The English: A Social History, 1066–1945 (Text Only)

by Christopher Hibbert

  Since there were no legal grounds upon which the marriage could be prevented, it did in the end take place. Margery was apparently never forgiven and seems not to have been received into the family again, though her eldest son did receive £20 under the terms of his grandmother’s will.3

  Harsh as her behaviour to her daughter appears to us, Margaret Paston was nevertheless a woman capable of deep affection. Her own marriage had been arranged and yet, as was so often the case, it proved a happy union. She subordinated her interests to those of her husband, as wives were expected to do; but evidently she did not resent her subordination, and proved a competent housewife. Like other wives in her position, she kept a careful eye on her larder so that supplies of essential foods were always available but not ordered in extravagant quantities and therefore wasted. She presided over the baking in the household, the smoking and salting of meat, the making of preserves and wine. She watched, too, over the clothing of the family, supervising the spinning and weaving that was carried out in the house, and ordering what could not be made at home from Norwich or London, specifying how much should be paid for silk laces, hose-cloth, ‘a girdle of plunket ribbon’ (6d), ‘a bonnet of deep murrey’ (2IS 4d) or pattens. ‘I was wont to pay but 2½d for a pair,’ she wrote, ‘but I pray you let them not be left behind though I pay more. They must be low pattens; let them be long enough and broad upon the heele.’

  I pray that you will … buy some frieze to make your child’s gowns [she wrote in another letter to her husband who was in London]. And that you will buy a yard of broad-cloth of black for an hood for me at 3s 8d or 4s a yard, for there is neither good cloth nor good frieze in this town [Norwich]. As for the child’s gowns if I have [the material], I will get them made [here] …

  As for cloth for my gown [she told her husband in November 1453], I cannot get anything better than the sample I am sending you, which is, I think, too poor both in cloth and colour, so please buy me 3¼ yards of whatever you think is suitable for me, of what colour you like, for I have really searched all the drapers’ shops in this town, and there is a very poor choice. Please buy a loaf of good sugar as well, and half a pound of whole cinnamon, for there is no cinnamon in this town.

  Just as John Paston was frequently commissioned to shop for his wife, so she was instructed to do all kinds of errands for him in his long absences away from home, and was asked frequently for confirmation that they had been done or would be done: ‘Thomas Howes [a friend’s agent] has got four great beams for the private room, the malthouse and the brewery,’ runs one characteristic letter when alterations to the Pastons’ house were being carried out, a letter such as many husbands of rank all over the country might have expected to receive.

  As to the laying of these beams, they will be laid this coming week … As to the rest of the work I think it must wait until you come home because I cannot get either joists or boards yet. I have measured the private room where you want your chests and accounting-board to be kept for the time being and there is no room beside the bed even if it was moved to the door, to put both your board and chests there and to have space to move and sit down as well. So I have arranged that you shall have the same private room as you had before.

  Margaret Paston’s letters to her husband begin and end with customary formality, being addressed to her ‘right reverend and worshipful husband and typically subscribed, ‘The Holy Trinity have you in their keeping and send you health. Written in haste at Norwich on the Wednesday after St Peter’s Day.’ But there can be no doubt of the affection she held for him. On 28 September 1443, after hearing that he had been ill, she wrote:

  Right worshipful husband, I commend myself to you, desiring with all my heart to hear how you are and thanking God for your recovery from your great illness. And I thank you for the letter that you sent me, for by my truth, my mother and I were nought in heart’s ease from the time that we knew of your sickness till we knew truly of your recovery. My mother-in-law promised another image of wax weighing as much as you for Our Lady of Walsingham, and she sent four nobles [26s 8d] to the four Orders of Friars at Norwich to pray for you, and I have promised to go on Pilgrimage to Walsingham and to St Leonard’s [Priory] for you. By my troth, I had never so heavy a season as I had from the time that I knew of your sickness till I knew of your complete recovery, and yet my heart is still in no great ease, nor shall be, till I know that ye be really well … If I might have had my will, I should have seen you ere this time. I would you were at home … I pray you if your sore be whole so that you may endure to ride … come home … For I hope you should be kept as tenderly here as ye be at London. I have not time to write half a quarter as much as I should say to you if I might speak with you. I shall send you another letter as hastily as I may. Almighty God have you in his keeping, and send you health. Written in Oxmead in very great haste on St Michael’s Eve … Your son is well, blessed be to God.4

  Devoted as she was to her husband, Margaret Paston, like most women of her class, appears to have been far less affectionate towards her children.

