Education -- Early works to 1800; England -- Social life and customs -- Early works to 1800; Etiquette; Home economics -- Early works to 1800; Table
bringing up of the Wards thus: “The wards are to attend divine service
at six in the morning: nothing is said about breakfast,[34] but they are
to study Latin until eleven; to dine between 11 and 12; to study with
the music-master from 12 till 2; from 2 to 3 they are to be with the
French master; and from 3 to 5 with the Latin and Greek masters. At 5
they are to go to evening prayers; then they are to sup; to be allowed
honest pastimes till 8; and, last of all, before they go to bed at 9,
they are again to apply themselves to music under the instruction of the
master. At and after the age of 16 they were to attend lectures upon
temporal and civil law, as well as _de disciplinâ militari_. It is not
necessary to insert farther details; but what I have stated will serve
to show how well-bred youths of that period were usually brought up, and
how disgracefully the duty of education as regards wards was
neglected.... It may appear singular that in these articles drawn up by
Sir Nicholas, so much stress is laid upon instruction in music[35]; but
it only serves to confirm the notion that the science was then most
industriously cultivated by nearly every class of society.” Pace in 1517
requires that every one should study it, but should join with it some
other study, as Astrology or Astronomy. He says also that the greatest
part of the art had perished by men’s negligence; “For all that our
musicians do now-a-days, is almost trivial if compared with what the old
ones (_antiqui_) did, so that now hardly one or two (_unus aut alter_)
can be found who know what harmony is, though the word is always on
their tongue.” (_De Fructu_, p. 54-5.) Ascham, while lamenting in 1545
(_Toxophilus_, p. 29) ‘that the laudable custom of England to teach
children their plain song and prick-song’ is ‘so decayed throughout all
the realm as it is,’ denounces the great practise of instrumental music
by older students: “the minstrelsy of lutes, pipes, harps, and all other
that standeth by such nice, fine, minikin fingering, (such as the most
part of scholars whom I know use, if they use any,) is far more fit, for
the womanishness of it, to dwell in the Court among ladies, than for any
great thing in it which should help good and sad study, to abide in the
University among scholars.”
[Headnote: NEGLECT OF EDUCATION BY MOTHERS.]
By 1577 our rich people, according to Harrison, attended properly to the
education of their children. After speaking “of our women, whose beautie
commonlie exceedeth the fairest of those of the maine,” he says:
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