A HISTORY OF SURREY 



made on the occasion is, ' and it shall be lawful 

 for the vicar that now is, and his successors, 

 to appoint fit holy-water carriers ' to serve 

 the said church and chapels ' and to keep or 

 license others to keep ' a school for boys in 

 letters, song, and other things up to and in- 

 cluding Donatus.' This does not mean that 

 the vicar might himself keep, or get someone 

 to keep under him, a Grammar School. On 

 the contrary, it shows that there was an author- 

 ised Grammar School on the domain of which 

 the vicar wished, but was not allowed, to 

 trespass. He was to confine his efforts to 

 elementary instruction : reading, singing, and 

 the elements of Latin grammar * up to and 

 including Donatus,' i.e. he might teach, or 

 have taught, the parts of speech and 

 accidence, but must stop short of syntax 

 and construction. For Donatus meant 

 the ' Ars minor,' or ' small grammar ' of 

 iEhus Donatus, a fourth-century school- 

 master at Rome, where he had St. Jerome 

 as one of his pupUs.' It was the primer of 

 the Middle Ages, so famous that an intro- 

 ductory book to any subject became known 

 in English as a Donat.° 



At Warwick, in the thirteenth century, a 

 dispute between the Grammar School and 

 the Music School was settled by the Dean 

 and Chapter of the Collegiate church ruling 

 that the Song Schoolmaster should ' keep and 

 teach those learning their first letters the 

 psalter, music and song,' while the Grammar 

 Schoolmaster * should have the Donatists 

 (donatistas) and those going beyond it in 

 grammar and dialectic' So too the chantry 

 priests connected with the parish church at 

 Saffron Walden were in 1422 forbidden to 

 trespass on the Grammar School there by 

 teaching classics, and were confined to ' the 

 alphabet, the graces and the lord's prayer.' 

 On the other hand, at Breslau, in 1 267, it was 

 ruled ' by a Papal legate that ' there may be 

 in the city by St. Mary Magdalen's church, a 

 school in which the little boys may be taught 



' Habiles et ydoneas personas aque benedicte 

 bajalos. 



' viz. Moulsey, Ditton and Sheen. 



' Scolas quoque pueronim literarum cantus et 

 aliorum usque Donatum inclusive tenere seu aliis 

 concedere. 



' Hieronymus in Ecclesiasten c. i. 



* New English Dictionary, 1362. Piers Plow- 

 man A. V. 123. Then I drove me among these 

 drapers my Donet to learn. In 1449 Bishop Pecock 

 published a ' Donet into Christian Religion ' ' as the 

 common donet berith himseHe towards the full 

 kunnyng of Latyn, so this booke for Goddis laws.' 



' The Universities of £Mro;i^, Hastings Rashdall, 

 ii. 602. 



the alphabet with the Lord's Prayer, Ave 

 Maria, creed and psalter and singing, so as to 

 be able to read and sing : and also may hear 

 Donatus, Cato and the Rules for Boys. But 

 if they wish to learn more advanced boob 

 they must go on to the school of St. John in 

 the castle.' Wykeham followed this line of 

 precedents at Kingston, and by so doing bears 

 testimony to the high standing of the Gram- 

 mar School, for he prescribed the same stand- 

 ard as he did for his ovm school at Winchester, 

 which he was already carrying on. No one 

 was eligible as a scholar there '' who was not 

 ' sufficiently instructed in reading, song and 

 old Donatus.' These they were supposed to 

 have learnt, in the reading and song schools 

 scattered all over the country : which it was, 

 in theory, the duty of every parish priest to keep. 



The point of the references to holy-water 

 carriers in connection with the school is this. 

 In 1295, Bishop John of Pontissara had order- 

 ed that in the diocese of Winchester, in which 

 Kingston was, only scholars should be em- 

 ployed as holy-water carriers. On 3 Jan. 

 1368-9, William of Wykeham directed this 

 constitution to be enforced.^ It had, he says, 

 ' been observed till a short time back,' but 

 'some, jealous of our scholars, have given 

 the holy water to married men, lewd men not 

 capable of this kind of schooling.' The vicar, 

 it would seem, jealous probably of the connec- 

 tion of the Grammar School with St. Mary 

 Magdalen's chantry, had not only been tres- 

 passing on its province in the way of teaching, 

 but had not made its scholars, as he ought, 

 the holy-water carriers of the parish. He 

 thus deprived the school of a sort of exhibition ; 

 for the holy-water carriers had to take round 

 the holy water to women in child-birth, sick 

 persons, and so on, and received fees and gra- 

 tuities for doing so. 



From this date Kingston Grammar School 

 disappears from view for 150 years or more, 

 not, we must believe, because it ceased to exist, 

 but because of the want of any records in 

 which it was likely to be mentioned. The 

 early town records of Kingston have all dis- 

 appeared in quite recent times. The earliest 

 extant Assembly Book or Minute Book of the 

 Corporation begins only in 1680. It is in a 

 modem binding and marked vol. 5, showing 

 that when it was bound there were four earlier 

 volumes. But all have disappeared. Man- 



^ Statutes of 1400, but they were only a new 

 edition of the original statutes of 1 382, which have 

 disappeared. See the writer's History of Win- 

 chesUT College, 91, 67-8; and V.C.H. Hants, 

 ii. 265, 269. 



» Winton Epis. Reg. Pontissara f. 55 ; W. Wyke- 

 ham, pt. iii, 1 6a. 



58 



