SCHOOLS 



called ' le myech ' l and a gallon of convent ale, while he might have in the 

 chapel-house, when the singers dine with the boys, a daily refection at his 

 pleasure. The grant was for eighty years, if the said John should so long 

 live, but if prevented by illness from performing his service he was to have 

 only 6 and half the livery (/iberatione) aforesaid. The grant was on the 

 condition that the recipient should be faithful to the abbot and convent, 



and teach the art of Grammar to all the youthful brethren of the monastery sent to him by 

 the abbot and the 13 boys of the clerks' chamber ; and shall teach and inform 5 or 6 of the 

 boys, apt and ready to learn, in plain song, divided or broken song and discant, sufficiently 

 and diligently, and shall devotedly with the same boys keep mass of the Blessed Virgin 

 Mary and the antiphon belonging to it daily, and on Saturday mass of the name of Jesus 

 with the antiphon belonging to it, and on feast days shall be present at both vespers and 

 high mass and other times assigned by the precentor, solemnly singing and playing the 

 organ 



unless prevented by illness or other reasonable cause, or during a month's 

 holiday in the year. 



This combination of a grammar and song schoolmaster's duties in one 

 person is a sure note of a not very exalted kind of school. Practically the 

 school was a choristers' school pure and simple, as the three or four novices 

 sent to learn grammar would not take up very much of the master's time. 



The document is interesting, however, as containing the earliest evidence 

 that at Gloucester, as in the other greater monasteries, a small charity school 

 was kept, probably in the almonry, and that it consisted of the usual number 

 of 1 3 boys, who also acted as choristers for the Lady chapel. In the dearth 

 of Gloucester muniments we know no more of the date of its foundation or 

 the extent of its work. The other inhabitants of the clerks' chamber were 

 no doubt the lay singing men, whose services here as elsewhere were much 

 sought after and highly paid in the latter part of the fifteenth and the first 

 half of the sixteenth century, when the English were par excellence a musical 

 nation. In 1 535 it would appear from the Valor Ecclesiasticus that there were 

 only * 3 men and 5 boys, singing daily in the Lady chapel, by ordinance of 

 St. Wolstan, bishop of Worcester, and Sir Serlo, abbot, receiving 5 a year,' 

 while ' a poor scholar ' serving the chantry priest of Abbot William Ferleigh 

 * at mass ' received ^d. a week for doing so. These boys and clerks were 

 reproduced on a less extensive scale on the dissolution of the abbey in the 

 six lay clerks and eight choristers of the cathedral. The only other educa- 

 tional payment recorded is * a distribution of 1 3*. $d. a year to 4 poor 

 scholars at Oxford by ordinance of Abbot Walter Froucettour,' which out of 

 a total revenue of 1,550 (a great deal more relatively than 31,000 a year 

 to-day) is not an excessive contribution to education. 



1 This word has been misinterpreted, Hist. Mm. Hi, 324, following Ducange's Dictionary, as a small loaf. 

 But this is through a confusion of the word with the French miche = mica, a particle, a crumb of bread. 

 Quotations given in the Promptorium Parvulorum of 1440, under ' mychekyne,' a small mich, show that it 

 cannot mean a small loaf. For the Register of Oseney in 1267 speaks of magne michic. So in 1351 the 

 abbot of Lilleshall granted '8 magnas michias majoris pondcris de pane conventus.' ' Big small-loaves of the 

 greatest weight ' would be absurd out of Ireland. The Oseney passage contains a grant to Andrew of Lang- 

 port on every day of 2 corrodies or canons ' portions a day, specifying 2 loaves which are called magne 

 michic, one bisan michiam, one salam michiam, one coarse (grossum) loaf and 2 gallons of the best 

 beer. Bisa seems to mean brown, and salam is probably not, as Hearne guessed, a hall or court loaf (quasi a 

 loaf you would cut in the salle a manger), but sala probably = sale, and means black. A myech is probably 

 therefore simply a loaf of fine white bread, which might be either a great mich or a little mich, a ' mychekyne.' 

 It is clear that the schoolmaster was being treated as a gentleman and on the same footing as the monks, and 

 not put off with a small loaf and insufficient diet. 



343 



