The school of Grasmere was doubtless an ancient institution, taught in days before the Reformation by the resident priest. It is not unlikely that it would be supervised by the visiting monk from York, for monasteries were then the centres of learning. It would, of course, be held within the church, or the porch, according to the season, as was the custom. After the Reformation, and during John Wilson's fifty-two years' term as rector, followed by that of the erratic Royalist, Henry Wilson, tuition must have been a good deal neglected, or left to the clerk. One Michael Hird was serving as clerk in 1613, and a Robert of the name in 1638, who may have been a son, since the office was kept in a family whenever possible. Robert Hird, "clarke," was buried in 1680, which looks like ejection by the Presbyterians, and subsequent restoration. For we are left in no doubt as to the appointments made by the new religious authorities. George Bennison, proud, no doubt, of his office and of his smattering of Latin, wrote in the register, "I began to teache Schoole att Grassmire the 3 day of May 1641 being et Ludimagister et AEdituus."[181] [181] From a recent work, _Educational Charters and Documents_, by H. F. Leach, we learn that the clergy taught both themselves and others from the earliest times; for instance, in the seventh century, Aldhelm, writing to the Bishop about his studies, tells him how after long struggles he grasped at last, in a moment, by God's grace, "the most difficult of all things, what they call fractions." In the tenth century a canon of King Edgar enjoins that "every priest in addition to lore to diligently learn a handicraft," and later in the same century the Council enacted that "priests shall keep schools in the villages and teach small boys without charge," and also that they ought always to have schools for teachers, "Ludi magistrorum scholas" in their houses, thus they would prepare others to take up the work professionally which they were doing for nothing. Five hundred years later we find it ordered at Bridgenorth, in 1503, that "no priste keep no scole, after that a scole mastur comyth to town, but that every child to resorte to the comyn scole." But the plague broke out and swept away "scole masturs" and pupils alike, and in 1529 the Convocation of Canterbury once more bade all rectors, vicars, and charity priests to employ some part of their time in teaching boys the alphabet, reading, singing, or grammar; and appointed a Revision Committee of one archbishop, four bishops, four abbots, and four archdeacons to bring out a uniform Latin grammar for all schools. That grammar was taught in Latin in the tenth and eleventh centuries we know from the Colloquy of OElfric, 1005, and from his preface to the first English-Latin grammar, in which teachers were told that "It is better to invoke God the Father giving him honour by lengthening the syllable (P[=a]ter) rather