A HISTORY OF HAMPSHIRE 



because, in the times for which the records exist, there were no boys 

 strictly speaking that is, under fourteen years of age but novices or 

 young monks all above that age, and what they learnt in school was not 

 so much school learning as the Benedictine rule. Indeed at Canterbury 

 the master of the novices was called, as a rule, not schoolmaster but 

 magister ordinis. Monks at that date appear to have been ill-educated. 

 In some injunctions l given after a visitation of the cathedral monastery 

 in 1387 William of Wykeham commented severely on some of the 

 monks, who were so ill-educated that they were ' almost wholly ignorant 

 of grammar and could not understand what they read, and in singing and 

 reading the lessons put shorts for longs and vice versd,' ' and walking in 

 the wilderness out of the way, defiled and perverted the sound meaning 

 of the scriptures, and so, being unable to enjoy Holy Writ, were 

 rendered prone to do what they ought not.' He thereupon ordered the 

 prior to follow the rule and provide a master to teach the novices and 

 others insufficiently learned. There is indirect evidence that Wykeham's 

 injunction was observed in a letter of Prior Alton 2 to Cardinal Beaufort, 

 bishop of Winchester, saying that since his appointment as prior he had 

 sweated, so far as his grace and strength allowed, to secure that the little 

 garden under his care might be watered with the stream of twofold learn- 

 ing, namely song and grammar. He says that while one person was 

 teaching grammar (in gramaticalibus) another priest, named Robert 

 Bygbrooke, was assigned to teach the junior monks singing. Beaufort 

 had carried off Bygbrooke to sing in his own chapel choir, and the 

 prior entreated that he might be returned as he was also organist, and in 

 his absence the organ was dumb. The letter shows that the novices' 

 grammar-master was not a monk, but, like the song-master, a secular 

 priest. The employment of a secular was allowed by the Benedictine 

 statutes of 1337, but it is not one which suggests that the monasteries 

 were homes of learning. A single appointment of a grammar-master of 

 the young monks is preserved, 3 10 August, 1497, tnat ^ Mr. Peter 

 Druett, M.A. He was to be paid 6 marks a year (4.) and receive for 

 his livery four yards of cloth of ' the gentlemen's suit ' (secta generosorum) , 

 to have his meals in the prior's hall at the gentlemen's table, unless he 

 was ill, when he could have them sent to the chamber provided for him 

 in the precincts. His boy (garcio) or servant was also to have a chamber 

 and dine with the chapel boys in the prior's hall. Two cartloads of 

 fuel or 2s. were also stipulated for. A special proviso forbade Mr. 

 Druett to teach any secular boys with the young monks, unless with 

 special leave from the prior. In 1510* Mr. William Parkhous was 

 appointed to teach the monks dialectic (in dialecticis) and to act as medical 

 adviser, with the same provisions in other respects, but he was to dine 

 at either the prior's or the gentlemen's table, and he received 6 a year 



i Harl. MS., 328, f. 3, b. 



* Cath. Mun., Prior's Register, i. 54. 3 Ibid. ii. f. I, b. Thomas Hunton, Prior. 



* Ibid. f. 146, b. ' Carta concessa Magistro Parkhous, clerico, pro informacione monachorum.' 

 Thomas Silkstede, Prior. April 12. 



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