  10 Pupils and Masters

  The want of affection in the English is strongly manifested towards their children [an Italian visitor to England noted]. For after having kept them at home till they arrive at the age of seven or nine years at the utmost, they put them out, both males and females, to hard service in the houses of other people … And few are born who are exempted from this fate, for every one however rich he may be, sends away his children into the houses of others, whilst he, in return, receives those of strangers into his own. And on enquiring the reason for the severity, they answered that they did it in order that their children might learn better manners. But I for my part, believe that they do it because they like to enjoy all their comfort themselves.1

  It was also hoped that the children would have a better opportunity of advancing in the world under the protection of some great lord, that they would learn to be obedient as well as mannerly, that they would gain some sort of education and some knowledge of how matters were conducted in a great house, and, perhaps, that they would be set on the way to making a profitable marriage. Their happiness was rarely a consideration. When Agnes Paston’s daughter bitterly complained of her unhappiness living in another house, her mother curtly replied that she must accustom herself ‘to work readily as other gentlewomen do’.

  From their earliest years children were expected to hold their parents and, in particular, their fathers in the deepest respect; and even when they came of age would not sit down in their presence without permission. When young, most were regularly beaten, girls as well as boys, in accordance with the advice given in books written for the guidance of parents in the upbringing of their offspring. The experiences of Lady Jane Grey were shared by many a medieval girl who, when the time came, thought it her duty to treat her own children in the same way:

  One of the greatest benefites that God ever gave me, is, that he sent me so sharpe and severe Parentes … For when I am in presence of father or mother, whether I speke, kepe silence, sit, stand, or go, eate, drinke, be merie or sad, be sawying, plaiying, dauncing, or doing anie thing els, I must do it, as it were, in soch weight, mesure and number, even so perfitelie as God made the world, else I am so sharpelie taunted, so cruellie threatened, yea presentlie some tymes with pinches, nippes and bobbes, and other waies which I will not name for the honor I beare them … that I thinke myself in hell.2

  Even if they were not beaten at home they could certainly expect to be whipped at school. Agnes Paston, when inquiring about the progress of her son’s lessons, told his master that if he had not done well, ‘nor would not amend’, no pains need be spared to ‘belash him truly till he will amend. So did his last master.’ Indeed, there were very few masters who did not. Medieval woodcuts invariably depict them with a birch; and a master of grammar at Cambridge was presented with two insignia of office when he had qualified; one was a psalter, the other a birch. And he was required to use the birch on a local boy to sh
ow that he had no aversion to corporal punishment, the boy being paid 4d for his ‘labour’.3

  The thirteenth-century rules of Westminster almonry school indicate how much the birch was then relied upon to maintain discipline, and how much disorder there nevertheless seems to have been. In the morning the boys were required to say their prayers

  without shouting and confusion; if anyone neglects these good things, let them be punished … Whether they are standing or sitting in the choir let them not have their eyes turned aside to the people, but rather toward the altar; not grinning or chattering or laughing aloud; not making fun of another if he does not read or sing psalms well; not hitting one another secretly or openly or answering rudely if they happen to be asked a question by their elders. Those who break the rules will feel the rod without delay … Likewise if anyone who knows Latin does speak English or French with his companion, or with any clerk, for every word he shall have a blow with the rod. Likewise for rudeness in word or deed anywhere, or for any kind of oath, let not the rod be spared … Again whoever at bed time has torn to pieces the bed of his companions or hidden the bedclothes, or thrown shoes or pillow from corner to corner, or roused anger, or thrown the school into disorder, shall be severely punished in the morning.2

  In all other schools birching seems to have been as common a punishment as at this one. A few voices were raised against it, among them those of Roger Ascham, Greek reader at St John’s College, Cambridge, and Sir Thomas Elyot who in The Governour suggested that children should not be ‘inf orced by violence to lerne but … swetely allured with praises and such praty gyftes as [they] delite in’.5 Also, parents occasionally sought redress in the courts for the excessive beating of their children. But most boys had to grow accustomed to regular thrashings, and would well have sympathized with the pupil in the late fifteenth-century poem The Birched Schoolboy, whose life was made a misery by his master’s sharp ‘birchen twiggis’.

