A HISTORY OF DURHAM 



two parties, and two schollers shall be appointed, the one shall take the first part, the other the 

 second . . . and upon Saturday . . . shall shew their orations . . . Against Saterday in the weeke 

 following the foresaid schollers shall pronounce ... by heart their said orations . . . publiquely 

 in the face of the whole schoole and this ... to contynue weekly throughout the whole yeare 

 among the best schollers.' ' Fourthlie, for the practise and exercise of versifying ... the schoole- 

 maister shall read to them the versifying rules sett downe in the latter end of our common grammer 

 . . . with due teaching . . . the true . . . skaning of a verse, for practise whereof the schollers 

 shall every second daie make certaine verses upon certaine argument which shalbe given them.' l 



Writing was not neglected. ' For the better exercising of Greake, Romaine and Secretarie 

 hands ; . . . wekely . . . those schollers which write the best shall give examples ... to the 

 inferiours and . . . upon Saterday ' which was a regular dies irae ' the schoolemaister shall com- 

 mand every scholler ... to write presently certaine lines in all the foresaid handes.' Two judges 

 being chosen 'everie boy . . . shall deliver in his penn . with the paper . to the judges . They 

 shall choise out of everie forme one boy which writeth the best, and that scholler shall receyve the 

 penns and papers of all his fellows in that forme.' What use the pens and papers were to the 

 winner does not appear. 



Sixthly came Greek. The boys when they had read the grammar ' with a pearte of some 

 author,' were ' to frame a Greke epistle, and utter a Greke verse.' ' And further because Socrates 

 saieth the love and commendacion of praise is a great spurr unto a scholler to stirr him to vertue,' 

 therefore once a quarter the master was to propound an ' argument or theam ' wherein ' everie 

 scholler which is able shall make epistles, theames, orations, verses Latin and Greke,' and ' the schoole- 

 maister shall place that scholler which hath the best epistle, theame, oration, verse Latin or Greke in 

 the cheifest or best state of that forme in the which he remaineth.' 



The holidays or ' times for bricking up ' were from 24 December to the day after Twelfth 

 Day ; Wednesday before Easter to Monday after Low Sunday ; and Wednesday before Whitsunday 

 to Monday after Trinity Monday. But the boys were to prepare themes for breaking-up day and had 

 holiday tasks ' to repaire to the schoole after the breaking up twice everie daie ' from 8 to 9 a.m. and 

 2 to 3 p.m. ' to repeate such things as the schoolemaister shall think profitable for their better 

 proceading.' 



An enormous list of authors to be read is given from ' Cato, Colloquia Erasmi and Mr. 

 Nowell's Catechism ' to Cicero, Livy, Ovid, Horace, Virgil, Lucan ; and in Greek, Homer, Hesiod, 

 Demosthenes, and Isocrates. Among more recondite books mentioned may be noted ' For recreacion's 

 sake the epistles of Mr. Acham (Roger Ascham) or Paulus Manutius . . . For the phigures of 

 grammar Susenbrotus, for historiographers Austin . . . Mantuan and Palangonius ... for Greke 

 poetts . . . Theognis or Phocilides.' 



Among the ' statutes for the schollers ' is the usual requirement to ' use the Latin tongue in and 

 about the schoole.' And to be obedient to the ' preposetors.' Prefects are still called prepositors 

 at Eton. A quaint prohibition to modern manners is that ' they shall use in or nere the schoole 

 noe wapons, as dagger, sword, or staffe, cudgell or such like.' 



Two years later, 20 November, 1595, there was a very fierce chapter order against the 

 ' intolerable disorder used by the schollers of the foundation of this church and others of this cittie 

 and countie, in breaking up, as they terme it, of this schoole, to a seditious and perillous example of 

 other elder folkes.' After setting out the days on which the masters were to ' demise the schollers ' it 

 was ordered that ' if any scholler or chorister . . . shall presume to shutt the schoole doore or 

 windows, or help to keep it or them shutt, or assist or consent thereto for the keeping out of the 

 schoolemaister, usher or any governoure or officer of this church, or to that purpose shall weare any 

 weapon or use any force ... or shall not . . . avoid all such contemptious and undecent manner 

 of dealing ' he shall lose his scholarship or be removed, as ' seditious and unfitt.' 



After Calf hill's departure in 1596, Robert Bowlton or Bolton, the usher, officiated during an 

 interregnum. Peter Smart, who became headmaster at Michaelmas, 1597, was a person who made 

 a considerable stir in the world, and was hailed as the proto-martyr of England in the Laudian 

 persecution. He was a scholar of Westminster and student of Christ Church, Oxford, and was made 

 headmaster by William James, who came to the deanery of Durham from that of Christ Church, and 

 in 1603 he introduced another Christ Church man, George Cocknedge, who did not take his B.A. 

 degree till 1606, as usher. Smart must have had a marvellous facility for Latin verse, for after he 

 had become a canon of Durham of the fourth prebend and chaplain of Bishop James, incensed by 

 the introduction into the cathedral of ritualistic practices by John Cosin, the junior prebendary, but 

 chaplain of the new bishop, Neale, especially the setting up of an altar with a number of gilt angels 

 bowing in front of it, he published a Latin poem of close on 1,000 lines on the subject, besides 

 preaching against the innovations in the cathedral. Laud, however, was behind Cosin and his 



1 This painful practice was still pursued at Winchester when I was there in 1863. Thrice a week did we 

 do a ' vulgus ' of six or eight lines, and once a week a verse-task of any number. 



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