EDWARD THE FOURTH’S HENCHMEN RICH MEN’S EDUCATION IN EARLY ENGLAND. HOUSES OF NOBLES AND CHANCELLORS WERE SCHOOLS. BP. GROSSETETE TAUGHT NOBLES’ SONS. YOUNG NOBLES IN WOLSEY’S HOUSEHOLD. KNOWLEDGE OF FRENCH. APPRENTICESHIP IN HENRY VII.’S TIME. GIRLS SENT OUT TO LADIES’ HOUSES. PRIVATE TUITION IN EARLY ENGLAND. EDUCATION AT HOME AND AT TUTORS’. STUDIES OF YOUTHS, TEMP. HEN. VIII. AND ELIZABETH. NEGLECT OF EDUCATION BY MOTHERS. UNIVERSITY EDUCATION IN EARLY ENGLAND. POVERTY OF UNIVERSITY SCHOLARS. UNDERGRADUATE’S EXPENSES AT OXFORD, 1478. FEW NOBLEMEN AT CAMBRIDGE. NOBLES AND GENTLEMEN AT OXFORD. FAVOURITISM OF THE RICH IN THE UNIVERSITIES. BAD EXAMPLE OF RICH MEN AT COLLEGE. FOREIGN UNIVERSITY EDUCATION. MONASTIC AND CATHEDRAL SCHOOLS. LYDGATE’S TRICKS AT SCHOOL. EDUCATION OF FIELD LABOURERS. NO BONDSMAN’S SON TO BE AN APPRENTICE. POST-REFORMATION CATHEDRAL SCHOOLS. POOR MEN’S SONS HAVE HEADS AS WELL AS RICH ONES’. AN ETON BOY IN A.D. 1478. POST-REFORMATION GRAMMAR SCHOOLS. STUDY OF ENGLISH RECOMMENDED IN 1582-1612. A GRAMMAR-SCHOOL BOY’S DAY IN A.D. 1612. THE GOOD OLD TIMES OF SMOKE AND FILTH. NAKED SCULLIONS AND DIRTY STREETS. FOREWORDS. “The naturall maister Aristotell saith that euery body be the course of nature is enclyned to here & se all that refressheth & quickeneth the spretys of man[1] / wherfor I haue thus in this boke folowinge[2]” gathered together divers treatises touching the Manners & Meals of Englishmen in former days, & have added therto divers figures of men of old, at meat & in bed,[3] to the end that, to my fellows here & to come, the home life of their forefathers may be somewhat more plain, & their own minds somewhat rejoiced. The treatises here collected consist of a main one--John Russell’s _Boke of Nurture_, to which I have written a separate preface[4]--extracts and short books illustrating Russell, like the _Booke of Demeanor_ and _Boke of Curtasy_, and certain shorter poems addressed partly to those whom Cotgrave calls “_Enfans de famille_, Yonkers of account, youthes of good houses, children of rich parents (yet aliue),” partly to carvers and servants, partly to schoolboys, partly to people in general, or at least those of them who were willing to take advice as to how they should mend their manners and live a healthy life. [Headnote: EDWARD THE FOURTH’S HENCHMEN] The persons to whom the last poems of the present collection are addressed, the yonge Babees, whom{e} bloode Royall{e} With{e} grace, feture, and hyhe habylite Hath{e} en{ou}rmyd, the “Bele Babees” and “swete Children,” may be likened to the “young gentylmen, Henxmen,--VI Enfauntes, or more, as it shall please the Kinge,”--at Edward the Fourth’s Court; and the authors or translators of the Bokes in this volume, somewhat to that sovereign’s Maistyr of Henxmen, whose duty it was