at there should be a
Schoolmaster in every Cathedral, and that he should be licensed by the
Bishop. In 1290 at Canterbury the Master had even the power of
excommunicating his Scholars. At a later date many chantry priests by
the founder's direction, a few voluntarily undertook the task of
teaching. In 1547 they were compelled to do so by a law, which after a
year was rendered nugatory by the confiscation of Chantries. In 1558
Elizabeth ordained that every Schoolmaster and Teacher should take the
oath, not only of Supremacy but also of Allegiance. Even after the
Reformation they had still to get the Bishop's license and this
continued till the reign of Victoria, save for a brief period during the
Commonwealth, when County Committees and Major-Generals took the
responsibility.

The curriculum in Schools at the beginning of the sixteenth century
consisted of what was called the Trivium, Grammar, Dialectic, and
Rhetoric. The Quadrivium or Music, Arithmetic, Geometry and Astronomy,
was relegated to the Universities and only pursued by very few. In 1535
Henry VIII wished "laten, greken, and hebrewe to be by my people
applied and larned." Latin was not in those days a mere method of
training the youthful mind, it was much more a practically useful piece
of knowledge. It was a standard of communication and a storehouse of
phrases. It was taught in the most approved fashion, as a language to be
spoken to fit them, as Brinsley says, "if they shall go beyond the seas,
as gentlemen who go to travel. Factors for merchants and the like."

Almost every boy learned his Latin out of the same book. Lily's Grammar
was ordered to supplant all others in 1540. The smallest local Grammar
Schools had much the same text-books and probably as good scholars as
Eton or Winchester or Westminster. The Master and Scholars must not talk
any language other than Latin, Greek or Hebrew according to the
Giggleswick Statutes, and at Eton and Westminster the same rule applied;
at those Schools any boy discovered talking English was punished with
the name of Custos, a title which involved various unpleasant duties.

Greek and Hebrew are both in the Giggleswick curriculum. Hallam says
that in 1500 not more than three or four persons could be mentioned, who
had any tincture of Greek. Colet, in his re-foundation Statutes of S.
Paul's School ordained that future Headmasters "must be learned in good
and clean Latin Literature" and also "in Greek, if such may be