s aspect of school
life that was very general and is mentioned in these particular
Statutes. The Master shall not begin to teache or dismiss the School
without convenient Prayers and Thanksgivings. The Prayers would probably
consist of the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer, and the Creed.

Of Grace there is no mention, but in 1547 Edward VI had issued
injunctions that "All Graces to be said at dinner and supper shall be
always said in the English Tongue."

Every year the Master was allowed to appoint three weeks for the boys to
be exercised in writing under a Scrivener. There were in Yorkshire
peripatetic Scriveners, who used to wander from school to school and
teach them for a few weeks in the year, after which the writing in the
school would be neglected. At Durham School the writing had to be
encouraged by a system of prizes, by which the best writer in the class
would receive every Saturday all the pens and paper of his fellows in
the form. St. Bees Grammar School in 1583 tried a similar system from
another point of view, they paid the Usher 4_d._ yearly for every boy
"that he shall teach to write, so long as he takes pains with them." But
paper was a very great expense; for by the year 1600 there were only two
paper factories in England and the price for small folio size was nearly
4_d._ a quire. Writing indeed was only beginning to be common in the
schools, it had long been looked upon merely as a fine art and for
ordinary purposes children had been taught by means of sand spread over
a board. Henceforward steps are taken all over England to ensure its
teaching; at first the expert, the Scrivener, goes round from school to
school, but later the ability of the Ushers improves and no longer need
they fear the competition of a rival, they begin to teach the boys
themselves and writing becomes a part of the ordinary curriculum.

It will be recognized that there is a central motive of religion
pervading the teaching and conduct of schools towards the close of the
sixteenth century, and in the seventeenth, as there always had been. "We
have filled our children's bones with sin" says Hezekiah Woodward, "and
it is our engagement to do all we can to root out that which we have
been a means to root in so fast." A more serious spirit was abroad. The
young man was to abstain from singing or humming a tune in company
"especially if he has an unmusical or rough voice." Schoolmasters were
to abstain from "dicing and carding,