Wives, Mistresses and Governesses, Girls' education in the 18th and 19th centuries

'I wish the singing master may not get one of my Lady Busby's daughters, which you know is commonly done'
(Lady Gardiner to Sir John Verney, 27 Nov. 1701.  Verney letters of the 18th century ed. Margaret Maria, Lady Verney, 2 vols, 1930, Vol. 1, p.165

 The Married Women's Property Act was passed in 1882.  Until then, in the U.K. the property of a married woman became her husband's  A husband might spend his wife's fortune any way he pleased and there was little her friends and relations, and the wife herself, could do about it though concerned fathers did attempt to tie up their daughters' money in dowries.  There was a great deal to be gained by seducing a young girl from a wealthy family into an a runaway marriage as Charles Wickham tries to run away with Mr. Darcy's sister in Pride and Prejudice.

Victorian girls at school
(Pinterest)

Girls from well-off and respectable families were still educated with marriage in mind, and a good marriage was still the best career option for most of these girls, though it certainly carried the high risk of early death in child-birth.  The standards for a good match were high; a spotless reputation, a respectable family, money, land, connections; intact virginity, beauty, if possible, though this could be negotiable.  Actual love and attraction was also becoming more important, unlike the frequent arranged marriages of earlier periods.  Jane Austen's novels revolve around these sensitive marriage negotiations, particularly Pride and Prejudice, (1813) which features Mrs. Bennet attempting the difficult task of marring off her five beautiful but not well off or well connected daughters.  The penniless opportunist Charles Wickham first attempts to capture wealthy Mr. Darcy's innocent young sister.  Then he 'ruins' the youngest Bennet girl, Lydia and has to be bought off to marry her.  This prejudices the rather slender prospects of Lydia's lovely but impoverished sisters with Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bingham, but, in the novel, love does triumph over prejudice.

Becky Sharp, the anti-heroine of Thackray's Vanity Fair,(1847) by contrast, did her best to rise in the world by marriage,though she made the unfortunate mistake of marrying the penniless second son rather than the wealthy baronet who has taken her on as governess to his younger children.  Many 18th and 19th century novels revolve around young women attempting to rise in the world through marriage, or having their prospects in life ruined by its failure, and this is because marriage was so important.

As Charles Hotham wrote to his sixteen-year old daughter in the 1760s:
'The Natural Walk and Situation of Women is Marriage.  It will of Course be yours in common with the rest of your Sex.'
(The Hothams, being the chronicles of the Hothams of Scorborough, 1918, p.112.)

In fact this daughter did not marry.  Many girls from middle class families were not able to find a husband, and many, even after marriage, had to earn a living, often unexpectedly owing to fluctuations in the fortunes of their families.  For middle class girls working for a living was considered almost shameful.  Also, girls were not allowed to go to university or take degree examinations, and consequently professions were not open to them.  They might become governesses in well-off households, or teachers in schools.  Some of them set up schools themselves.

Hannah Moore (1745-1833) an exceptional woman of her time, was brought up by her father to earn her living as a teacher.  However her father stopped her maths lessons because she was progressing too fast.  She went on to teach for a time at her father's school, then became financially independent and a well-known bluestocking, intellectual, playwright,founded many Sunday Schools for the poor, campaigned against the slave trade, and wrote Strictures on the Modern System of  Female Education, 1779, Her view was that women need education to be wives and mothers and to contribute to society through charity work:

Hannah Moore, 1821, by H.W. Pickersgill
(Wikipedia)

'The profession of ladies, to which the bent of their instruction should be turned, is that of daughters, wives, mothers, and mistresses of families. They should be therefore trained with a view to these several conditions, and be furnished with a stock of ideas and principles, and qualifications ready to be applied and appropriated, as occasion may demand, to each of these respective situations; for though the arts which merely embellish life must claim admiration; yet when a man of sense comes to marry, it is a companion whom he wants, and not an artist. It is not merely a creature who can paint, and play, and dress, and dance; it is a being who can comfort and counsel him; one who can reason and reflect, and feel, and judge, and discourse, and discriminate; one who can assist him in his affairs, lighten his cares, sooth his sorrows, strengthen his principles, and educate his children.'
(Hanah Moore, Strictures on the Modern System of Female Education, 1779)

