Of the sports of the boys, Fitzstephen gives a long description. On Shrove-Tuesday, each boy brought his fighting cock to his master, and they had a cock-fight all morning in the school-room.[76] After dinner, football in the fields of the suburbs, probably Smithfield. Every Sunday in Lent they had a sham-fight, some on horseback, some on foot, the King and his Court often looking on. At Easter they played at the Water-Quintain, charging a target, which if they missed, souse they went into the water. ‘On holidays in summer the pastime of the youths is to exercise themselves in archery, in running, leaping, wrestling, casting of stones, and flinging to certain distances, and lastly with bucklers.’ At moonrise the maidens danced. In the winter holidays, the boys saw boar-fights, hog-fights, bull and bear-baiting, and when ice came they slid, and skated on the leg-bones of some animal, punting themselves along with an iron-shod pole, and charging one another. A set of merry scenes indeed. “In general, we are assured by the most learned man of the thirteenth century, Roger Bacon, that there never had been so great an appearance of learning, and so general an application to study, in so many different faculties, as in his time, when schools were erected in every city, town, burgh, and castle.” (Henry’s Hist. of England, vol. iv. p. 472-3.) In the twenty-fifth year of Henry VI., 1447, four Grammar schools were appointed to be opened in London[77] for the education of the City youth (_Carlisle_). But from the above lists it will be seen that Grammar Schools had not much to do with the education of our nobility and gentry before 1450 A.D. [Headnote: AN ETON BOY IN A.D. 1478.] Of Eton studies, the Paston Letters notice only Latin versifying, but they show us a young man supposed to be nineteen, still at school, having a smart pair of breeches for holy days, falling in love, eating figs and raisins, proposing to come up to London for a day or two’s holiday or lark to his elder brother’s, and having 8d. sent him in a letter to buy a pair of slippers with. William Paston, a younger brother of John’s, when about nineteen years old, and studying at Eton, writes on Nov. 7, 1478, to thank his brother for a noble in gold, and says,