A HISTORY OF SUFFOLK 



of learned clergy had increased with the supply 

 of colleges and their pay had fallen. 



When exactly the school was opened is un- 

 known. At all events it was in full swing by 

 I September, 1528, when Wolsey sent the 

 master of it a grammar for the use of the boys ; 

 while his elaborate orders for the curriculum 

 are dated the same day. 1 These orders are 

 particularly valuable, as issuing from one 

 who owed his rise in life to having been 

 master of one of the then most famous schools 

 in the kingdom, that of Magdalen College 

 School, Oxford, and was no doubt intimately 

 acquainted with the later developments of 

 schools. 



The school was to be divided into eight forms. 

 We know that both at Winchester and Eton 

 there were seven forms and at St. Paul's probably, 

 as now, eight. In Form I, the lowest, the boys 

 learnt only the parts of speech, our old friend 

 the Donat, and pronunciation. In Form II they 

 were to talk Latin and turn into Latin 'some 

 common proposition, not dull or inappropriate.' 

 They were to write Roman hand. Their books, 

 ' if any,' for it would seem their work was to be 

 mainly viva voce, were to be Lily's Carmen 

 Monitorium and the so-called Cato's Precepts, 

 better known as the Mora/ia, moral sayings in 

 verse. In Form III they were to read ' Aesop, 

 who is wittier ? Terence, who is more useful ? ' 

 — for talking Latin be it understood — and Lily's 

 Genders. In Form IV they went on in Lily's 

 Grammar to preterites and supines, and in 

 authors to Virgil, ' prince of all poets,' whose 

 1 majestic verses ' they were ' to give out with 

 sonorous voice.' In passing on to Form V, 

 which was probably the lowest under the 

 master, Wolsey interrupts himself to give 

 special directions that ' the tender youth is not 

 to be treated with severe blows, or threatening 

 faces or any kind of tyranny. For by injustice 

 of this kind the keenness of their intelligence is 

 often extinguished, or to a great extent blunted.' 

 We may recall the lecture on the same subject 

 given by Robert Sherborne, bishop of Chichester, 

 in founding his grammar school at Rolleston in 

 1524, who remarked that some teachers of the 

 day behaved more like madmen than teachers ; 

 and the stories by Erasmus of the brutal methods 

 he had seen adopted in some German schools ; 

 and may congratulate Wolsey, following Wyke- 

 ham, on his superiority to the stupid and reac- 

 tionary ferocity of one of Sherborne's successors 

 in the see of Chichester and of his own in the 

 see of York, Samuel Harsnett, who, founding 

 a school at Chigwell almost exactly a century 

 later — 1629 — actually directs the master to be 

 ' severe in his government ' and to apply the 

 ferula if they do not speak Latin in school and 

 to chastise them severely for divers offences. In 



1 Strype's Eeel. Mem. i, pt. 2, p. 139. Strype does 

 not say whence he got them. 



a similar kindly spirit Wolsey, when he comes to 

 Form VII, says that a good deal of play should 

 be allowed and studies made pleasant. The 

 books prescribed are : In Form V, Cicero's Select 

 Letters; in VI, Sallust or Caesar; in VII, 

 Horace's Epistles, Ovid's Metamorphoses or Fasti; 

 in VIII, Valla's Elegantiae, Donatus' Figurae, 

 and any ancient authors in the Latin tongue, 

 while Terence is to be studied with lectures 

 on the life of the day, style, and the like. 

 The veteran diplomatist wished the boys to 

 be taught precis-writing in English and the 

 method of writing essays or themes. 



William Goldwin was the master who pre- 

 sided over the school. A Latin letter of his to 

 Wolsey of 10 January, I 528-9, 2 tells him how — 



everybody, especially at Ipswich, vies in extolling 

 his munificence, and how they rejoice in his having 

 been born there, who had bestowed such benefits not 

 only on them but on posterity. Especially they ad- 

 mired his judgement not only in having established 

 and adorned the college but in having set over it a 

 man whose learning and wisdom all praise ; and 

 whom the inmates of the college love and venerate, 

 who omits nothing which tends to the worship of 

 God in chapel or the good instruction of the boys 

 in school. 



Goldwin renews his promises for his own zeal 

 and diligence, and — 



as he has laboured not sluggishly hitherto he already 

 begins to see a more plentiful crop growing so that 

 he does not despair of the harvest. But it must have 

 time to ripen. What could be done in so short a 

 time that 1 have done as your majesty 3 may see. For 

 I have sent some writings of my pupils, not of all but 

 of some, who as they now write so I hope they will 

 soon be able to speak Latin (Itafice) as they ought : 

 for no one ever employed a sower on more fertile soil, 

 so full are they all of good intelligence and disposition. 

 The flock hourly increase so that the house is too 

 small to hold the number of boys comfortably. 



Brewer, in his short mention of this letter, 

 makes Goldwin promise that the boys shall learn 

 to speak Italian — a shocking anachronism. By 

 ' writing Italian ' Goldwin meant the clear 

 round Roman hand he himself wrote, as compared 

 with the crabbed Gothic script of the day ; and 

 the Italian they were to talk was similarly the 

 ' very Roman tongue ' which Colet spoke of in 

 the St. Paul's statutes, though Wolsey 's and 

 Goldwin's ideas of where that ' very Roman 

 tongue ' was to be found had advanced consider- 

 ably since the days, only 16 years before, when 

 Colet recommended Sedulius and Juvencus and 

 other low Latin authors. 



The same day that Goldwin wrote in 'Italian,' 

 the bailiffs wrote in English in answer to a re- 

 quest of Wolsey's that they would grant him 



■ L. and P. Hen. Fill, iv, 5 1 59. 



' This address wis almost a hanging matter, seeing 

 that until the days of Henry VIII not even the king 

 wa, addressed as 'your majesty.' 



330 



