non solum illo in loco, sed
etiam per totam provinciam [of Normandy], nee non per totam Galliam,
in plebeiis maxime scientiam psallendi ac legendi deficere et annullari
clericis." It was therefore a missionary effort to remedy the general
ignorance of the parish clergy ; and Montalembert rightly compares these
schools to the post-Tridentine seminary system. St. William died in
103 1, and no evidence of any similar effort has been produced for a later
date, until the non-monastic Brethren of Common Life.
Note 40, p. 10. — Louis the Pious. Pertz Mon. Germ. Leges, vol. I.,
p. 201, § 45 (cf. § 42).
This council was dominated by the reforming energy of St. Benedict bf
Aniane. Mabillon attempts to argue that the words imply only a separa
tion between the schola internee and externce; but modern scholars have
abandoned this position (cf. Sackur Die Cluniacenser, 1894, vol. II.,
p. 328). It must be noted that, even at St. Gallen, the so-called scholce
externa were within the abbey walls. See the well-known plan of that
monastery, easily accessible in Encyc. Brit., ed. XL, vol. I., p. 13 ; far
larger scale in Archceol. Journal, vol. V., 1848. (Prof. Willis.) Mab
illon, indeed, after carefully noting the distinction, all-important to this
discussion, between schools for young monks and schools for young out
siders, proceeds hopelessly to confuse the two categories, and never
attempts to unravel the threads again during the latter part of his
argument. (Acta Sanctorum O.S.B., Saec III., i., praefatio.)
Note 41, p. 10. — St. Peter Damian in Migne, P. L., vol. 145, col. 621.
(Opus cxxxvi., cap. 16.)

NOTE 42, PAGE 10. 31
Note 42, p. 10. — Ccesarius of Aries, in Migne. P. L. 67, col. 1,108.
(Chap. 5).
It is repeated verbally by St. Benedict of Aniane in his Concordia
Regularum, cap. 46. (Migne P. L. vol. 103, col. 1,098.) " Nobilium
filii sive ignobilium, ad nutriendum aut ad docendum penitus non
accipiantur. " For Cluni see not only the negative evidence of Udalric's
Consuetudines of about io86 (Migne. P. L. 149, col. 741 sq.), but also
Peter the Venerable's words in P. L. 189, col. 1,051, with the comments
of G. Robert. Les Ecoles, <Sfc., p. 17 ; also Sackur, as above. Indeed,
both Mabillon and Dom Berliere emphasise the antagonsim of the Cluniac
reform to the education of outsiders. For Carthusians see Guigo's own
words in L. Holsten. Codex Regularum, t. II., p. 322 ; he may refer
here only to the oblate school, but his words would, a fortiori, exclude
pupils from without. For Cistercians, see Guignard, La Rigle
Cistercienne, 1878, p. 272, a code drawn up probably in St. Bernard's
lifetime: " nullus puerorum doceatur litteras intra monasterium vel in
locis monasterii nisi sit monachus, vel in probatione receptus novicius,"
cf J. T. Fowler in Yorks. Archceol., vol. X., p. 512. For the
Gilbertines, Dugdale-Caley, vol. VI.,* p. xliii., verbally from the
Cistercian rule ; again, as emphasising the hindrances to discipline which
actuated this prohibition, ibid, pp. x. (lay-sisters), and Ixxxv. ^Rule § 25).
For the Montfortines, Martene, Thesaurus, vol. IV., col. 1,215. For
Prcemonstratensians, G. Robert, loc. cit., p. 17. I may add that the
Benedictine reform of the early thirteenth century seems to have been
equally inimical to the scholce externce. The so-called " Narbonne
Statutes," initiated by Honorius HI., in 1226, and ratified by Gregory
IX., were apparently enforced even as far off as at Salzburg and
Lambach ; Berliere thinks that they " devaient en quelque sorte faire loi
dans I'ordre," until superseded by the epoch-making .Statuta Gregorii
of a decade later. [Revue Binidictine, vol. 9 (1892), pp. 550-2.] One of
these runs (§ 7) : " Item statuimus quod infantes qui recipiuntur in
monasteriis, et quotidie audiant Regulam exponi, et scholam non exeant
donee legitimae sint aetatis, et tunc professionem faciant et bene-
dictionem accipiant secundum formam Regulae." Elders are, after the
lapse of a year, to profess or depart. The existence of only one school,
the scholce internee or oblate school, seems to be assumed here as clearly
as in the Cluniac Consuetudines. (See Dachery, Spicilegium, ed. 1723,
vol. I., pp. 707 ff.)
Compare with the foregoing quotations a document of extreme im
portance, which shows (i) the weight attached by the disciplinarian to this
strict conventual seclusion, and (2) the difficulty of maintaining it under
constant pressure from influential secular folk. In 1223 the Order of
Sempringham obtained certain important papal privileges, among which
was an " Inhibition [to the Master of the Order] to admit any young girl
or woman who does not intend to become a nun, to be nurtured or taught
in the convents of their Order, or to stay there except in cases of imminent
danger. The kinswomen of the nuns are to visit them only once a year."
A document like this explains clearly why visitors looked upon convent
education with disfavour, and, on the other hand, how difficult it was
for them to restrict it in the face both of great folk who wanted their
daughters looked after, and of nuns who caught at any means of adding
to their scanty income. It is a curious commentary on this Inhibition that
in 1324, when Roger Mortimer was a rebel, three of his daughters were
sent to be " safely kept " at three Gilbertine convents — Sempringham,
Shouldham, and Cockersand. (Vict. Count. Hist., Norfolk, II. , 414.)

