628
Constitutional History.
[chap.
where, and wlɪerever there was a monastery or a college there
was a school. Towards the close of the middle ages, notwith-
standing many causes for depression, there was much vitality
Attempts in the schools. William of Wykeham at Winchester and Henry
the depres- VI at Eton set conspicuous examples of reform and improve-
education. ment ; the Lollards taught their doctrines in schools ; the
schools of the cathedrals continued to flourish. The depression
of education was recognised but not acquiesced in. In 1447
four parish priests of London, in a petition to parliament,
begged the commons to consider the great number of grammar
schools 1 that sometime were in diverse parts of the realm be-
side those that were in London, and how few there he in these
days ; ’ there were many learners, they continued, but few
teachers ; masters rich in money, scholars poor in learning ;
they asked leave to appoint schoolmasters in their parishes, to
be removed at their discretion ; and Henry VI granted the
petition, subjecting that discretion to the advice of the or-
dinary1. Learning had languished, as may be inferred from
the fact that the decline of the Universities had only been
arrested by the rapid endowment of the new colleges, and
that the restriction of the church patronage of the crown to
University men had been offered as an inducement to draw
men to Oxford and Cambridge. But the great men of the
land, ministers and prelates, were devoting themselves and
their goods liberally to prevent further decline, and their
efforts were not unappreciated in the class they strove to
First effects benefit. In this, as in some other matters, it is probable that
of the in- .... i
vention oi the invention of printing acted at first somewhat abruptly, and
by the very suddenness of change stayed rather than stimulated
exertion. Just as men ceased for the moment to write books
because the press could multiply the old ones to a bewildering
extent, the flood of printing threatened to carry away all the
profits of teaching and most of the advantages which superior
clerkship had included. It is true the paralysis of literary
energy in both cases was short, but it had in both cases the
result of giving to the revival that followed it the look of a
1 Bot. Parl. v. 137,
XXi.] Class Jealousies. 629
new beginning. The new learning differed from the old in
many important points, but its novelty was mainly apparent
in the fact that it sprang to life after the blow under which
the old learning had succumbed. So it was with education Character
generally : the new schools for which Colet and Ascham and educational
their successors laboured, and the new schools that Edward VI,
Mary and Elizabeth, founded out of the estates of the chantries,
were chiefly new in the fact that they replaced a machinery
which for the time had lost all energy and power. It is not
improbable that the fifteenth century, although its records
contain more distinct references to educational activity than
those of the fourteenth, had experienced some decline in this
point, a decline sufficiently marked to call for an effort to
remedy it. But however this may have been, whether the Existence
foundation of Winchester and Eton, and the country schools schools,
that followed in their wake, was the last spark of an expiring
flame, or the first flicker of the newly lighted lamp, the middle
ages did not pass away in total darkness in the matter of edu-
cation ; and it was not in mockery that the parliament of
Henry IV allowed every man, free or villein, to send his sons
and daughters to school wherever he could find one. Eor any-
thing like higher education the Universities offered abundant
facilities and fairly liberal inducements to scholars ; every
parish priest was bound to instruct his parishioners in a way
that would stimulate the desire to learn wherever such a desire
existed. Lollardism would have been, if not innocuous, still
incapable of anything like secret propagandisɪn, if the faculty
of reading had not been widely diffused. But it is impossible
now to discuss at any length a subject, the importance of which
is at least equalled by its difficulty.
497. Great facilities for rising from class to class in the strength
social order are not at all inconsistent with very strong class jealousies,
jealousies and antipathies and broad lines of demarcation. So,
although we may readily grant that it was not impossible or
even rare for the son of a yeoman to reach the highest honours
in the church, or for the son of a merchant to reach the highest
grade of nobility, it would be wrong to shut our eyes to the