housed by the twelfth century.[1] The college had also a common hall on the north of the cathedral, near the Pardon churchyard; and hard by was the almonry in Paternoster Row.[2] The statutes left the almoner the option of either giving the boys their literary education himself, or sending them elsewhere. It naturally proved convenient to send them to the grammar school, and the almoners claimed that they had a right to admission without fees.[3] On the other side we find the grammar school boys directed by Colet to attend the Boy Bishop ceremony and make their offerings.[4] Evidently there was much give and take between song school and grammar school.
As early as 1378 the scholars of Paul's are said to have prepared a play of the History of the Old Testament for public representation at Christmas.[5] Whether they took a share in the other miracles recorded in mediaeval London, it is impossible to say. A century and a half later the boys of the grammar school, during the mastership of John Ritwise, are found contributing interludes, in the humanist fashion, to the entertainment of the Court. On 10 November 1527 they gave an anti-Lutheran play in Latin and French before the King and the ambassadors of Francis I, and in the following year the Phormio before Wolsey, who also saw them, if Anthony Wood can be trusted, in a Dido written by Ritwise
- ↑ Stowe, Survey, ii. 19; cf. the Hollar engraving in Baker, 95.
- ↑ Stowe, i. 327; Archaeologia, xliii. 171. By c. 14 of the statutes the college gates were shut at meals.
- ↑ Leach, Journal of Education (1909), 506, cites the Registrum Elemosinariae (ed. M. Hacket from Harl. MS. 1080), 'If the almoner does not keep a clerk to teach the choristers grammar, the schoolmaster of St. Paul's claims 5s. a year for teaching them, though he ought to demand nothing for them, because he keeps the school for them, as the Treasurer of St. Paul's once alleged before the Dean and Chapter is to be found in ancient deeds'. Mr. Leach adds, 'It is to be feared the Treasurer invented or misrepresented the ancient deed'. William de Tolleshunt, almoner, appears from his will of 1329 in the same register to have taught his boys himself (Archaeologia, lxii. 1. 220), 'Item lego pueris ecclesiae quos ego educavi senioribus in Elemosinaria existentibus cuilibet xij^d et iunioribus cuilibet vj^d'. He also left his grammar books 'et omnes quaternos sermonum de Festo Sanctorum Innocencium, quos tempore meo solebant Episcopi Puerorum pronuntiare, ad remanendum in Elemosinaria praedicta imperpetuum, ad usum fructum puerorum in eadem degencium'. His logic and physic books are to be lent out 'pueris aptis ad scolatizandum, cum ab elemosinaria recesserint'.
- ↑ Mediaeval Stage, i. 356. The sermon written by Erasmus is headed Concio . . . pronunciata . . . in nova schola Iohannis Coleti, but Erasmus may not have known the exact procedure at St. Paul's. The earlier sermon printed by Wynkyn de Worde has 'whyche often times I radde whan I was Querester, in the Marteloge of Poulis'.
- ↑ Mediaeval Stage, ii. 380.