32 NOTE 43, PAGE lo.
Note 43, p. 10.— Mabillon. Acta Sanctorum O.S.B., Saec. IIL, i. praef,
§ IV., pp. XXV. sq.
Ziegelbauer. Hist. Lit. O.S.B., Augsburg, 1754, vol. I., p. 63.
Note 44, p. 10. — The Friars.
Except, of course, sporadically— Vasari, for instance, tells us that
Cimabue " fu mandato, acciocche si esercitasse nelle lettere, in S. Maria
Novella, ad un maestro suo parente, che allora insegnava grammatica a
novizi di quel convento "; but the words rather exclude than suggest a
real school for outsiders. It must be noticed, however, that one or two
passages in Erasmus may possibly refer to the Friars, though in most
cases he evidently refers to the Brethren of Common Life; my references
are to the ed. of 1703. De Pronuntiatione , vol. I., p. 919, C : but this
seems to imply only the scholce internee; and there is no hint on 918 F.,
where we should expect an allusion. Page 92 1 C. seems to refer jlefinitely
to the B. Com. Life. De Pueris Instituendis, I., 507, A ; but here, again,
the reference is probably to the Brethren, as vol. V., 713 D, certainly is.
(Christiani Matrimonii Institutio.)
Note 45, p. 11. — Ziegelbauer.
L.C, p. 63, col. 2, quoting Mabillon with approval : Denifie, Universi-
taeten d. Mittelalters, p. 658.
Note 46, p. 11. — Clement V., at Council of Vienne in ,1311, embodied
in Canon Law (Clement, 1. III., tit. X., c i). For Benedict XII.
see Wilkins, Concilia II., 594, col. 2 :
" Proviso attentius, ut seculares instruendi cum ipsis monachis
docendis in eisdem ecclesiis, monasteriis, prioratibus, et locis aliis,
nullatenus admittantur. " I have here modified my original text. The
separation insisted upon by Benedict XII. would at least seem to explain
why, when we come to the fuller documentary evidence of the last
century before the Dissolution, we find so little trace of schools for
secular boys beyond the choir and almonry schools, and these only in the
larger houses.
Note 47, p. 11. — To the Universities.
Evidence on this point is easily accessible in Reynerus I.e., App. III.,
pp. 117, 136, Wilkins, Concilia III., 425, 468 ; moreover, it constantly
recurs in the reports of visitor.s — e.g., in the Norwich Visitations pub
lished by Dr. Jessopp. I will therefore only give details here from two
lists which are still in MS., but of which the Rev. H. E. Salter has kindly
lent me transcripts. They refer to the Austin Canons, who were, of
course, under the same obligation as the Benedictines since Clement V.
and Benedict XII.
In 1443, the English General Chapter reported that not half the
statutory attendances had been kept. Forty-two houses were bound to
keep constantly at least one student each at the University : total,
42 X 3 = 126 units since the last General Chapter, three years ago.
Four houses were reported as defaulting for one year, one for a year and
a half, six for two years, while nineteen had not kept a single student
during all the three years ; total, 68^ units lacking out of the statutory
126. (Bodleian MS., Rawlinson, B., 401, f., 8 a.) In 1518, matters
were still worse ; only eight out of the forty-two houses had fulfilled their
statutory obligations. (B.M. MS., Cotton, Vesp., D. i. f., 69 b.) Com-

NOTE ^8, PAGE 11. 33
pare the frequent complaints of visitors that monasteries had no teacher
for the young monks or novices : e.g., Jessopp, Vis. Dioc, Norwich,
pp. 19, 28, 54, 59, 61, 74, 77, 98, 107, 124, 125, 137, 160, 165, 248, 252,
253, 280, 286, 289, 303, 312. Among these defaulters are great houses
like Norwich Cathedral, Walsingham, and St. Benet's, with important
foundations of the second rank such as Wymondham Abbey and St.
Peter's, Ipswich. Important sidelights are thrown upon the same subject
by pp. 7, 22, 76, 105, 118, 120, 132, 141, 178, 193, 217, 266.
Note 48, p. 11. — Wards of the Abbot.
Of this kind, rather than schoolboys in the ordinary sense, were
probably those complained of at Westacre in 1494. " Item. Quod multi
sunt pueri generosi in domo de quibus non percepit Prior quomodo pro
eorum mensa solvitur " (sic, as printed in the Norwich Visitations, I.e.,
p. 50). This, it is implied, was due to the sub-prior, who managed the
whole house, " et non vivit sicut religiosus," keeping a rabbit-farm in
one place and a swannery in another, " quos [cignos] donat generosis et
aliis ubi vult, et nihil reddit prioratui de eisdem." Of two other
Brethren it is reported that " otio vacant et non applicant se ad aliquod
studium "; and the whole report reads as though the sub-prior boarded
sons of the Mammon of Unrighteousness, just as he kept rabbits and
swans, for his own personal profit. Later visitations of Westacre do
not suggest a place of learning (pp. 103-5, 165). The only other passage
in these records which might suggest a monastic boys' school in the
traditional sense is, I believe, p. 280 (St. Benet's at Hulme). Here it is
testified in, 1532, " quod cubant pueri in dormitorio cum monachis.
Et quod sunt quidam juniores monachi qui nihil intelligunt grammaticae,
viz." [five of the sixteen monks are here specified by name, and another
witness testifies concerning four of them, "vix possunt legere vel
cantare ;"] in 1494 it had been noted that the Brethren had no grammar-
master. The third Prior (to return to 1532), was a " communis venator,"
and witnesses complain ' ' quod multitudo canum in domo devoret (ste)
aescas quae soient distribui inter pauperes." Here again, then, there
is little suggestion of educational activity in any serious sense. If the
" pueri " here, as at Westacre, were not choirboys but sons of gentle
folk, they may well have been sent to the Abbey as to a neighbouring
squire's household. Within three miles of Westacre Priory is one of
the last spots on which the bustard used regularly to breed in England.
St. Benet's, again, is among the Broads, and was an admirable centre
for coursing, hawking, shooting, and fishing. Both entries are rather
suggestive of that " exhibitio potentum," or " succouring of gentlefolk
and their sons," upon which the orthodox Gascoigne and the orthodox
Aske passed judgments so different ; or at least of the well-known story
in the Gesta S. Ludovici, of " tres pueri nobiles de Flandria " who had
been sent to the Abbey of St. Nicolas du Bois to pick up the French
language ; " quos jocantes et spatiantes per memora dictae ecclesiae,
arcubus et sagittis caniculos sagittando, dum sequerentur praedam
suam in nemoribus domini de Couciaco jam dicti, forestarii ipsius domini
eos ita reperientes ceperunt." (Recueil des Hist, des Gaules, vol. XX.,
p. 398.) An entry very similar to the Westacre one meets us at an early
date in Yorkshire. When Abp. Giffard visited Bolton Priory in 1275,
one of the Brethren deposed on oath, " quod scutifer prioris
duos habet pueros in domo, qui de bonis monasterii pro-
curantur, et aliam habet familiam onerosam." (Register, Surtees Soc,
p. 322.) The records of this visitation do not suggest, any more than