The influential educationalist and novelist Maria Edgeworth (1768-1849) wrote:
'We cannot help thinking that their happiness is of more consequence than their speculative rights, and we wish to educate women so that they may be happy in the situations in which they are most likely to be placed...'
(Maria Edgeworth, Practical Education, 2nd ed. 1801 p 259)

It was not considered lady-like for a girl to be too well-educated.  Lady Mary Wortley Montague (1689-1762) secretly educated herself in her father's library.  Probably writing of her own bitter experience, she advised her granddaughter to: 
'conceal whatever learning she attains with as much solicitude as she would hide crookedness or lameness; the parade of it can only serve to draw on her the envy and consequently the most inveterate hatred of all he and she fools....'(Mary C. Borer, Willingly to school, a history of women's education 1976 p.122)

What was school life like for girls?  Mary Borer cites a fashionable girls' boarding school in Queen's Square, Bloomsbury, London, called the 'young ladies Eton'.  In 1781 it had 220 pupils age six to sixteen, the fees were over 100 guineas a year.  The girls were schooled in manners, dancing,  history, French and  manners; surprisingly they learned how to use make-up and had their hair fashionably powdered.
(Borer p.185)

Fashionable young ladies
(The School Run, Google)

Not everyone approved:
'Is it surprising that a girl when grown up should starve herself into shapefulness and overspread her face with paint who was trained at boarding school to swing daily by the chin in order to lengthen her neck and accustomed to peculiar modes of discipline contrived to heighten the complexion?'
(Thomas Grisborne, An Enquiry into the Duties of the Female Sex, 1797, quoted in Josephine Kamm, Hope Deferred, Girls' Education in English History, 1965, p. 126)

Another expensive girls' boarding school was 32 Brunswick Terrace, Brighton.  In 1836 the fees were £1000 for two years.  There Francis Power Cobbe studied French, Italian, German, music, manners and dress; the girls were trained to wear full evening dress and wore corsets.  They also studied  drawing, conversation, English, maths, history, geography, had some lessons on science and took regular exercise.  Francis Power Cobbe complained about the food; nothing new there then.
 (Borer p.238)

Mary Vivian Hughes (1866-1956)  described her mother's education at a finishing school in Bath in the mid 19th century.  There were only six pupils. They had visiting masters for French, music and philosophy, and learned good French, Latin and general knowledge.  The school was very strict on what might be considered good manners.  Before the girls went out to tea with anyone they had to eat a plate of thick bread and butter, so that they could show elegant appetites by leaving something on the plate.
(A London Child of the 1870s, 1934, p.44)

Mrs. Trimmer (1741-1810), children's author, and founder of The Guardian of Education, had some critical things to say about those French teachers:
'In the course of a few years the knowledge of the French language was considered as an indispensable part of a polite education, and French masters and governesses were encouraged to come to England as adventurers; these were frequently very low-bred persons of depraved morals, and ignorant of every thing essentially requisite for the important task of educating youth; but they were eagerly engaged by an infatuated people, both for schools and private families...'
(The Guardian of Education, Vol. 1, 1802 p.7 Internet edition available)

The Guardian of Education
(Wikimedia)

 Mary Hughes herself went to the North London Collegiate School and wrote two excellent books on women's life and education: A London Child of the 1870s, A London Girl of the 1880s.

