Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 4.djvu/34

22 NOTES AND QUERIES, no* s. iv. JULY s, his model in placing them under the tutelage, and nwking them part, of his College, instead of putting them upon an independent footing. He established a school—" a splendid pile of brick in two stories, with two towers "—at his birthplace, Wainfleet, in Lincolnshire, •which, like Chichele's similar foundation at Higham Ferrers, in Northamptonshire, still retains the buildings of the fifteenth century. The Hospital of SS. John and James at Brackley, in the latter county, was annexed to Magdalen by her founder ; and upon the death of the last chantry priest in 1548, after the Act for the Suppression of Chantries, the College established a school, which still con- tinues, in place of the chantry. Of the old Hospital buildings nothing now remains but the chapel, -which serves as the chapel of the College School (Leach's ' Winchester College,' pp. 121, 212, and the Rev. H. A. Wilson's • Magdalen College,' p. 265). Magdalen College School appears to have been opened in 1479, inside the College, and in 1480 to have been removed to separate build- ings outside its gates. The founder ordained that the thirty foundationers of his College— who, corresponding to the Scholars at Win- chester, were called Demies (demi-socii), from their receiving half a Fellow's commons— were to be admissible at the early age of twelve. They might stay, like founder's kin at Winchester, to twenty-five, and were to be kept at school under the grammar master of the College, to be instructed in grammar, poetry, and other arts of humanity," until they should be considered by the ^President and master fit to enter upon the University course in Arts (Rev. H. Rashdall's ' Uni- versities of Europe in the Middle Ages," II. pt. ii. p. 514). So close, then, was the con- nexion between the two that it almost appears more difficult to determine who among the College alumni were not partly educated at the Grammar School than who Like Eton, the School was to be open were. and free, the master to teach freely (libere et f/ratis) all who came to it. But it would appear that the College never at any time admitted the claims of persons in no sense members of the University or of any college or hall to receive gratuitous teaching in the School. The petition of the citizens in favour of the School in 1550, while it states that such teaching was of great advantage to the inhabitants of Oxford, shows also that those who received it were scholars or choristers of various colleges (Wilson, 240n., and J. R. Bloxam's ' Register of St. M. M. Coll.,' iii. pp. 1-6, 275-85). The salaries of the master and usher were to be the same as at Win- chester : the master (Informatvr Gram- maticorum) received 10Z. a year, being half the allowance—less travelling expenses— made to the President of the College; the usher (Hostiarius) one hundred shillings. A new feature was that the School was to be in part a training school for masters : " two or three of the thirty [Demies] at least were to study, so that not only might they profit themselves, but be able to instruct and teach others, and stand qualified for the purpose." The trust of the famous warrior and litigious landowner Sir John Fastolf for founding at Caister Castle, Norfolk, a college " of seven priests and seven poor folk " was eventually transferred by John Paston, one of the trustees, to the College in Oxford newly founded by Waynflete, another of the trustees. Fastolf's seven priests were represented by four chaplains and three fellows; and the seven poor folk by the seven eldest Demies, who, according to the statutes, received one penny a week, " which being nowadays [Mr. Collins, master of M.C.S., told Thomas Hearne, 15 May, 1721] but a small pittance, they that have it are called, by such as have- it not, Fastolf's Buckram Men." It is difficult, if not impossible, to discover at what period the choristers, not matricu- lated, were first allowed to enter the Grammar School. The elementary portion of their education _was at first entrusted to the instructor in music, and in 1519 Robert Perrot, the College organist, is styled " scholemaster of the choristers." But as early as 1490 William Bernard, instructor of the choristers, is also called organist (Pulsator Orrjam»~um) ;. and the latter title gradually superseded the former. The choristers, who are sixteen in number, originally lived in the Fellows' chambers and waited upon them. They also waited in hall down to 1802. At Winchester College the choristers, also sixteen in number, were to make the Fellows' beds, wait in hall,, and dine off the fragments and broken meats, if sufficient, of the Fellows' and Scholars' tables. Possibly, from the first, the instructor of the Magdalen choristers may have handed them over to the grammar master in matters touchingthe construing, and not singing, of Latin. Besides their singing and acting, we find the eight choristers of the Chapel Royal at Whitehall obliged to attend classes- in their grammar school. In 1474 a tower was roofed "in the wall towards the College meadows," which is probably identical with a tower by the water mentioned in the accounts for building the walls, and with what was afterwards known as the "Songe Schoole." Under that name