34 NOTE 49, PAGE ii.
those of Westacre and St. Benet's, a place devoted to altruistic educa
tional activities. Moreover, even where girls under the age of twelve
are alluded to, we cannot assume with absolute certainty that these were
schoolgirls ; cf. Vict. Hist. Yorks., III., 127, note 13, where it appears
that a convent maid-servant was turned out, under the Archbishop's
orders, on reaching the age of twelve. I do not wish to over-emphasise
all these objections, but so many rash assumptions have been made under
the traditional preconceptions, that it is necessary to point out other
possibilities which must always be reckoned with in interpreting these
stray notices of children.
Note 49, p. 11. — Almonry School.
Here, again, the temptation to neglect was great. In 1520 the visitors
found that Norwich Cathedral Priory had cut down its almonry scholars
from thirteen to eight; and in 1526 it was noted at Rushworth that
" pueri in collegio non continue aluntur sumptibus collegii sed custodiunt
pecora parentum nonnunquam." Rushworth was a college of secular
priests, but the temptation to evade statutory obligations was no
stronger, nor was the Bishop's control weaker, over such a foundation
than over a monastery ; rather the reverse. (Jessopp, Z.c, pp. 192,224.)
For Choir Schools, Almonry Schools, and Grammar Schools depending
on monasteries, by far the most trustworthy information is to be found
in Mr. Leach's article in Encyc. Brit., ed. XL, vol. XXIV., art.
Schools, pp. 364-6. The reader should also consult his account of
chantry schools on p. 367, and elementary schools on p. 371.
Note 50, p. 12. —
The prohibition of monastic dowries occurs as early as the second
Council of Nicea, can. 19. It was repeated twice under Alexander IIL,
the second time at the second Lateran Council (1167) and passed thus
into Canon Law. (Decret. Greg, 1. III., tit. XXXV., c. 2.) Innocent
III. repeated it in stronger terms at the fourth Lateran Council, cap. 40 :
" Simoniaca labes adeo plerasque moniales infecit, ut vix aliquas sine
pretio recipiant in sorores, paupertatis praetextu volentes hujusmodi
vitium palliare : ne id de csetero fiat, penitus prohibemus. " The
severest penalties are decreed against both parties in the transaction ;
yet St. Edmund Rich, his biographer tells us, " monasterium vix reperire
potuit, quod eas [his two sisters] reciperet, nisi certam summam pecuniae
dandam cum eis monasterio praetaxaret ; " and only with difficulty did
he find one at last into which he could place them without the guilt of
simony. (Martene, Thesaurus, v. III., col. 1780.) Thenceforward the
story of nuns' dowries is curiously like that of nuns' schools, though
naturally on a larger scale, in proportion as the pecuniary temptation
was more direct. Councils, synods, and visitors forbid the dowry with
an insistence which only reveals the frequency of the abuse. But, in
the face of these prohibitions, the thing was constantly done in a furtive
and irregular way which often defeated its own ends. Fresh nuns were
indeed taken for the sake of dowries, but of hand-to-mouth dowries which
afforded only momentary relief ; so that the convent was soon only the
deeper in debt. But the movement was irresistible ; and on the verge
of the Dissolution we find it apparently enjoying quasi-official approval.
By the seventeenth century it was triumphant. Van Espen, it is true,
calls it only "praxis hodierna multorum in Belgio monasteriorum ;"
but when, in 1667, Lady Warner of Parham was received among the

