A considerable educational work was accomplished by the monks and regular canons, quite outside the careful claustral teaching of the novices who were being trained to enter their own ranks. An able work, published a few years ago, on the early schools of England, the writer of which, however, never lost an opportunity of decrying the ‘religious,’ attempted to show that English monasteries had but little, if any, connexion with education outside the actual cloister. But his own pages of documentary school evidence might be cited against him. We have, for instance, definite information of the close connexion of monasteries and schools in documents pertaining to Bruton Abbey, Somersetshire, Winchcombe Abbey, Gloucestershire, and the celebrated abbeys of Evesham and Sherborne, as well as the priories of Lewes and Launceston. At some of the more important hospitals, the heads of which were often termed priors, and whose brethren were certainly regulars and followed the Austin rule, education was one of their definite functions. Thus the hospital, or priory, of Bridgwater educated thirteen poor boys up to the time of its dissolution, whilst actual thirteenth-century lists of the names of the boys being taught at the great York hospital of St. Leonard’s, adjoining the abbey of St. Mary, are still extant. Wherever the records or rolls of one of the greater monasteries are extant in any abundance, references to schools and schooling are almost certain to be found. The accounts, for instance, of the great priory of Durham show that the monastic funds were used to further schooling, altogether apart from the instruction or training of their novices. The boys who attended it were called the Children of the Almery; they were taught by one of the priory chaplains, who received a stipend, and they were also fed at the priory’s charge, but seem to have returned home to sleep. The accounts for 1369-70 show that Nicholas, the chaplain, received a stipend of 56_s._ 8_d._ _pro erudicione puerorum_. In 1372-3 the master of the Almery school received 39_s._ 3_d._, in addition to a gown, and 2_s._ for coal. John Garner, master of the grammar school, received 53_s._ 4_d._ about 1430, payable at Pentecost and Martinmas. George Trewhytt, in 1500, received a stipend, as grammar schoolmaster, of 60_s._, together with a furred gown worth 10_s._ 11_d._ In 1536-7 the sacrist’s roll shows that the boys’ schoolroom was repaired; and in the same year the bursar received from the almoner 40_s._ to pay for a table for the schoolmaster. [Illustration: FOUNTAINS ABBEY (Cistercian) (By kind permission of the Editor of the _Photographic News_.)]