  On Monday in the morning when I shall rise

  At vi. of the clock, it is the gise

  To go to school without a-vise

  I had rather go twenty mile twice!

  What availeth it me though I say nay?

  My master looketh as he were mad:

  ‘Where hast thou been, though sorry lad?’

  ‘Milking ducks, my mother bade:’

  It was no marvel that I were sad.

  What availeth it me though I say nay?

  My master peppered my arse with well good speed:

  It was worse than fennel seed;

  He would not leave till it did bleed.

  Much sorrow has been for his deed!

  What availeth it me though I say nay?

  I would my master were a wat [hare]

  And my book a wild cat,

  And a brace of greyhounds in his top.

  I would be glad for to see that!

  What availeth it me though I say nay?

  I would my master were an hare,

  And all his bookis houndis were,

  And I myself a jolly hunter:

  To blow my horn I would not spare!

  For if he were dead I would not care.

  What availeth it me though I say nay?6

  Birching, of course, however severe and regular, could not be relied upon to bring all pupils to submit to their masters; and in some schools the statutes provided for the incorrigible to be expelled. At Wotton-under-Edge in 1384 scholars were required to be ‘of good behaviour attending school and obedient to their master’ and ‘compelled continually to devote their time to learning and study’. If they were undisciplined and ‘after due warning and chastisement refused to amend’, they were to be expelled.7

  At this time elementary education was gained in a variety of schools of different origins – widely scattered throughout the country and ever growing in numbers – giving clever boys of humble origins an opportunity to rise in the world. By the second half of the thirteenth century there were already schools in sixty places in England, including all the cathedral towns, and many more had been founded since then. In Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire there were almost three times as many schools in the fourteenth century as there had been a hundred years before.8 There were small, informal schools kept by parish clerks or clergy in minor orders who taught their pupils at the parish church, perhaps in the vestry, as at North Cadbury, Somerset, where vestiges of the alphabet can still be seen on the whitewashed walls. There were chantry schools whose founders had provided money for teaching children to serve as altar boys or choristers for the chantry priests. There were song schools attached to most cathedrals and almonry schools attached to monasteries. There were small schools run by the various orders of friars for their young novices, although the elementary monastery schools which had nourished in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries had gradually disappeared after 1215 when canon law discouraged the practice of committing children to a monastic life before the age of fourteen. There were guild schools, preparatory schools for grammar schools and grammar schools themselves. And there were those private foundations like ‘Seinte Marie College of Wynchestre’ established in 1382 by William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester, and Eton College founded by Henry VI.

  At the humblest of these schools the curriculum was simple. It began with the alphabet and song and ‘other petite lernunge as … redyng of the mateyns and of the psalter … and redyng of Englissh’; and progressed, as at Childrey chantry school, to ‘learning prayers and psalms, collects and graces to be said before and after meals, the articles of faith in English, the ten commandments, the seven deadly sins and seven sacraments’.9 At some schools the emphasis was more secular. At a school in Rotherham, founded in 1483 by Thomas Rotherham, Archbishop of York, accountancy was taught as well as grammar, because ‘that county [Yorkshire] produces many youths endowed with the light and sharpness of ability who do not all wish to attain the dignity and elevation of the priesthood … and these may be better fitted for the mechanical arts and other concerns of this world’.10

  Normally, the teaching of grammar was left to the grammar schools whose pupils were expected to have a grounding in basic education before they came. Parents wishing to enter their sons at St Paul’s School were told, ‘If your chylde can rede and wryte Latin and Englysshe sufficiently, so that he be able to rede and wryte his owne lessons, then he shall be admytted into the schole for a scholer.’11

  Once admitted to a school like St Paul’s a child’s-principal subject would be Latin grammar, probably based on Donatus’s Ars Minor which was written in fourth-century Rome in question and answer form. All the other main textbooks were common to the whole of western Europe and, as teaching methods were oral rather than visual, they were generally written in verse.