NOTE 50, PAGE 12. 35
Poor Clares of Gravelines, neither she nor her biographer seem to have
had the least suspicion of the Canon Law on the subject. (Life, ed. 1S58,
p. 115.) Indeed, the gulf between the medieval canons (probably un
repealed to this day) and modern common-sense practice, may best be
measured by the ditticulty which the Principal of St. Edmund's College
finds in even remotely conceiving St. Edmund's point of view in tne
13th century. He writes, with reference to the saint's difficulties and
scruples in the matter of his sister, " It must be remembered that in
those days all such institutions were endowed, and most of them were
well off. Although, therefore, it is lawful to require a certain sum to
provide for the maintenance of a new subject — as is now regularly done
— St. Edmund seems to have looked on this solicitude about the amount
to be paid as evidence of a worldly spirit, to which he would be no party.
There was in those days no fixed sum as at present, and he looked for
a community where the first care should be to ascertain whether a new
subject would be likely to make a good religious, and where temporal
considerations should occupy a secondary place. This, at least, seems
the easiest explanation of what at first sight appears almost an un
reasonable solicitude." (St. Edmund of Canterbury, by Father Bernard
Ward, 1903, p. 26.) The matter is very fully expounded and discussed
by Van Espen, ed. 171 5, vol. II., pp. 28 ff. He shows how common
the custom had become in Belgium by his time, and, though with evident
embarrassment, sweeps away the flimsy excuses urged by his contem
poraries for their disobedience to the Nicene and Lateran Councils. The
whole story of later medieval monasticism is that of a similar conflict
between old theories and newer ideas. Over and over again some un-
Benedictine practice dawns first upon history as a mere abuse. Pre
sently, however, it proves itself to be deeply rooted in average human
nature ; it is, therefore, gradually accommodated to the Rule, and to
Papal or Conciliar prohibitions, not only by the passive resistance of a
multitude of culprits, but also by ingenious logical subterfuges which
attempt to cover this abandonment of the primitive ideal. We must, of
course, read the Benedictine Rule equitably as well as accurately ; and
certainly the Rule itself gives the Abbot power to grant exceptional
liberties in exceptional cases. But this saving clause has been pressed
by medieval monks and modern apologists with an emphasis which some
times leaves us asking why the Founder should have troubled to formu
late so long and minute a code if its most important provisions were to
be left at the mercy of personal judgment in each separate house. The
truth is, that we hear very little in the actual Middle Ages of this
dispensing power ; it was obviously not intended to be frequently exer
cised, and no legislator dreamed of allow^ing it in any matter of real
importance. If it is so frequently invoked by later historians, this is in
order to excuse the undeniable break-down of primitive Benedictinism
long before the Dissolution. Monastic disciplinarians, General Chapter
acts. Visitor's reports, tell here an even plainer tale than the satirist ; for
it was often the most earnest Churchmen who realised most clearly how
few were those chosen spirits who could keep the Rule either in the
letter or in the spirit. But to attempt the history of monasticism based
upon an exhaustive survey of these numerous documents is a task which
grows more laborious from year to year ; I have therefore seized this
opportunity to break ground in one small corner of the field, and to show
how many modern contributions to the subject are not only unhistorical,
but anti-historical ; a jungle which the pioneer's axe ought to have
cleared long ago.

36 NOTE 51, PAGE 12.
Note 51, p. 12. — Van Espen, I.e., vol. I., pp. 458-9 (Pars. II., tit. XL,
c I, § 6, 7).
Note 52, p. 12. — Fragmenta ex Tertia Vita Bernardi, c. III. (Migne,
P.L., vol. 185, col. 525.)
" Fugiebat ergo quotidie puer [Nivardus] ad fratres suos, volens con-
versionis eorum socius fieri. Sed quia parvulus erat, remittebant eum,
et reddebant patri suo. Tandem non ferentes importunitatem ejus,
tradunt eum sacerdoti cuidam, ut disceret litteras ; et ubi paululurn
crevit, factus est et ipse Novitius apud Cistercium ; et suscepto post anni
spatium habitu, redditus est fratribus in Clara-Valle. "

APPENDIX II.

Summary by Pere P. Mandonnet, O.P., Rector of the University of
Fribourg, of his remarks during the discussion at the Congress : —
" Les ecoles ecclesiastiques et monastiques presentent, jusqu' a la fin
du xii° siecle, et meme plus tard, un phenomene general d'intermittence ;
leur existence etant liee a la presence d'un seul maitre susceptible de
disparaitre. Seules font exception, quelques ecoles episcopales depuis
le milieu ou la fin du xi' siecle. Ces derniers d'ailleurs perdent de leur
importance, ou meme disparaissent, avant le debut du xiii' siecle, sous
Taction des grands centres scolaires, comme Paris, Bologne, Oxford,
etc. " Pendant le haut moyen-age, c'est a dire jusqu'au xiii' siecle, I'educa
tion et 1 'instruction du clerge a ete surtout I'ceuvre des cures qui
formaient, comme iis pouvaient, les aspirants a I'etat clerical. L'instruc-
tion commune des clercs d'alors peut etre qualifiee de liturgique. Elle
suit, tant bien que mal, le programme trace par Charlemagne : Psalmi,
cantus, compotus, grammatica. Les clercs qui sont dans les ordres
majeurs et les pretres completent, comme iis peuvent, par eux-memes, ou
avec le concours d'un maitre s'il s'en trouve a leur portee, leur formation
theologique, qui vise, avant tout, la connaissance du symbole de la foi
et I'administration des sacrements.
" Les regies monastiques, y compris celle de Saint Benoit, ne
prevoient, ni I'etude proprement dite, ni des ecoles dans les monasteres.
En consequence I'existence de ces ecoles doit etre etablie par les docu
ments et non etre presupposee. Les ecoles dites externes, a I'usage des
clercs seculiers ou des jeunes nobles, n'ont existe que tres rarement et
transitoirement. II n'y a meme pas eu d 'ecoles internes pour les moines
qui etaient universellement laiques. Les ecoles ont ete etablies pour les
seuls oblats, c'est a dire les jeunes enfants offerts au monastere par leurs

