Turning next to this country, we find that schools for the inmates of the monasteries and for their prospective members were instituted as a matter of course. This point is so generally admitted as not to call for specific evidence in its support.[149] The question at issue is: did the monasteries in England make any provision for the education of external pupils? We are not concerned here with the further question why they should interest themselves in the subject; our only task is to enquire whether or not they actually did so. To summarise the main evidence to support the statement that some of the monasteries took an interest in the provision of schools, we may note that there existed a secular school in connection with the Abbey at St. Albans, and that among the famous headmasters of this school were Geoffrey of Maine[150] and Neckham[151]; a cell in connection with the monastery of St. Albans was in charge of a monk who kept school[152]; the Abbot Samson of Bury St. Edmunds gave an endowment towards the payment of a master of a secular school at Bury,[153] and provided a hostel in connection with the school[154]; schools existed on two of the manors belonging to St. Edmund's Abbey to which the Abbots appointed the masters.[155] Schools were also supported by monasteries at Evesham, Bruton, and other places.[156] In those cases in which monastic orders took the place of secular canons, they continued the work of their predecessors, _e.g._ at Waltham,[157] at Huntingdon,[158] at Canterbury,[159] and at Christ Church, Twinham.[160] The conclusion seems to be that monasteries directly provided schools for their own members only within the walls of the monasteries, and that, when opportunity occurred and necessity demanded, they also undertook the responsibility of providing schools in their neighbourhood for all who might care to attend. As is shown by the appointments at Bury St. Edmunds, in those cases in which the monasteries were in charge of schools, the masters appointed to these schools were men of high intellectual attainments. This is what would naturally be expected when the mental calibre of some of these Norman abbots is considered; thus, Warin[161] was a master of the University of Salerno,[162] John de Cella, his successor,[163] was a master of Paris, and is described as "in Greek, esteemed a Priscian, in verse an Ovid, in Physic, a Galen"[164]; and the Abbot Samson, the hero of Carlyle's _Past and Present_, was at one time the "magister scolarum" at Bury St. Edmunds.[165] III.--THE WRITING OF BOOKS.