Many girls were educated at home by governesses. Lady Caroline Russell, daughter of the Duke of Bedford,  came from a very wealthy family.  She had:
'...a writing master, music, dancing, French, Italian, singing and harpsichord and guitar.  She was presented at Court aged fifteen in 1758:
'Mama desires me to add to this that...the Prince of Wales thinks me very pretty...I was against writing you this for fear you should think me a saucy, vain Puss.'
Her brother, Lord Tavistock, was sent to Westminster school though his father and grandfather had been taught at home by tutors.
(Gladys Thomson, The Russells in Bloomsbury, 1669-1771, 1940, p. 293)

Here is an extract from the Heber letters, 1796, written during the upheavals following the French Revolution, about hiring a governess for little Mary:
'There are plenty of emigrant ladies, some of the rank of Viscountess, to be had, but I think you could not prefer a French-woman, and I am sure would not take a Roman Catholic into your house.  We have just hired a governess for Mary Ann...She undertakes to instruct her pupils in English, French, Geography, Music, Writing and Arithmetic, all for £40 a year'
(R.H. Cholmondeley, ed. The Heber Letters, 1787-1832, pub. 1950)


 What of the less well-off? Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855) in  Jane Eyre, 1847, wrote one of the most famous descriptions of Victorian girls at school.  Lowood  was based on the Clergy Daughter's School at Cowan Bridge in Lancashire.  Many clergy were not well off, and would send their daughters to be educated at such boarding schools.  Charlotte Bronte described:

' ...a wide, long room, with great deal tables, two at each end, on each of which burnt a pair of candles, and seated all round on benches, a congregation of girls of every age, from nine or ten to twenty.  Seen by the dim light of the dips, their number to me appeared countless, though not in reality exceeding eighty; they were uniformly dressed in brown stuff frocks of quaint fashion, and long holland pinafores.
There were four classes in the room, divided by age.  Charlotte Bronte describes their studies:

'The superintendent of Lowood (for such was this lady) having taken her seat before a pair of globes placed on one of the tables, summoned the first class round her, and commenced giving a lesson on geography; the lower classes were called by the teachers: repetitions in history, grammar, &c., went on for an hour; writing and arithmetic succeeded, and music lessons were given by Miss Temple to some of the elder girls.'
The girls also learned French and spent a lot of their time on Bible study.  The school was strict, cold, the food was very poor, and their time at the school gave the Bronte sisters the TB which eventually killed them.
(Jane Eyre, 1847. Project Gutenberg internet edition available)

The original Cowan Bridge school cottages
(Wikimedia)

 Alison Uttley was born in 1884 into a middle class family in Derbyshire.  She eventually won a scholarship to Manchester University and, in 1906, was their second woman honours graduate.  In her autobiography, she described her school life:

'...fifty children had lessons in the long open room.  On the walls were glass cases full of geological specimens, grey, brown and black stones, sparkling stones, bright green malachite, fossils and shells...little classes of children, each with a pupil teacher, sat along the room and in the centre sat the headmaster at his desk...By his side was the cane with which he swished the hands of unfortunate children....The lessons, the games , the singing and music, the open-air drill when little girls used wands and boys iron dumb-bells, all made a new and wonderful life for me.'
But: 'Little boys had school gardens, little girls sewed calico, little boys learned geography.'
(Aliso Uttley, Ambush of Young Days, 1937 p.159)

Vanity Fair, 1847, by W. Makepeace Thackeray,  opens with Amelia Sedley and Becky Sharpe leaving their boarding school.  Amelia Sedley was a model pupil:
'In music, in dancing, in orthography, in every variety of embroidery and needlework, she will be found to have realised her friends' fondest wishes.  In geography there is still much to be desired; and a careful and undeviating use of the backboard, four hours daily during the next three years, is recommended as necessary to the acquirement of that dignified deportment and carriage, so requisite for every young lady of fashion....In the principles of religion and morality Miss Sedley ...also satisfied the Misses Pinkerton'
W.M. Thackeray, Vanity Fair, 1847, p.2

Vanity Fair
(Wikipedia)

