pain, judiciously applied, was worth much persuasion of a gentler kind. Instructive in this connection is the conversation between Sir William Cecil and his friends reported by Ascham in the preface to his Scholemaster. “I have strange news brought me this evening,” says Cecil, “that certain scholars of Eton be run away from the school for fear of beating.” To this Mr. Peter replied that “the rod only was the sword that must keep the school in obedience and the scholars in good order”; while Mr. Haddon went so far as to say that the best schoolmaster of their time (Nicholas Udall) was the greatest beater.
Small wonder that the boys left the Grammar School “great lubbers, always learning and little profiting!”[1]
Machyn, writing in 1563, quotes a typical case of brutality: “A schoolmaster that had a child to lerne, and for a small fault did bett him so severely with a leden gyrdyll with buckles that he left no skyne on his body.” Even for the sixteenth century this seems to have passed the limits of legitimate severity, as we read that “thys master was sett on the pelere and wyped that his blude ran downe.”[2] A curious way this of maintaining the doctrine that corporal punishment should be sparingly administered.
The extensive use of Latin as a medium for imparting knowledge was frequently brought forward by reformers, and in particular by Comenius, as the reason why beginners made such slow progress. To a certain extent they were undoubtedly right. Many Grammars and Arithmetics were written in Latin, and though constant exercise in that language may have been of use to the more advanced student, the combination of a new tongue and a new subject must have had a disastrous effect on younger boys whose knowledge of Latin was limited.
It would, however, be an error to lay too much stress on this point, as there is evidence that side by side with the enthronement of Latin there was a strong under-