APPENDIX II. 37
parents ; et c'est parmi eux que s'est recrutee la classe des moines
instruits, quand les moines n'ont pas ete des clercs qui ont quitte le siecle
pour entrer en religion. La formation du moine instruit est une forma
tion liturgique, semblable a celle des clercs seculiers, moins cc qui
regarde la pastoration des fideles. II semble bien que c'est le capitulaire
d 'Aix-la-ChapeUe de 817, inspire par Saint Benoit d'Aniane, le reforma-
teur Carolingien de la vie monastique, qui a fait loi universellement : Ut
scola in monasterio non habeatur, nisi eorum qui sunt oblati. Lorsque
les grandes reformes monastiques supprimerent, au xii' siecle, dans
des vues de discipline religieuse, les ecoles des oblats, il ne resta plus
trace d 'ecoles monastiques.
" La culture superieure pendant le haut moyen-age est I'apanage a peu
pres exclusif des prelats, seculiers et reguliers. C'etait a eux, les
Ordinaires (ordinarii), qu' appartenait la mission officielle de I'enseigne-
ment religieux par la predication ou I'exhortation. C'est pourquoi iis
etaient pris parmi les sujets les plus instruits qu'on pouvait rencontrer.
Ayant re9u une formation premiere, iis poursuivaient leur developpement
personnel des qu'ils en avaient le gout : leur qualite de prelats leur en
laissait le temps et les moyens. C'est eux qui sont les auteurs des
ceuvres litteraires du haut moyen-age, a peu de choses pres : — eveques
dans les dioceses, abbes dans les monasteres, prevots dans les collegiales
de chanoines reguliers. Les grands lettres de cette epoque sont une elite.
En dehors de leur cercle, I'instruction est extremement rudimentaire,
et I'Eglise, malgre ses efforts renouveles, n'a pu alors triompher de
I'ignorance generale du clerge interieur."

38 APPENDIX III.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.
Besides those already quoted, information is to be found in the follow
ing books : Leon Maitre, Ecoles Episcopales, &c. (1866) ; but, as Dom
Berliere points out, the author confuses the scholae externae and internae,
which vitiates his whole argument. More logical are Ch. Stallaert and
Ph. V. d. Haeghen, De I'instruction Publique au Moyen-Age (in Bel
gium, 1850) ; and a little may be found in Leon Gautier, La Chevalerie
(1883) ; Alwin Schultz, Hoefisches Leben, u.s.w. (1879) ; and K.
Weinhold, Die Deutschen Frauen im Mittelalter (1882). All these
authors rather take convent education for granted, than attempt
seriously to prove it ; but all supply useful indications. Celestin
Bernard, L'Enseignement Elimentaire, &c. , is, like Miss Drane, too
uncritical to be of any real use ; but the lowest depth is reached by the
article on Schools in vol. XIII. of the new Catholic Encyclopedia, which
can only be excused by the commercial necessities of modern bookmaking
and the necessary presuppositions from which the author started.

APPENDIX IV.

SCHOOL CHILDREN IN NUNNERY ACCOUNTS.
For the references on which this Appendix is based, I am mostly
indebted to Miss Power. In the mass of Stamford rolls no indication
has as yet been found. In the paper lately published by Mr. Flower,
of the Public Record Office, seven sets of nunnery accounts are dealt
with ; but they contain only one extremely doubtful reference to school
children (Hatfield Regis), although at Syon there were receipts " from
boarding visitors." (St. Paul's Eccl. Soc. Transactions, 1912, vol.
VII., pp. 51 ff.) At St. Radegund's, Cambridge, the accounts for
1482 show us Richard Woodcock paying for the " commons " of two
daughters during part of the year; but these probably resembled the
" divers persons of gentle birth," twice lumped together in 1449-51,
without any suggestion of education. (" Et de viij li. xiiijs iij perceptis
de mensa sive repasto diversarum personarum generosarum." A. Gray,
Priory of St. Radegund, Cambs. Antiq. Soc, 1898, pp. 176, 147, 163.)
At St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, the Prioress received £1 irom Dionysia
Miles " pro filia sua," and a mark for the nephew of Walter de
[Morton?]. (P.R.O., Ministers' Acct., 1258-2.) But the fullest account
comes from Swaffham Bulbeck (Dugdale, IV., 459). Here, in one year,
1482-3, 5 males and 4 females boarded with the nuns for an aggregate
of 214 weeks, or an average of twenty-four weeks each. These were
almost certainly children, paying 6d. each for their board. There were