Mrs. Sherwood,(1755-1851) author of many improving books for children, was the daughter of a clergyman.  She learned French, Latin and Greek at the School for Girls at Reading Abbey which Jane Austen (1775-1817) also attended.  She had to wear a backboard, as recommended for Amelia:
'It was the fashion then for children (girls) to wear iron collars round the neck, with a backboard strapped over the shoulders: to one of these I was subjected from my sixth to my thirteenth year.  It was put on in the morning, and seldom taken off till late in the evening; and I generally did all my lesons standing in stocks, with this still collar round my neck'
(Life of Mrs. Sherwood, 1857, p. 37, Internet edition available)

The Sherwood family became short of money and Mrs. Sherwood opened a boarding school herself, teaching English, French, astronomy, grammar, writing and arithmetic.
Financial uncertainties led to many women finding themselves having to earn a living, and many became governesses, earning around £30 a year in the mid 19th century.  This was not very much, though more than a servant would earn, and governesses needed to be educated.   In 1848 Queen's College opened for girls over twelve, also offering evening classes.  This offered teaching to the equivalent of a university standard.  The redoubtable Dorothea Beale (1831-1906) studied there.  She went on to develop the exclusive Cheltenham Ladies College, founded in 1854.  Dorothea Beale also set up the first training colleges for women teachers.  'Good education is a sort of insurance', she said.
(see Schools Inquiry Commission Report on the Education of Girls, 1867-8, internet edition available, it makes very interesting reading)

Dorothea Beale
(Wikipedia)

Frances Buss was a contemporary of Dorothea Beale at Queen's College.  She also found herself teaching to support her family, and made an equally significant contribution to girls education.  She became Principal of Queen's College, later re-named North London Collegiate School for Ladies, and campaigned for the rights of girls to take public examinations and attend universities.  Like Dorothea Beale she was involved in setting up teacher training colleges.

Frances Buss
(Wikipedia)

The SPCK (Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge) tried to improve the lives of the poor, and found that many women with no maths skills had, not surprisingly,  problems getting work in shops.  The Society  began book-keeping classes which led to founding the Langham Place Ladies Institute. which led to Barbara Bodichon founding the Society for the Employment of Women in 1859.  Not only the poor benefited, Emily Davies  and Elizabeth Garrett Anderson met there, going on to fight for women's suffrage,  equal access to schools endowment funds which had been diverted to supporting boys' schools,  university education for girls, and the rights of women to work as doctors and surgeons.   (Internet, Langham Place Ladies Institute; Borer p. 273; Wikipedia)

The advances in girls' education were probably influenced by what was happening in the USA. There a number of all-female colleges were opened from the 1830s on; Georgia Female College, founded 1839, claims to be the first university chartered to award degrees to women.  The USA was much in advance of the U.K. in both girls education and women's suffrage.

'Dullness is not healthy, it points to general malingering, headaches, hysteria, langour.  All we claim is that the intelligence of women, be it great or small, shall have full and free development'
(Emily Davies, Paper at the Social Science Association, York, read by Mr. J. G. Fitch, since as a woman she could not read it herself, 1864.  Quoted in Josephine Kamm, Hope Deferred, 1965  This was an extremely important paper, arguing for the re-distribution of charity school endowment funds, intended for the support of both girls and boys schooling, but appropriated almost exclusively to boys public schools.  She and Frances Buss went on to argue the case in front of the Schools Inquiry Commissioners, who were struck by their 'perfect womanliness, possibly due to Frances Buss being struck almost speechless with nerves)

Dorothea Beale cunningly said that girls' education was for:
'the cultivation and improvement of the mental and moral capacities with which they had been endowed for the glory of the Creator and the relief of man's estate.'
( Reports issued by the Schools' Inquiry Commission on the Education of Girls by D Beale, Principal of the Ladies' College, Cheltenham,1870)

Cheltenham Ladies College
(Wikipedia)

The Girls' Own Paper, a periodical published by the Religious Tract Society for these newly educated girls, opened in 1880.  It was an entirely new and progressive paper, including articles on independent girls at work, in professions such as nursing and clerical work.  Vol. 20, 1898-9, has a story about 'Three girl-chums and their life in London rooms...with accounts of basic necessities:
'Ada is a type-writer in a very good office in the City.  She has got on so well that she is earning £100 a year'.  Jane is a cookery teacher in a distant parish, and they  trained at Pitman's and a cookery school.  Marion teaches music and does the housework, earning £60 a year and £30 left to her.  The apartment costs 15/- (75p) a week and they have a maid from a National School.

