School life in the 16th and 17th centuries

In the Middle Ages when all schools of any importance were run by the church, the scholars rose according to monastic rule, and this pattern of early rising was carried over into secular boarding schools on the 16th and 17th centuries.   A 15th century book of Latin exercises describes the pain of early rising:

'When I was a childe, from III yere old to X (for now I go upon the XII yere)...I was wont to lye still abedde tyll it was forth dais...My brekefaste was brought to by beedys side as oft as me liste to call therefor...But nowe...sat fyve of the clocke by the monelyght I most go to my book...and yff our master hap to awake us, he bryngeth a rode stede of a candle.'
  ( Mathurin Cordier (1479?-1574), Geneva: Corderii colloquiorum centuria selecta)

Mathurin Cordier, in his colloquies, describes the pupil rising in the morning:
  'I took my Breeches and Stockings, I put on both, I put on my shoes, I tied my Breeches to my Doublet with Points (laces), I tied my Stockings with my Garters upon my legs, I girt myself with my Girdle, I combed my head diligently, I fitted my Cap to my Head, I put on my Gown, then going out of my Chamber I went below.  I made water in the Yard against the wall, I took cold water out of the Bucket, I washed myt hands and face, I rinsed out my Mouth and Teeth, I wiped my Hands and Face with the Towel, in the mean Time the Signal is given to Prayer .'
   (Mathurin Cordier, op. cit)

Title page of Mathurin Cordier, Colloquia 1579 ed.

The colloquies, or conversational exercises, are based on life at the Puritan school set up by Calvin in 1559 in Geneva, where many English exiles lived, They are full of boys running home to fetch their 'beaver' or snacks.  The boys also frequently go into town on errands, visiting the 'Botchers' to have their stockings mended, the 'Barber's' to have a septic bite dressed, to the merchants' stalls to buy books and paper, taking care they 'be not cozened(cheated)'  Pens have to be made out of goose quills, an in one colloquy Calvin himself appears making two for a small pupil.

There is a description of making such quill pens in Hollyband and Erondell's dialogues:
  Master:  "Have you brought your weapons?  Have you brought your pennes and incke-horne?  We write with goose quilles,  Cut off the feathers with a penknife..."
Maurice: "My maister taught me to make my penne softe with spitalle, and rubbing it against the inside of my cote."
   (M. St. Clare Byrne.  The Elizabethan home discovered in two dialogues by Claudius Hollyband and Peter Erondell.  1930.  op. cit)

In Erondell and Hollyband's school the older children learened Latin in the mornings and French in the afternoon, by Francis Vives' and Roger Ascham's new method of double translation:'Children, turne your lessons out of French into English, and then out of English into French' (Hollyband and Erondell, op.cit)

The children are lively and naughty, providing an entertaining French vocabulary exercise:
 'Nicholas: "Maister, John Nothing-worth hath sworne by God,
played by the way, solde his poyntes, chaunged his booke, stollen a knife, lied twice, lost his cappe."
Master: "Is it true? Come hether companion, untrusse upi: untie you, put your hosen down, dispatche."
John N. "Nicholas doth mocke me, plucketh me by the heare, by the eares; hath stroken me with his fist upon the head; hath stroken me, hath made me bleede."
Master: "You shall be beaten both..."
    Erondell and Hollyband, op.cit)

The children at the school in Geneva were naughty too, and indulged in midnight feasts:
'"Woe is me! I am almost out of my wits, I am smitten with such fear"
"What is the matter I say?"
"The Master hath caught us"
"In what? In theft?"
"...Private junketing"
"An hainous crime indeed."'

They also pawned each other's belongings:
'A:"Lend me a Virgil for two days...."
B"Truely I cannot"
A"Why not?"
B"Because Garard, who borrowed it lately of me, hath put it in Pawn.'
   (Mathurin Cordier, op.cit)

A child studying his letters on a hornbook, Jost Amman, Kunstbuch, Frankfurt, 1580,
 (Tuer, History of the Hornbook, 1896)

Francis Seager describes the 16th century schoolboy in a popular school text, The Schoole of Vertue and book of good nourture for children and youth to learne theyr dutie by, 1557.  Shakespeare was probably attending Stratford-upon-Avon grammar school about this time, and might have had to learn it by heart:
  '...thy satchel and thy books take,
and to the school hast see thou make.
But ere thou go with thyself forethink
That thou take with thee pen, paper and ink,
These things thus had, Take straight thy way
Unto the school without any stay...
Thy master there being Salute with all reverence
Declaring thereby thy duty and ovedience
Unto thy place appointed for to sit
Straight go thou to and thy satchell unknit,
Thy books take out, thy lesson then learn...
Apply thy mind to learning and science
For learning in need will be thy defence...'
   (Francis Seager, Schoole of Vertue...EETS Vol. 32 op cit)

John Brinsley (1581-1624) has left an example of a typical grammar school timetable in his Ludus Literarius or, The Grammar Schoole, 1612. The scholar's day began at six or seven am, an hour later in winter.  although Brinsley says, sympathetically that 'it is hard for the little children to rise so early' early rising was generally the rule for labourer and prince.

Lily's Latin Grammar, the standard Latin grammar book from 1540.

A 1687 edition of William Lily's Latin Grammar

Students would have studied their Latin from William Lily's Latin Grammar, in use right up to the 19th century, and first authorised as the standard Latin text book by Henry VIII.

