SCHOOLS 



the same as at Winchester, 10. The allow- 

 ances for commons were raised, as compared with 

 Winchester, from is. in ordinary times and is. 6d. 

 in time of scarcity, to is. 6d. in ordinary times 

 and 21. in times of scarcity. For some reason, 

 however, the livery of cloth for gowns was 

 reduced in amount, the master having 6 yards 

 instead of 8, and the usher 5 yards, the same as 

 at Winchester. They were obliged, however, 

 only to keep their gowns for one year instead of 

 five years, as at Winchester. A similar advance 

 was noticeable in the arrangement as to cham- 

 bers. While at Winchester the master and 

 usher, and, if necessary, another priest, were to 

 share a chamber, and the fellows were to sleep 

 three in a room ; at Eton each fellow and the 

 head master were to have separate rooms, and 

 the hostiaritu and chaplains were to be two in a 

 room. 



Besides the master and usher provision was 

 made for an assistant master, it being provided 

 that the chapel clerk, who acted as parish clerk, 

 should also be able to teach the grammarians. 

 His pay was 5 marks (3 6s. 8^.), and his 

 commons i$d. a week. 



The provisions as to the scholars were in 

 identical terms with those at Winchester ; that 

 is, they were to be 70 in number, poor and needy 

 (pauperes tt indigentes], between eight and twelve 

 years old at the time of election, completely 

 instructed in reading, plainsong, and grammar ; 

 with a proviso that anyone under seventeen 

 might be elected if he showed promise of being 

 sufficiently learned in grammar by the time he 

 was eighteen. They were to be born in Eng- 

 land, with preference for those coming from 

 places and counties in which the college had 

 property. But there were two additions not 

 present in the Winchester statutes, viz. that 

 ' regard was to be had to the choristers ' of Eton 

 and King's, ' whom on account of their labours 

 and services rendered in the said royal colleges it 

 is right should according to their merits be pre- 

 ferred to those who are on a par with them in 

 the conditions and qualities above-mentioned,' but 

 * no villein (nativus) or illegitimate ' was to be 

 admitted. 



The provisions as to examination for college 

 at Winchester had specially included ' other boys 

 and the choristers of the chapel there' to be 

 examined, and as a matter of fact, till the reign 

 of Henry VIII at least, nearly all the choristers 

 did get into college. In this respect, therefore, 

 the definite preference given for choristers was 

 only a legalization and extension of existing 

 practice. Whether the exclusion of those who 

 were unfree was also in accordance with practice at 

 Winchester, and not a retrograde provision, is a 

 moot point. When Wykeham first started his 

 school, about 1370, and when he definitely en- 

 dowed it in 1382, it is probable that no one 

 would have thought the son of a slave or a bonds- 



man eligible for a scholarship at Winchester any 

 more than he ordinarily was for the priesthood, 

 though it is to be observed that in 1 3 1 2 a fellow 

 of Merton, Master Walter of Merton in Oxford, 

 received manumission from the Cathedral Priory 

 of Durham. 1 * But by the rejection of a Bill sent 

 up by the Commons in 1392, excluding villeins' 

 sons from schools, Richard II, or his advisers, 

 threw the school doors open to them. As a 

 sequel to the Peasants' Revolt, by the time of 

 Henry VI the number of bondsmen was much 

 reduced, so that exclusion of the unfree, while 

 at all events not a liberal measure, was not so 

 illiberal as it would have been in the 141(1 cen- 

 tury. One danger in the selection of its scholars 

 Eton escaped by having a royal founder ; the 

 absolute right of admission and the special privi- 

 leges given to kin of the founder, which in the 

 1 7th century nearly ruined Winchester, were 

 absent from the Eton statutes. 



The electing body was the same, mutatis 

 mutandis, as at Winchester; the provost of 

 King's, with two fellows called posers (i.e. 

 opposers or apposers), came to Eton between 

 the translation of Thomas Becket (7 July) and 

 the Assumption of the Virgin (15 August), and 

 with the provost and vice-provost and head 

 master of Eton held a scrutiny to detect anything 

 amiss in the conduct of the college, and then 

 examined and elected the Eton boys to King's, 

 and the choristers and others for admission to 

 Eton, putting their names on a roll, those named 

 being admitted in order as vacancies occurred. 



The scholars of Eton were to dwell in the 

 ground-floor chambers of the inner quadrangle 

 with three prefects or prepostors in each cham- 

 ber. It is a moot point with the Eton historians 

 whether they ever did so, or whether Long 

 Chamber, in which the whole 70 slept in one 

 barrack-like room, was original or only an inno- 

 vation, dating from the time when the west side 

 of the inner quadrangle and Lupton's Tower was 

 devoted to the provost by Provost Lupton at the 

 end of the reign of Henry VII. It seems, 

 however, wholly incredible that the statutes, 

 which were altered from those of Winchester in 

 every minute point in which circumstances were 

 altered, would have been retained unaltered on so 

 important a point of school life as the chambers, 

 if so great an alteration had been made as to sub- 

 stitute one large chamber for six smaller ones. 

 The words in the Winchester statutes as to 

 chambers, directing the ' great house ' below Hall 

 to be used as a school it is now Seventh Cham- 

 ber and the prohibition of wrestling, dancing, 

 jumping, singing, and shouting in Hall, because it 

 was over school, are omitted from the Eton 

 statutes, because Hall at Eton was a separate 



* Rtg. Palat. Duntlm. (Rolls Ser.), 97. At late as 

 the day* of Elizabeth a manumission ii found of a 

 fellow of Exeter College and his family. 



'59 