The Girls' Own Paper, masthead, 1886
(Wikipedia)

Angela Brazil (1868-1947) built her writing career on writing stories set in the new girls boarding schools, making them in the process glamorous places that girls longed to be sent to:

'"Isn't it withering?" she remarked.  "And just on the very afternoon when we'd made up our minds to decode the tennis championship and secured all the courts for the lower school.  I do call it the most wretched luck! I'm a blighted blossom."'
(Angela Brazil, The Leader of the Lower School, 1913 p.10
See Mary Cadogan, You're a brick, Angela! A new look at girls'fiction from 1839 to 1975,  pub. 1976)

Angela Brazil
(Wikipedia)

So the girls got their act together and did something about girls' education.  They did rather better than the boys.

www.nikyrathbone@blogspot.com

Bringing up Girls: Plantagenets and Tudors

Now haue I thee taught, doughter, As my modir dide me
Thinke theron nyght and day, forgote that it not be
Haue mesur and lownes, as I haue thee taught,
And what man thee wedde schal, him dare care naught
Betere were a child unborn
Than untaught of wifje lore
Mi leue child'
       (How the Good Wijfe Taught hir Doughtir, Lambeth MS 853, c. 1430 ed. F.J. Furnivall, EETS original         series Vol. 32)

Like noblemen's sons, daughters were usually sent away to receive part of their education in another household, hopefully of superior status, where they could acquire social poise and make friendships which would be useful to them in later life.  The rise of Bess of Hardwick, one of the most notable Elizabethan success stories, for a woman,  began when this daughter of a good, but not very important Yorkshire family was sent to London as lady in waiting to Lady Zouch.  There she met and married Robert Barlow, a rich but sickly young man.  He soon died, leaving her with the first of the fortunes which she gained through her marriages.  She became the richest woman in England after the Queen.
Girl;s were sometimes even sent out of the country.  Mary Queen of Scots, sent to France as a child bride, took her four little Marys with her.  Anne Boleyn was also sent to France, with Mary Tudor.  Lord Lisle's wards Anne and Mary Bissett were both placed with good French families in 1533 and 15834 when they were about twelve.  They were able to perfect their French and meet French society. (The Lisle Letters ed. Muriel St. Clare Byrne, 1981)  Muriel St. Clare Byrne calls their education a combination of finishing school and European tour.

Imaginary portrait of Mary Queen of Scots as a child.  John Osterlund . Glasgow Museums

Alternatively girls might be sent for a convent education, like the Lisle's daughter Bridget.  In 1536 she was living at St. Mary's Convent Winchester with twenty-six 'children of lords, knights and gentlemen.'.  Bridget was sent there when she was six.

Until the Renaissance girls received even less formal education that boys.  Those who entered nunneries moight have opportunities for study but on the whole learned women were frowned on.  So, in the 13th century Romance of Floriz and Blauncheflour, when the king's son is old enough to begin his lessons his playmate Blauncheflour is excluded:

'Al wepying seid he
"Ne schal not Blancheflour lerne with me?
Ne can y in no scole syng ne rede
Without Blancheflour" he seide.'
    (The Romance of Florizel and Blauncheflour.  Trentham MS, now Egerton 2862 c. 1250 In Middle                English Metrical Romances ed. Walter Hoyt French and Charles Brockway Hale, New York, 1964,           Vol. 2..  Quoted in Dorothy Gardiner English girlhood at school, 1929)

