London (England) -- Description and travel; London (England) -- History -- 16th century -- Sources; London (England) -- Surveys
But touching schools more lately advanced in this city, I read, that
King Henry V., having suppressed the priories aliens, whereof some were
about London; namely, one hospital, called Our Lady of Rouncivall,
by Charing Cross; one other hospital in Oldborne; one other without
Cripplegate; and the fourth without Aldersgate; besides other that are
now worn out of memory, and whereof there is no monument remaining more
than Rouncivall, converted to a brotherhood, which continued till the
reign of Henry VIII. or Edward VI. This, I say, and other their schools
being broken up and ceased, King Henry VI., in the 24th of his reign,
by patent, appointed, that there should be in London grammar schools,
besides St. Paul’s, at St. Martin’s le Grand, St. Mary le Bow in Cheap,
St. Dunstan’s in the west, and St. Anthony’s. And in the next year, to
wit, 1447, the said king ordained by parliament that four other grammar
schools should be erected, to wit, in the parishes of St. Andrew in
Oldborne, Allhallowes the Great in Thames street, St. Peter’s upon
Cornhill, and in the hospital of St. Thomas of Acons in West Cheap;
since the which time as divers schools, by suppressing of religious
houses, whereof they were members, in the reign of Henry VIII., have
been decayed, so again have some others been newly erected, and founded
for them; as namely Paul’s school, in place of an old ruined house, was
built in most ample manner, and largely endowed, in the year 1512, by
John Collet, Doctor of Divinity, Dean of Paul’s, for one hundred and
fifty-three poor men’s children, for which there was ordained a master,
surmaster, or usher, and a chaplain. Again, in the year 1553, after
the erection of Christ’s hospital, in the late dissolved house of the
Gray Friars, a great number of poor children being taken in, a school
was also ordained there at the citizen’s charges. Also, in the year
1561, the Merchant Taylors of London founded one notable free grammar
school, in the parish of St. Laurence Poultney by Candleweeke street,
Richard Hils, late master of that company, having given five hundred
pounds towards the purchase of a house, called the Mannor of the Rose,
sometime the Duke of Buckingham’s, wherein the school is kept. As for
the meeting of the schoolmasters on festival days, at festival churches,
and the disputing of their scholars logically, etc., whereof I have
before spoken, the same was long since discontinued; but the arguing of
the schoolboys about the principles of grammar hath been continued even
till our time; for I myself, in my youth, have yearly seen, on the eve
of St. Bartholomew the Apostle, the scholars of divers grammar schools
repair unto the churchyard of St. Bartholomew, the priory in Smithfield,
where upon a bank boarded about under a tree, some one scholar hath
stepped up, and there hath opposed and answered, till he were by some
better scholar overcome and put down; and then the overcomer taking
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