APPENDIX IV. 39
eight nuns, including the Prioress. The Carrow accounts are lost ; we
have only the list of names, each with its date, extracted by Norris for
genealogical purposes, and Tanner's single extract showing that Dame
Margery Wetherly paid 13s. 4d. for eleven weeks, i.e., one quarter, while
her maid paid 8d. a week ; this was about 1430 a.d. For Grace-Dieu,
wherever the indications are precise enough for us to infer a weekly
rate with certainty, this is usually 6d. (i.e., two marks a year) ; but
Philip Scargill and his wife paid is. 6d. and 2s. respectively. There
are entries suggesting that Philip may have been an invalid ; and his
wife (like Dame Margery) had very likely a maid with her. .Several
other boarders seem to have paid more than 6d. , but we cannot be certain.
From all this, however, we may infer two things with reasonable cer
tainty ; that at Swaffham and Grace-Dieu the actual children paid only
6d. a week, and that their elders, as at Carrow, paid is. or more.
" Robert Drewe's daughter," for instance, paid is. at Grace-Dieu, and,
though I have counted her as a schoolgirl, it is most probable that she
was simply a boarder. The well-known case of Margaret Paston and
her daughter Margery, shows how useful a convent would be for a girl
whom the family had not yet been able to marry, whom they could not
place out (after the then fashion) in any friend's household, and for
whom there was no room at home with her mother ; indeed, even the
girl's despised suitor, Richard Calle, found an asylum with her for a
while among the nuns of Blackborough. (Paston Letters, ed. 1900, Nos.
617 and 633 ; cf. Gairdner's Introd., pp. ccxc. sq.) This is a definite
instance in which the records have survived by chance ; but cases of
similar necessity, more or less acute, must have been frequent.
The above-noted distinctions of price may help us with these and
similar entries, which, it is to be hoped, may some day be discovered,
though this particular field seems to have been fairly exhaustively
explored. The boarders at Cornworthy nunnery, unearthed by Mr. de
Montmorency from the Chancery records, paid rod. a week each,
beginning at the age of seven and nine respectively. This was about
1470 (Journ. Ed., June, 1909) ; the author quotes another instance in the
footnote, implying that this was the normal cost at the time. It may
have been so in London, but fifty years later two children of the
distinguished Lestrange family boarded with a layman in Norfolk at
5d. a week each. Their brother, " Mr. Nicholas," boarded with John
Mann, of Norwich, at 9d. a week, or f^i for the half-year, paying is.
for the same time "to ye skool mast' for his skool hyer. " Thence he
passed on to board with the Vicar of North Elmham, who charged is. a
week. (Archceologia, vol. XXV., pp. 421, 462-6.) The few accounts
in the Valor Ecclesiasticus are tantalising ; but it seems pretty plain
from the instances collected by Prof. Savine that at Norwich, Glouces
ter, Coventry and Bridgewater an almonry schoolboy's board cost at
most 6d. a week. It seems evident that the professor has mispunctuated,
and that not only board but vestitus is included in the yearly two marks
at Norwich (I.e., p. 233). I cannot profess, however, to have looked
closely into these cases, which I quote onlv for further illustration. Mr.
Leach points out that a Winchester boy's commons cost 8d. a week,
and those of an Oxford Fellow only is. And prices of this kind seem
to have increased so little during the 150 years preceding the Dissolu
tion, that we may instructively compare the cost of board for other
adults besides College Fellows. From 1414. onwards — exactly the
Grace-Dieu dates — labourers at King's Hall, Cambridge, received for
their maintenance from 8d. to lod. a week, "most generally 8d. "

40 APPENDIX IV.
?
In other cases, later on, we find it from i^d. to 2d. a day : " in [1518]
it is clear that board [of a man] is reckoned at Hickling Priory at 2d.
a day. ... In 1542 board and lodging are still reckoned at 2d. a
day." (Thorold Rogers, Hist, of Ag. and Prices, vol. II., pp. 497, 752.)
Three-halfpence a day is the ordinary price which may be gleaned from
parish accounts. (Nichols, lllust. of Manners, &c., 1797, pp. 80 ff.;
from 1484 to 1532 A.D.) Lodging of the ordinary sort seems to have
been gratuitous even at inns ; see the journey allowances in the
Lestrange accounts and the Northumberland Household Book (ed.
1827, pp. 117, 118). This would account for the fact that all these
accounts charge only for food.
With regard to the numbers : at Nunnaminster the girls just exceeded
the nuns (twenty-six to twenty-three*); and at Carrow, the boarders
(though here we cannot separate the girls from their elders) were once
as many as twenty, and twice fourteen, to about fifteen nuns.
But the average, as we have seen, was far lower ; and, if we could
reckon up the number of weeks spent by each girl at the Priory, we
should probably find an average of only four or five, or even less, present
at the same time. At Swaffham the average comes to between four and
five ; at Grace-Dieu, even counting the doubtful cases, scarcely to
more than three. These statistics are only too scanty ; but they cover
sufficient variations of time and place to suggest that their general con
sensus is not merely accidental. Therefore, until better are produced,
it can scarcely be thought hypercritical to emphasise the disagreement
between these fragments of fact and the vague statements of the Com
missioners pleading for Pollesworth or Godstow, who had strong, though
generous, motives for exaggeration.
* There were, however, four novices, who would have raised the numbers of
the nuns to twenty-seven by the end of the year.

APPENDIX V.

