shall substitute good school-books for inefficient ones, if necessary, and summon the master to appear before the dean if he has neglected his charge. As for the classdivisions and methods of teaching, these are left to the individual judgment of the master.[1] Special attention is to be paid to the Catechism, and at the beginning and end of the day the boys are to repeat the twelve articles of the faith, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Ten Commandments. Boys are not to be admitted before they are eight, or after they are fourteen years old, and each, on admission, must be able to read English, repeat the Catechism in Englis and write his own name. He must also possess an English New Testament.[2] For further information as to the functions of the master and management of the boys, we are referred to the “Statutes of the Cathedral, if any such exist”—a vague statement that does not add much to our knowledge.
That so little attention should be given to education in the Reformatio is the more remarkable, because in other respects very minute instructions for the subject under discussion are forthcoming. In the section on “Matrimony,” for example, the writer even urges mothers to suckle their own children. It is only when he deals with schools that he leaves the organisation to the man in charge.
It must be confessed that the rules drawn up by Wolsey for his school at Ipswich,[3] though prior to the Reformation, are better conceived, and present more points of interest.
To this establishment boys below a certain standard were not to be admitted. “If your chyld can red and wryte Latyn and Englyshe suffycyently, so that he be able to rede and wryte his owne lessons, then he shall be admitted into the schole for a scholer.” An attendance rule is enforced. “If he be absent six dayes, and in that meane season ye shewe not cause reasonable (reasonable cause is only sekeness),