Upper class girls studied English or French rather than Latin as this was considered a social grace.  They also studied dancing, some music, and were expected to acquire courtly manners, charm and good deportment.  However girls mostly learned domestic skills.  In an age when food for use during winter had to be preserved, and cloth had to be first spun and then woven manually before it could be made into clothes, such household skills were very important.  Even a noblewoman with large numbers of servants needed to have some knowledge of the processes involved in order to run the household.  All the making of preserves, salting, curing, butter and bread making, some spinning and weaving and the preparation of day to day herbal remedies were in the hands of the women and a man expected his wife to direct them.    So the 15th century romance Partonope of Blois describes how the daughter of Constantine learned:
   'To know of every herbe the vertue
And eke of Rothis (roots) where ever they grew
Whether they in kynde be colde or hote
The names of Spyces I know by rote
How in phisike they have her worching
The syke in to heele I canne wele bring.'
   (Partonope of Blois et. W.E. Buckley for the Roxburgh Club,quoted in Gardner op cit p,43)

Also, if a landowner was called away by his overlord to fight, his wife would be expected to take over the running of his estates, a serious business in an agricultural economy.  The knights and soldiers who went to fight in the Crusades were away for several years in some cases.  So while nobly born boys were trained for fighting, their sisters were trained for a domestic role.  So were the daughters of artisans, merchants and farmers.  The advice the Good Wijf gives her daughter on the running of her household gives some idea of the life of a middle class housewife at that time:

Unknown mother and child, Paulus van Somer National Trust collection

  'With your household don't be too sharp or too easy; set them to work at what most needs doing.  If your husband is away, make your people work, and treat them according to what they do.  When necessary set to work yourself, all will be better for it.  Look after your household when at work, and have faults put to rights at once.  See everything straight when they leave work; keep your keys yourself and beware who you trust.  Pay your people on wages day and be generous to them.'
    How the Good Wijf taught hir Doughter c. 1430 EETS Original series Vol. 32 ed. F.J. Furnivall)



There are records of women in business, particularly widows who inherited from their husbands, but far fewr girls were apprenticed to a skill than boys, those that were being mainly apprenticed to traditional female crafts such as the textile trade or became servants.  And always the women sewed.  The invention of the sewing machine, the great liberator, did not happen till the 19th century.  Meantime, from high to low, from childhood to the grave, they sewed, embroidered, ,knitted, darned and mended.  William the Conqueror defeated Harold, his wife Matilda iommortalised the battle in a tapestry to hang on the walls of a draughty castle.  Mary Quewen of Scots wiled away the long hours of captivity embroidering hangings with Bess of Hardwick.  Little princesses and less well born girls sat with for long hours labouring over trousseaux,  ready for marriage.  Most of what a girl was taught was to fit her for being a good wife, and the stress was on obediance:
  'Keep all that I have told you and your husband won't regret marrying you.'
said the Good Wijf.
  'Love your husband above all earthly things.  Answer him meekly and he'll love you.  Be cheerful and true and keep free from blame.'

Books of manners for girls stress the importance of guarding that virtue:
  'Sit not by him neither stand where sin might be wrought
For a scandal raised ill
Is evil forto still
My beloved child.'
   says the Good Wijf
'When any man speaks to you, greet him only, and then let him go on, as he might tempt you to do wrong. For all men are not true that speak fair.  Take no gifts, the're the ruin of many a true woman'.