  The lower forms began with attempts to translate sentences from English into Latin, simple sentences, often intended to amuse and known as vulgaria: ‘The blind eateth many a fly’ or ‘His nose is like a shoeing-horn’. Then the pupils progressed to disputations, stylized debates conducted in Latin, and, ideally, to the composition of Latin verse: fourteenth-century pupils at Bredgar in Kent were not considered fit to take part in the chapel liturgy until they could ‘read, sing, construe and compose twenty-four verses in a single day’.12

  To familiarize them with Latin, pupils were usually forbidden to speak English. A vulgarium of the late fifteenth-century ran, ‘If I had not used my English tongue so greatly for which the master hath rebuked me oft times, I should have been more cunning in grammar. Wise men say that nothing may be more profitable than to speak Latin.’ Boys at schools in Wells were specifically ordered at meal times ‘to ask for anything they want in Latin not in English’.13 In many grammar schools, however, French was also permitted, though the use of this language was gradually dying out by the fourteenth century, much to the chagrin of conservative commentators, one of whom, writing in 1385, complained that nowadays children ‘know no more French than their left heel knows, and that is harm for them i
f they cross the sea and travel in foreign lands, and in many other circumstances. Also gentlemen have now largely ceased teaching their children French.’14 Greek was also rarely taught in grammar schools, though it seems to have formed part of the curriculum at both Eton and Winchester in the fifteenth century.15

  The school day was arduous and long, beginning as early as six o’clock and in summer at five. There were lessons before breakfast, from eight o’clock to nine, more morning lessons after breakfast until twelve, and still more lessons in the afternoon from two to six.16 The timetable remained unvaried throughout the year, there being breaks for feast days only, and holidays of less than a fortnight at Christmas, Easter and Whitsun, although at some places there were short traditional holidays at other times, as during the annual carnival at St Andrew’s where the scholars were customarily given three days’ holiday for cock-fighting.17 Boarders, however, usually spent their holidays at school, and even on Sundays were given work to do to keep them out of mischief.

  They were not well fed; nor were their living conditions in the least comfortable. At St Paul’s School the pupils’ urine was collected in tubs and sold to dyers and tanners, the profits going towards the school funds. ‘For other causes, if need be, they shall go to the water-side.’18

  Classes were generally large. In 1412 the hundred or so pupils at Winchester were all taught in one room; and Eton’s rather larger numbers in the fifteenth century were also all crammed into a single classroom. At St Paul’s, at the beginning of the next century, the pupils were instructed in one large rectangular chamber divided into four by curtains. This provided space for three classes and a chapel. The boys sat on long benches or forms, sixteen to a form, each of which was supervised by a head boy.19

  Yet, despite the discomfort and severely limited facilities, education was not cheap. Certain schools had been founded on a charitable basis: William of Wykeham had established his school at Winchester for ‘seventy poor and needy scholars’; Eton provided for the teaching of poor local boys for nothing; so did a school founded in 1515 at Liverpool by one John Crosse who left lands for a priest ‘to keep a grammar school and take his advantage from all the children except those whose names be Crosse, and poor children that have no succour’. At Wotton-under-Edge grammar school the master was enjoined to ‘keep the school faithfully … and kindly receive all scholars whatsoever, howsoever and whencesoever coming for instruction in the said art of grammar, without exacting, claiming or taking from them any advantage or gain for their labour’. And at Sevenoaks grammar school, founded by William Sevenoke, a local man who had done well as a grocer in London, the master was required in about 1432 to ‘teach and instruct all poor boys whatsoever coming there for the sake of learning, taking nothing of them or their parents or friends for the teaching and instructing of them’. Similarly the statutes of Queen’s College, Oxford, provided for the teaching of seventy poor grammar pupils when finances permitted, though the finances were rarely deemed to allow it and it was not often that more than one or two pupils were provided for by the college.20