SCHOOLS 



college without burden to the college ; so that it 

 be without prejudice, damage, or scandal to the 

 members of the college.' The same words were 

 used at Eton, but the number was doubled, 

 twenty extranet commensales or tabling strangers 

 being admissible. ' Noble ' of course had not the 

 limited sense now given to it, but included all 

 of gentle birth, squires and country gentlemen 

 in fact anyone who bore arms. 



Lastly, over and above all these the school was 

 open as a Free Grammar School to all coming to 

 it from all parts of England. In this respect 

 Eton was unlike Winchester and like the 

 ordinary grammar school. At Winchester no 

 provision was made for outsiders, probably be- 

 cause there was already an existing high school 

 or city grammar school in the town, of imme- 

 morial antiquity, to which outsiders could go, 

 and for trenching on the monopoly of which, by 

 admitting scholars and gentlemen-commoners at 

 all, Wykeham thought it necessary to get a papal 

 bull. In point of fact, however, outsiders were 

 admitted. For a rescript by Bishop Beaufort, 

 Wykeham's successor in the see of Winchester, 

 IO April 1412, states the 'the master is con- 

 tinually instructing and educating in grammar 

 80 or 100 outsiders in our college, contrary to 

 the pious intention of the founder,' and ' because 

 one master is not enough to teach so large a 

 number,' he forbade the warden ' to admit any 

 outsider beyond the number limited by the 

 statutes to be taught grammar in the college, or 

 allow them to be admitted without your (the 

 warden's) special licence.' This licence must, 

 however, have been freely given. Extant 

 accounts of the provost of St. Elizabeth's College, 

 which stood where the warden's garden now is, 

 show the admission in 1400 of commoners, and 

 the next extant accounts in 1455 and 1460-4 

 show commoners of whom some are specifically 

 stated to be attending school in ' New College,' 

 as Winchester, like its sister college at Oxford, 

 was then called. Wayneflete no doubt had 

 himself taught these commoners at Winchester. 

 Convinced, therefore, of the advantage of them, 

 he ensured their admission at Eton, not at the 

 mercy of the provost, but by adding to the 

 master's salary and making it his duty to admit 

 them free and giving the boys an absolute right 

 to come. There was, however, at Eton no St. 

 Elizabeth's College and no Sisters' Hospital, one 

 on each side of the college, to board them under 

 care, and no city to receive them into lodgings, 

 but only a village with a few houses. Yet so 

 important was the admission of outsiders deemed, 

 that, by a patent of 20 June 1444, Henry VI 

 forbade the providers of victuals for the king's 

 household to take any property of the college or 

 of the parishioners of Eton for the king's use, or 

 to billet anyone in Eton against the will of the 

 provost, and declared ' that all the inns (hosf>itia) y 

 houses, and mansions in the town and parish of 



Eton shall be specially reserved for the boys and 

 scholars coming together there for their educa- 

 tion (diidplina) and others coming there for any 

 reason connected with the college, at the discre- 

 tion of the provost or his deputy, so that no one 

 else shall lodge there either himself or anyone 

 else without their leave.' So that the whole 

 town of Eton was placed under the rule of the 

 provost and reserved for the school. Moreover, 

 on 12 March 1444-5 a " lands and tenements 

 in Eton were granted to the college, and to 

 ensure a supply of provisions two fairs, one for 

 three days after the Carnival, the other for four 

 days after the Assumption of the Virgin 

 (15 August), were established. In the same 

 spirit it is said 31 that by patent 24 Henry VI 

 the grammar school of the college was given a 

 monopoly, and no other school was allowed in 

 Eton or within 10 miles of it. 



The absence of any indication whatever of 

 the time-table or curriculum of the school in all 

 the voluminous statutes might be thought strange 

 were it not that a similar absence of detail is 

 characteristic of school foundations in every age. 

 Indeed, the latest formula of the Board of Edu- 

 cation for school curriculum is merely to say 

 that ' instruction shall be given in such subjects 

 proper to be taught in a Public Secondary School 

 as the governors in consultation with the head 

 master may from time to time think fit.' The 

 Eton curriculum was summed up in the one 

 word ' grammar,' taught in a way to fit the 

 scholars for the university. There is no specific 

 evidence to show what grammar included or 

 how it was taught at Eton for nearly a century 

 after the foundation. But we know** that 

 grammar meant Latin grammar and the Latin 

 classics, with composition both in Latin prose 

 and Latin verse, and conversation carried on in 

 the Latin tongue, both in and out of school. 

 Besides this, the Eton statutes go in one respect 

 into rather more detail than those of Winchester, 

 in that they direct (stat. 14) that ' the master, 

 or, in his absence, the usher, is to make a dispu- 

 tation in grammar, to be publicly held in the 

 nave of the collegiate church or the cloister of 

 the same, or other fit place, on the day of the 

 Translation of St. Thomas the Martyr, by some 

 advanced scholar of the royal college in the 

 presence of all the boys learning grammar and of 

 all others coming there he to be answered in 

 the accustomed manner by another scholar.' 

 This institution of a Speech Day was no doubt 

 not a new thing in schools. The reference to 

 its being held in the cloister shows that it was 

 modelled at all events on Winchester practice, 



" B.M. Sloane MSS. 4840, fol. 313. I am bound 

 to say that I have failed to find the patent in question. 



" e.g. by the regulations for Grammar Schools and 

 Grammar Schoolmasters at Oxford in Oxford Uni- 

 versity Statutes. 



ibi 



