Schools, School-Books and Schoolmasters: A Contribution to the History of Educational Development in Great BritainHazlitt, William Carew
History
Schools, School-Books and Schoolmasters: A Contribution to the History of Educational Development in Great Britain
Hazlitt, William Carew
Education -- Great Britain; Textbooks
The same writer traces back St. Paul's school to Henry the First's reign,
when the Bishop of London granted the schoolmaster for the time being a
residence in the bell-tower, and bestowed on him the custody of the
library of the church. A successor of this person had the monopoly of
teaching school in London conferred on him by the Bishop of Winchester,
saving the rights only of the schoolmasters of St. Mary-le-Bow and St.
Martin-le-Grand.
The old cathedral school, which that of Colet doubtless gradually
extinguished, lay to the south of his, and appears curiously enough not to
have occupied the basement, but to have been, as we should say, on the
first floor, four shops being beneath it. It was close to Watling Street.
A passage in the _Monumenta Franciscana_ shews that the site of Colet's
original school, which perished in the Great Fire, had been in the
possession of bookbinders, and in the immediate neighbourhood was the sign
of the Black Eagle, which, as we learn from documentary testimony, was
still there in 1550.
At the epoch to which I am referring, the vocation of a bookbinder was, I
think, invariably joined with that of a printer, and I apprehend that
these shops formed part of a printing establishment.
The _Black Eagle_ was an emporium for the sale of books, and it is to be
recollected that in early days, where the typographical part was done in
some more or less unfrequented quarter of the city, it was a common
practice to have the volume on sale in a more public thoroughfare.
St. Paul's Churchyard, in the days of Colet and in the infancy of his
valuable endowment, was beyond question not only a place of great resort,
but a favourite seat of the booksellers. For in the imprint to an edition
of the _Hours of the Virgin_, printed at Paris, the copies are said to be
on sale at London "apud bibliopolas in cimiterio sancti Pauli 1514;" and
of this fact I could readily bring forward numerous other evidences.
Besides the vendors of literature, however, the site soon became one of
the places of settlement of the teachers of languages, to whom the
immediate proximity of St. Paul's served as an useful introduction and
advertisement; and in the time of Elizabeth a French school was
established here, for the benefit of the general public, of course, but
more especially, doubtless, with a view to such Paulines as might desire
an extension of their studies.
VIII.
Thomas Linacre prepares his Rudiments of Latin Grammar for the use of
the Princess Mary (1522)--Probably the earliest digest of the
kind--Cardinal Wolsey's edition of Lily's Grammar for the use of
Ipswich School (1529)--Inquiry into the priority of the Ipswich and
St. Paul's Grammars--First National Primer (1540)--Lily's _Short
Introduction of Grammar_ (1548)--Its re-issue by Queen Elizabeth
(1566-7)--Some account of its contents--Its failure.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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