SCHOOLS 



We may suspect that a school was already being maintained by the brotherhood or the brotherhood 

 priest, and that this gift was in furtherance of a design to establish it as an independent foundation, 

 free of fees. But as we hear no more of it, perhaps the design failed. But like the foundations of 

 Cuckfield and Horsham, it shows how the erection of schools was in the air then, very much 

 as it is now. 



CHICHESTER PREBENDAL SCHOOL 



The oldest school of Sussex is found, as might have been safely predicted, in the seat of the 

 greatest population and commerce, and therefore of the chief church, in the cathedral city of 

 Chichester. When, in accordance with the decrees of the synod of London in 1075, that episcopal 

 sees should be placed in the great towns and moved from deserted villages, the cathedral establish- 

 ment was moved to Chichester, the grammar school, which must have formed an integral part of that 

 establishment, was no doubt moved with it. 



Chichester was organized like other cathedrals of the old foundation ; that is the normal 

 foundation, with a body or college of secular canons, ordinary secular priests like the clergy of 

 to-day, as distinguished from the regular orders. Among its thirty canons were four principal 

 persons, dean, precentor, chancellor, treasurer. The dean performed the functions of a dean of the 

 present day ; the treasurer was not bursar, but sacrist, and had the care of the sacred vessels, the 

 jewels, plate, and other treasures used in divine service. The chancellor and the precentor both had 

 educational functions, and the chancellor was par excellence the minister of education of the cathedral 

 church, the cathedral city, and the diocese. 



In some other churches, e.g. York and St. Paul's, it is on record that the original title of the 

 chancellor was schoolmaster. At Chichester, on the morrow of St. Mary Magdalen, 23 July, 1247, 

 at a full chapter, all the ancient customs of the cathedral approved [by general usage] were ordered 

 to be reduced into writing and published along with certain statutes then made. 



The ancient and approved customs, which from the simplicity of their language and the 

 terseness of their terms must date back to the earliest foundation of the cathedral in the eleventh 

 century, are thus set out under the heading 



Ancient customs of various offices 



The Dean presides over all the canons and vicars [choral] as to cure of souls and correction of 

 morals. 



The Singer * {Cantor, i.e. Precentor) ought to rule [or teach] the choir as regards singing, and can 

 raise or lower the chant ; place readers and singers both for night and day on the table, admit the 

 inferior clerks to the choir ; when orders are being conferred read out the names of those admitted. 



The Chancellor* ought to rule [or teach] school or present to it, to hear lessons and determine 

 them ; to keep, with the assistance of a faithful brother, the seal of the chapter, and compose letters 

 and deeds. 



Here, as elsewhere therefore, the precentor had charge of the choir, taught as well as ' ruled ' 

 it the regent masters at Paris and Oxford in the Middle Ages were those who actually taught in 

 the schools and managed the singers, including of course choristers. The chancellor, on the other 

 hand, was the legal and educational officer of the chapter. It is a little difficult to say what exactly 

 is meant by ' hearing and determining the lessons.' If the phrase was found in relation to a university 

 functionary one would say that it exactly described the functions of the regent master, who in the 

 fourteenth and fifteenth centuries presided at the disputations between a candidate for the bachelor's 

 degree and another student, and determined or summed it up ; while the 'lectiones' or readings was 

 the appropriate word for a lecture. Remembering that the universities really sprang out of the 

 cathedral or collegiate schools, and that the chancellor of the University of Paris was originally the 

 chancellor of Notre Dame, there can be little doubt that in 1114 the 'lectiones' which the 

 chancellor had to hear and determine were lectures in grammar, logic, theology, or law. He was 

 then really a schoolmaster. But the universities both of Paris and Oxford were fully developed in 

 the twelfth century and the early part of the thirteenth, and that of Cambridge was something more 

 than an embryo. Grammar had become a subordinate faculty and study, and with rhetoric and the 

 beginning of logic was restricted to grammar schools, while philosophy and theology were the 

 pursuits of grown men at the universities. Hence in statutes made for Chichester Cathedral by 

 Bishop Ralph II, with the assent and consent of the dean and chapter, 26 October, 1232, we find 



1 ' Cantor debet chorum regere quoad cantum, et potest extollere atque deprimere ; lectores et cantores 

 nocturnos in tabula notare, inferiores clericos in chorum introducare ; in celebracione ordinum clericorum 

 admissorum nomina recitare.' 



1 ' Cancellarius debet scolas regere vel dare, lecciones auscultare et terminare, sigillum ecclesie, adhibito 

 sibi fratre fideli, custodire, litteras et cartas componere.' 



399 