ABBOT GASQUET'S AUTHORITY.
This Appendix is only indirectly connected with the main theme of
my article. I add it here in answer to a recent general challenge, and in
the hope that it may save several pages of controversy when I find time
at last to publish a constructive study of Monasticism during the last
four centuries of the Middle Ages.
Within the last few months, Abbot Gasquet has republished a collection
of articles under the title of " England under the Old Religion." In
the last of these (" Editing and Reviewing") he complains of "the
slipshod work which too frequently of late has been allowed to do duty
for scholarship in England. ... If the reviewer always did his

APPENDIX V. 41
plain duty, . . . editors would hesitate to expose themselves to cen
sure by undertaking work which would but display to the world their
ignorance and incompetence " (pp. 332-3). From this, he goes on to
make sport with two collections of medieval documents by non-Romanist
editors. He mentions, only to reject it, the extenuating plea that these
were mere amateurs ; for " surely in the matter of editing this should
be no excuse ; and it is really time to protest against the spirit which is
everywhere tempting men whose ambitions are greater than their quali
fications tp undertake editorial work with, of course, disastrous results,
so far as our English reputation for scholarship is concerned." (338.)
He gloats over their transgressions in detail, and exposes them not only
to the reprobation of historical scholars, but also to the thoughtless
merriment of the groundlings. Few will hesitate to admit that his
criticism was well deserved on the whole ;¦ but few will fail to observe
that the critic has made the best of a welcome opportunity, sparing no
sarcasm — no touch of buffoonery even — which might lend vigour to his
onslaught. The sarcasms are demure and priestly, even the buffoonery
is demure : the tone all through is that of a scholar whose strength lies
in his own purity of conscience. The result has justified the writer's
policy. Not only have fellow-Romanists been duly impressed by the
republication, but even the reviewer in a well-known weekly paper wel
comes the conqueror with reverential awe. The Spectator of April 26th,
1913, prints a contribution headed " Historical Controversies," and
beginning : —
" On closing such a book as Dr. Gasquet's most recent work,
the reviewer takes up his pen and his parable in fear and trembling.
This is not so much because the Abbot-President of the English Bene
dictines is so minutely recondite in his book, nor even because most of
the essays included are of a strongly controversial nature from the
religious point of view. Controversial, of course, they are. One might
relish, at a safe distance, some of the remarks which an extreme critic
of the English Low Church faction might be inspired to write about some
of them. Yet, for the critic who does not approach his subject with a
completely uninformed and strongly biassed mind there must always
be a strong presumption in Dr. Gasquet's favour. He is, after all,
a modern scholar to whom we are deeply indebted for knowledge of the
Middle Ages. And he is scrupulously and eruditely accurate in all the
statements which he makes, and the evidence that he adduces. It is this
accuracy that makes the reviewer nervous. Nor is the fear relieved
by the final essay in this work, on ' Editing and Reviewing,' wherein
Dr. Gasquet utters denunciations of critics ' whose ambitions are
greater than their qualifications to undertake editorial work.' "
An author who has so little pity for inaccuracy outside his own
communion, and who literally cows the Spectator critic into humble
acquiescence, not only deserves close examination, but — in the strictest
sense of the word — requires it, by demanding from the public a judgment
which can be given only after weighing both parties in equal scales.
The two Anglican amateurs have indeed blundered both ignorantly and
carelessly ; but their accuser himself has done far worse. First, even
before this self-righteous article had appeared in the Dublin Review, a
heavier guilt of historical falsehood had been brought home to him than
to any writer of repute in our generation. And, secondly, long before
he reprinted these words, thus challenging the public again to judge
between himself and blundering Anglicanism, he had added to this
original sin the far heavier guil^ of republishing, knowingly and

42

APPENDIX V-

deliberately, falsehoods concerning which there could be no more doubt,
when once they had been exposed, than about the spelling of his own
name. I have already pointed out these facts briefly in a review of this
recent book (Nation, Nov. 30th, 1912), and in a subsequent letter to
the Guardian (May 30th, 1913) ; neither communication provoked any
answer ; and, indeed, the facts, once stated, speak conclusively for them
selves. Error, however, has an astounding power of propagation,
especially when it flatters the prejudices of a numerous and disciplined
party ; 1 must, therefore, take this opportunity of a fresh audience, and
repeat here one single instance out of the many which have given Abbot
Gasquet a bad pre-eminence even among controversial writers of his
own communion.
On p. 129 of the first edition of his " Old English Bible," he alluded
to " the account given by Foxe, who has printed from the Register of
Fitzjames, Bishop of London, thirteen articles extracted from ' the
prologue' of Hun's 'Great Book of the Bible.'" He added, two
sentences lower down, " We shall look in vain, in the edition of Wycliffite
Scriptures published by Forshall and Madden, for any trace of these
errors "; and on this negation he based one of his main arguments.
The issue is here as simple as possible. Are these thirteen articles,
printed by Foxe from Fitzjames's Register, to be found in Forshall and
Madden? They were in the Prologue of Hun's Bible ; are they in that
of the "Wycliffite Scriptures"? This Prologue is only sixty pages
long, and Abbot Gasquet assures us that there is "no trace " of the
articles within those sixty pages. A well-known Anglican clergyman,
writing in the Church Quarterly (Jan., 1901, p. 292), pointed out that
this categorical denial of so simple a fact is absolutely and inexplicably
false. He printed the articles themselves, side by side with the
corresponding passages in the Prologue, showing that the first occurs
as early as p. 3, and the rest (in the very same order as in Foxe) within
the remaining fifty-seven pages. I give the first two here ; the others,
which are equally unmistakable, may easily be verified. The italics, of
course, are mine.
Articles in Foxe.
(Acts and Monuments, ed. Towns-
end IV., 186.)
(i) First, the said book damneth
all holy canons, calling them cere
monies and statutes of sinful men
and uncunning, and calleth the
pope Satan, and Anti-Christ.

(2) Item, It damneth the pope's
pardons, saying they be but
leasings.

