in connexion with the Grammar School which he attached to Magdalen, or
such as Walter de Merton considered desirable when he ordained that
there should be a Master of Grammar in his College to teach the poor
boys, and that their seniors were to go to him in any difficulty
without any false shame ("absque rubore"). Many universities extended
certain privileges to boys studying grammar, by placing their names on
matriculation rolls, though such matriculation was not part of the
curriculum for a degree. Masters in Grammar were frequently, but not
necessarily, University graduates; at Paris there were grammar
mistresses as well as grammar masters. The connexion between the
grammar schools and the University was exceptionally close at Oxford
and Cambridge, where degrees in grammar came to be given. The (p. 135)
University of Oxford early legislated for "inceptors" who were taking
degrees in grammar, and ordered the grammar masters who were graduates
to enrol, _pro forma_, the names of pupils of non-graduates, and to
compel non-graduate masters to obey the regulations of the University.
A meeting of the grammar masters twice a term for discussions about
their subject and the method of teaching it was also ordered by the
University, which ultimately succeeded in wresting the right of
licensing grammar masters from the Archdeacon or other official to
whom it naturally belonged. A fourteenth-century code of statutes for
the Oxford grammar schools orders the appointment of two Masters of
Arts to superintend them, and gives some minute instructions about the
teaching. Grammar masters are to set verses and compositions, to be
brought next day for correction; and they are to be specially careful
to see that the younger boys can recognise the different parts of
speech and parse them accurately. In choosing books to read with their
pupils, they are to avoid the books of Ovid "de Arte Amandi" and
similar works. Boys are to be taught to construe in French as well as
in English, lest they be ignorant of the French tongue. The study of
French was not confined to the grammar boys: the University recognised
the wisdom of learning a language necessary for composing (p. 136)
charters, holding lay-courts, and pleading in the English fashion, and
lectures in French were permitted at any hour that did not interfere
with the regular teaching of Arts subjects. Such lectures were under
the control of the superintendents of the grammar m