In The good wyfe wold a pylyremage, c. 1460-70, the writer is more explicit and goes into some detail about the behaviour of flirtatious medieval women:
'Doughter, said the good wife,
hide thy legs white
And show not forth thy street hose (stockings)
To make men have delight....
Though it please them for a time
it shall be thy despite (shame)
And men will say
Of thy body thou carest but light.'
  ( The Good Wyfe Wold a Pylremage, EETS extra series Vol. 8 ed. F.J. Furnivall, )

Child with a rattle, 

Paulus van Somer (1576–1621 

Flemish)

The Good Wyfe is strongly in favour of early marriage:

'And look to thy daughters than none of them be lorn (lost)

From that same time that they be of thee born

Busy thee and gather fast towaqrds their marriage

And give them to spousing as soon as they be able

Maidens be fair and amiable

But of their love ful unstable

My beloved child'

'Gather fast towards their marriage' refers to the custom of giving a dowry with a daughter when she married.  This was intended originally as some kind of security for her.  It was not an outright payment to the husband or his family, and if the marriage broke up the dowry was supposed to return with the wife to her family.  Inevitably, dowries were not always returned and there were numerous lawsuits over disputed claims.  In the case of an heiress the dowry would probably consist mainly of land and money, but a wife normally also brought with her a good stock of household goods such as linen sheets, all made by her.

The Good Wijf continues with some more advice on behaviour her daughter is to avoid when married, which sheds revealing light on the life of a middle class housewife around the time of Chaucer:
  'Don't swear. In town don't gad about, or get drunk on your cloth money (ie money made by selling cloth the daughter has woven and sewn)

Furthermore:
   'Don't go to wrestling and shooting at targets like a strupet but stay at home.'
She gives general advice on conduct towards husband and neighbours:
'Don't be jealous of your neighbour's fine dress...Love your neighbours and do as you would be done by....Don't ruin your husband with your extravagance if he is poor.  Bleed a wren according to his viens.  Don't borrow or take your own dues first or show off with others' goods.
On bringing up children she takes the orthodox medieval line and advises severity:
'If your children are saucy and rebellious if any of them do wrong do not curse or hit them but take a smart rod and beat them in a row until they cry mercy and admit their guilt.'

Unlike the advice for boys, the Good Wijf books of manners are clearly directed to someone who will be occupying a subordinate position.  It is true daughters may carry carry considerable responsibilities, but they must make it their aim to please, and little medieval or Tudor girls learned this in early childhood.

nikyrathbone.blogspot.com
childhoodblog@gmail.com

Lessons in Good Behaviour for Medieval and Tudor children

'In bed if thou fall harboured to be
With fellow, master or highte degree
Thou shalt enquire by courtesy
In what part of the bed he will lie.
Be honest and lie thou far him from
Thou art not wise but thou do so.'
  The Boke of Curtasye ed, J.O. Halliwell, Percy Soc. Tracts Vol. 4 1849 (c. 1430-40)

This sounds like a delicate warning about sexual molestation which books of manners give no advice on but which was probably a common problem in the promiscuous living conditions of medieval Europe.
Sharing a bed with a stranger was quite normal both in private houses and crowded inns.  The 5th Earl of Northumberland's Gentlemen and Children of the Chapel, for instance, are descriped in the household accounts of Henry VIII as normally sleeping two gentlemen or three children to a bed.
(EETS Vol. 32, Extracts from the Household books of the Earl of Northumberland..c. 1510-11)

Four children of Sir Thomas Lucy III, 1619.  National Trust

Some of the general advice to children in the books of courtesy of the Middle Ages and Tudor times has been popular with parents and teachers from time immemorial, and brings these long ago children vividly to life:

'Child I warn thee in all wise
That thou tell troth and make no lies.....
Child, climb thou not over house nor wall
Forno fruit, birds nor ball
And, child, cast no stones over mens houses
Nor cast stones at no glass windows.
       EETS vol. 32 Symon's lesson of wysdome for all maner chyldren

Several books of courtesy suggest that under fourteens were more mature than most boys that age are now:

And son of one thing I the warn
And on my blessing take good heed
Beware of using of the tavern
And also the dice I thee forbid
And flee all lecherie in will or deed'
  How the wise man taught his son, ca. 430,  EETS vol. 32