Prologue as printed in Forshall
AND Madden.
(i) It semith opyn heresie to
seie, that the gospel with his
treuthe and fredom suffisith not to
salvacioun of cristen men without
kepyng of ceremonyes and statutis
of sinful men and unkunnynge,
that ben maad in the tyme of
Sathanas and of Antecrist " (p. 3).
(2) " Summe cristene lordis sen
den general lettris to alle her
mynistris, and leegemen either
tenauntis, that the pardouns of the
bisschopis of Rome, that ben opin
leesingis, for thei graunten many
c. yeeris of pardoun aftir domes
day, be prechid generaly in her
rewmes and lordschipis. . . ."
(P- 30)-

APPENDIX V. 43
This exposure naturally caused some sensation, especially as the
critic pointed out two other scarcely less damaging misstatements,
which proved that the Abbot had not even read the Prologue from which
he so confidently argued. Moreover, these were only a few of the errors
and subterfuges brought home to him. It was shown how, in the face
of previous exposures by the eminent Wycliffite scholar, Mr. F. D.
Mathew, he had simply accused his critic of discourtesy, and made shift,
under cover of that accusation, to reprint the incriminated assertions
without correction. The article attracted so much attention that even
the Church Times, hitherto so friendly, emphasised its revelations in
very plain and unflattering language. During the next three months,
readers looked forward with much curiosity to the next Dublin Review,
in which the Abbot's " Old English Bible " Essays had from time to
time appeared. The next Dublin Review did indeed contain an article
from his pen ; but it was this article on " Editing and Reviewing,"
which has now been republished. The writer vouchsafed no word of
excuse or apology for his own faults ; nothing but a self-righteous
denunciation of non-Romanist editors, of reviewers who puff them, and
of the public which allows itself to be gulled.
Nor is this the worst. In due time, a thousand copies of " The Old
English Bible " having been sold to a public which takes its history
from the Dublin Review, a second edition was produced. This edition
was reprinted almost without the alteration of a word, and, in the
passages most needing alteration, quite unchanged. Abbot Gasquet
knew perfectly well, by this time, that all the thirteen articles were in
the Prologue ; but he could not have corrected the falsehood without
cutting away one main prop of his case ; and, even then, there were other
falsehoods scarcely less patent which cried for the knife, and would
have ruined the rest. He therefore made up his mind to a course which
has probably never commended itself, in the present generation, to a
responsible official in any Christian Church but one — or, indeed, in any
self-respecting society among non-Christians. On p. 1 1 1 of the second
edition, as on p. 129 of the first, stands the solemn repetition of this
exploded falsehood : " We shall look in vain, in the edition of Wycliffite
Scriptures published by Forshall and Madden, for any trace of these
errors." This lie was republished in 1908, without the least shock to
public opinion within his own Church, though many persons must have
known the facts. And now, in 1912, presuming on his long impunity,
he ventures to republish the old self-righteous onslaught on non-Catholic
historical methods from the Dublin Review. Historical scholars of real
position are, as a rule, quite unaware of all this, for they have ceased
to read his later volumes. Even his " Henry VIII. and the English
Monasteries " owed most of its reputation to the fact that Bishop
Creighton and Dr. Gairdner reviewed it very indulgently, without veri
fying its references. Yet, when I first began to expose the falsehoods
that lay there concealed, Dr. Gairdner was the first distinguished scholar
to volunteer frankly to me that he regarded my revelations as " a power
ful indictment "; and he wrote far more plainly before his death. The
last letter I had from him was dated Jan. 4th, 1912, in answer to a paper
in which 1 pointed out that Abbot Gasquet's recent apologia for Abbot
Wallingford displayed much of that cynical indifference to documentary
evidence which had already prompted his republication of the " Old
English Bible " falsehoods, to which I drew Dr. Gairdner's attention.
He wrote in reply : ' ' Thanks for your letter and the typed article
enclosed, which I now return. Abbot Gasquet does surprise me ; and

44 APPENDIX F-
I do not wonder at your severity." Quite recently, two scholars of
almost equal distinction have expressed the same astonishment and
disgust on learning the story of this republication, of which they had
hitherto no suspicion. But the Romanist hierarchy in England cannot
plead this excuse of ignorance. It is with open eyes that they lend all
their approbation to a system of apologetics which may possibly make
a few converts to-day, but must breed twice as many agnostics
to-morrow. Literary dishonesty of this extraordinary kind cannot be exposed by
ordinary means. A writer of Abbot Gasquet's position and ability could
never have committed himself publicly to falsehoods so patent, unless he
had been tempted gradually down the slippery slope by a most treacher
ous conspiracy of favourable circumstances. The very incredibility of
his proceedings is a protection in itself ; and he can further count upon
the prejudices or docility of his fellow-Romanists, upon the silence of
real students who lack leisure to verify his references or even to read
his books, and upon the terrors of weekly reviewers who have at least
some Socratic knowledge of their own ignorance, and are fain to take
an aggressive critic at his own valuation. Martin Luther's pecca fortiter
(in the sense in which his enemies understand it), might seem the very
best of worldly wisdom here. If a man cannot afford to confess the
truth, let him by all means reprint his falsehoods with absolute regularity
and serenity. The best English public is still what it was in Andrew
Marvell's time, " candidly credulous for once — nay, twice ;" and for
many years an author may thus pass as truthful, simply because the only
other alternative is too ugly for the candid reader to face. Such per
sistency in misstatements, therefore, can be met only by an equal per
sistency of exposure ; and the impenitence of the offender not only
excuses, but requires, continued appeals to the reading public. The
Church Quarterly Review, twelve years ago, pointed out that the Abbot's
long impunity was a poor testimonial to English scholarship ; and it
is a growing scandal that the circulation of false historical coin should
still be so easy.

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