In many schools day scholars and boarders were both taken and some boys would be lodged in the town.  At 9am, according to Brinsley's timetable, they went home to breakfast.  He allows them fifteen minutes.  Lessons, according to Brinsley, continued after breakfast to eleven, when there was a long break t one o'colck followed by two further periods of lessons with a fifteen minute break between them, finishing with a Bible reading and psalms around five thirty.  Bedtime was around nine.  This timetable was followed at Westminster School  Philip Henry, who was there from 1643, has described the pupils' habit of studying through the night, two or more sitting up till eleven or twelve, then waking a second group and so on through the night. (Diary and letters of Philip Henry, 1631-1696 ed Matthew Henry Lee, 1882)

It was common until the 19th century for several forms to be taught in the same room.  The original schoolroom at Rugby can still be seen, and in it each class would have taken a corner.  Charles Hoole in his book Scholastick discipline, 1659, talks of six or seven forms using one room, and suggested the use of folding doors to reduce the noise which must have been terrible when oral repetition was still a common teaching method.  If the pupils were well disciplined, however, noise does not seem to have been a problem. Cordier, comparing the school in Geneva with small country schools, says, 'There is more silence in our school of six hundred than of forty, yea thirty in those pesty schools' (Cordier, op.cit)
Contemporary woodcuts often show the teacher sitting raised up above the class in a kind of pulpit, with the scholars on what must have been extremely hard wooden benches facing him, no desks.  Right through the 18th century Eton scholars still used their hard top hats, resting on their knees, as writing tables.

Udalricus Ebrardi, Modus Latinus, Nuremberg 1500, showing the tutor and the class.
Note the birch twigs in the tutor's hand (from Percy Muir, Early Children's Books and their Illustration, 1975)

Many of the collections of colloquies mention gambling, with nuts among the small boys, but also with cards and dice, especially at Christmas.  According to the colloquies from Magdalen School, Oxford, 'They do wysely that send no Children to the Universite but they put them under Creansers (censors) to have the rule
 of them and of their money, for yf they wer not so ordeuynede, they sholde waste all their money att dyss and Cardys in Cristmas tyme.'
   (Magdalen School colloquies, op.cit)

In one of Vives' dialogues a scholar is tempted to play truant with the cobbler's son to play dice, while smaller boys propose:  '"Let us play at nuts, at throwing them into holes."
Scipio: "Nut-shells are good for making little houses to put ants into."'
    (Tudor schoolboy life.  The dialogues of Juan Luis Vives.  Translated...by Foster Watson, 1908)

The boys were often allowed to keep pets at school.  John Evelyn (1620-1706) mentions the pets' corner in the well known Jesuit school at Antwerp which he visited, and was much impressed by, in 1641.  A boy at Magdalen School, Oxford, complained in a colloquy   '...thei say that I kepe a dawe in my chamber, but iwys thei lye falsly upon me for it is but a pore Conye.  'Unfortunately he does not explain why rabbits were permitted but not jackdaws.

A typical Latin class (National Education Network)

Food, of perennial interest to school children, forms the subject of several colloquies.  The meals at Peter Erondell's school do not sound too bad:
'Pisan:"Our breakfast in the morning is, a little peice of bread made of meale not bulted, but with all the bran in it, and a little butter, or some fruits...To dinner, we have herbes, or every one a messe of porridge.  Sometimes turneppes, coleworts, wheate and barly in porridge, a kind of delicate meate made of fine wheate flower, and eggs.  Upon fishe-dayes, fleeted milke, in deepe poengers...with some bread put in it.  Some fresh fische, if in Fish Streate it can be had at a reasonable price.  If not, salt fishe, well wattered.  After, pease, or fitches, or beanes, or lupins (sic)...Some drinke small biere, and a few, but seldome, drink winne, well alaqyed with water.  Our drinking at after none is, a litle bread, and almonds, drie figges, or reasens.  Or if it be Sommer tiem, pears, or apples, cheries, or prunes.  After, whenb we go to the farme, for plesure, then we eate, either new milke, or curded, frech cheese, creame, lupins alayed...The first dish of thge supper is a salat cut small with salt upon it, and moistened with oile of olives...and with vinaiger...And mutton sodde in a large platter, with dry prunes, or small rootes, or chopped herbes.  Sometimes a very good gallimafrie, now and then a minced meat..a little roset-meate, specually veale, and sometime kidde.  Upon fasting dayes, we have egges rosted, fired, or poached...or made ufter the fashion of a pannecake...Thereto is added sometimes a little fische, and after the cheese come nuttes.'
 (Erondell, op.cit)

Another Latin text book., 1673(Yale University)

At the school in Geneva the pupils came and went in what now seems a very casual fashion, drifting back after the school holidays in dribs and drabs, going off to help with the grape harvest or to family occasions, making excuses to visit their doting mothers, who aided and abetted them and defended them from the consequences.  Cordier's colloquies include an account of a boy who tries to use his lice as an excuse to go home:
'Master "Have you any lice?"
 Caius" I, and a great many indeed."
Master "Why do you not tell my wife so much?"
Caius "We durst not."
Master "As though indeed shee was so hard to be spoken to.  She hath a maid chiefly for that purpose, to see you be all kept cleanly...ye are glad ye have an occasion offered you to go and see your mother."'
 (Mathurin Cordier, op.cit)

This was, of course, the school which many Puritans attended in exile. Cordier wrote his colloquies for their use to ensure that their exercises had the correct religious stance. In Geneva the boys prayed together several times during the day and, in addition, according to Puritan practise, 'the Master doth oft admonish us, that every one go aside sometimes some whither into a private place and pray for himself.'
  (Cordier, colloquies, op.cit)
They were also encouraged to 'admonish' the local peasants and remind them of their religious duties.  The peasants did not always take this well: 'There were some that threatened to beat me when I admonished them very kindly.'
  (Cordier, colloquies, op.cit)


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