Passing to the period with which we are more immediately concerned in this chapter, we find the requirement that parish priests should keep school reiterated by Canon Law "ut quisque Presbyter, qui plebem regit, clericum habeat, qui secum cantet, et epistolam et lectionem legat, et qui possit scholas tenere, et admonere suos parachianos, ut filios suos ad fidem discendam mittant ad Ecclesiam: quos ipse cum omni castitate erudiat."[251] The Council of Westminster, held in 1200, also decreed that:-- "Priests shall keep schools in their towns and teach little boys freely." "Priests ought always to have a school of schoolmasters in their houses and if any devout person wishes to entrust little ones to him for instruction, they ought to receive them willingly and teach them kindly."[252] The teaching of the Church on the matter was consequently clear and explicit. The question next arises, to what extent did the parish priests in this country comply with the regulations of the Church. Rashdall is of the opinion that "it may be stated with some confidence that at least in the later Middle Ages the smallest towns, and even the larger villages possessed schools where a boy might learn to read and acquire the first rudiments of ecclesiastical Latin."[253] The available evidence to support the contention that it was customary for the parish priests of the Middle Ages to keep school is admittedly slight, but it establishes clearly that it was regarded as a common practice for schools to be held in the various parishes. Thus, we learn in _Philobiblon_ of "rectores scholarum ruralium puerorumque rudium paedagogos."[254] Roger Bacon[255] tells us that schools existed everywhere "in every city, castle and burg."[256] Abbot Samson in speaking of the days of his boyhood at Diss in Norfolk says that he attended a school which was held there,[257] and John of Salisbury narrates that when he was a boy he went in company with other boys to a priest "ut psalmos addiscerem."[258] Then, again, an interesting passage, which supports our contention, occurs in the correspondence (usually assigned to a date between 1119 and 1135) which took place between Theobald of Etampes and an anonymous critic. The writer of this passage is supposed to be attacking a statement that there was a scarcity of secular clerks. He urges: "Are there not everywhere on earth masters of the liberal arts, who also are called clerks? You yourself, a nobody, are you not said to have taught as a master sixty or one hundred clerks, more or less? Have you not been a greedy seller of words to them, and perhaps have wickedly deceived them in their ignorance as you have deceived yourself? Where then, I pray, is this want of clerks of yours? For not to mention other parts of the empire, are there not nearly as many skilled schoolmasters in ... England, not only in boroughs and cities, but even in country towns, as there are tax collectors and magistrates?"[259]