'....ye shall nhot you excuse
From breecheles feast (beating) and I may you espy
Playing at any game of Ribaldry
  Caxton, advice to Lytle John ca. 1477-8, ed. F.J. Furnivall, EETS extra series 5, 1868

O Little childe Eschewe thou ever game
For that hath brought many one to shame
As dicing, and carding And such other plays
Which many undoeth as we see nowadays.'
'Tale a Toppe, if though would playe
And not at the hasadrye'
   F.S. Seagar The schoole of vertue...1557 EETS Vol. 32

And be ware and wyse how that thou lokys
Ouer any brynk, well or brokys...
For many chyld without drede
Is dede or dysseyuyd throw ywell hede...
And but thou do thou shat fare the worse
And therto be bete on the bare ers....'
   Symon's lesson of wysdome EETS Vol. 32

As might be expected in a society where the church was very much a part of everyday life, most books of manners impress on children the importance of observing their religious duties.  Symonds in his Lesson of Wysdome says:
  'For make no crying, Japes nor plays
In holy church on holy days.

Symonds also advises, with an eye to the child's future career:
'And lerne as fast as thou may and can
For owre byschope is an old man
And therefor thou most lern fadst
If thou wolt be bysshop when he is past...
  Symon's lesson of wysdome...EETS Vol. 32
 

Table Manners

'Grace being said low curtesy make thou
Saying "much good may it do you"
Of stature then if thou be able
It shall become thee to serve at the table...'
   Seagar, The Schools of Vertue,  ed. F. J. Furnivall,  Early English Text Society Vol. 32

Table manners are dealt with in a lot of detail on books of courtesy, both eating at table and serving since this was one of the  principal duties of a page.  Relationships were very formal.  Coming into the dining hall the page should:

'Say first "good speed" And all that be before
You in this stead salute with humble Face
Start not Rudely; come In an easy pace
Hold up your head, and kneel but on one knee
To your sovereign or lotd, whoever he be...'
    The Babees Book, c. 1475, EETS Vol. 32

Here are some instructions for children serving their parents at table:

'Don't fill the dishes so full as to spill on your parents' dress or they'll be angry.  Have spare trenchers ready for guests.  See that there's plenty of everything wanted.  Empty the bones from the voiders often.  Be at hand if anyone calls.  When they have finished clear the table.  First cover the salt...Put a voider on the table to take the trenchers and napkins.  Sweep the crumbe together into a voider.  Set a clean trencher before everyone.  Then set fruit and cheese on the table with biscuites or caraway seeds.  Serve wine, ale or beer, but wine is best.  When your parents have finished clear the table and fold up the cloth.  Then spread a clean towel, bring basin and ewer, and when your parents are ready to wash take up the water.  Don't be rash and pour out more water than necessary.  Then clear the table so that they may rise.  All things done don't forget thy duty, before the table make a low curtesy.'
   The Babees Book EETS Vol. 32

On table manners Seager also gives the advice so popular with the Victorians:

'Silence is metest
In a child at the table.'

The 14th century Lytylle Childrenes Lytil Boke  gives advice on table manners which make medieval children sound remarkably like modern ones:

'Don't pick your ears or nose, or drink with your mouth full, or cram it full.'
      ETS Vol. 32

Perhaps 'Don't pick your teeth with your knife' is no longer necessary.
The author continues:

'Don't spit over on on the table, that's not proper...don't rush at the cheese or throw your bones on the floor...take salt with your knife....'

Trenchers in early, times and poorer households, would be flat hunks of bread though by the Renaissance plates were in use. Forks were also introduced from Italy then; previously everyone ate with their fingers, a knife and maybe a spoon.  It is interesting to see that, contrary to popular belief, the bones were not thrown into the rushes strewn to cover the floor in polite society but put into big dishes or voiders.  Everyone, including children, drank wine., ale or beer, not because they were a nation of alcoholics but because fermented drinks were more wholesome that the water.  Tea and coffee, of course, were still unheard of in Europe.   Salt was kept in a large, lidded container and added to food to make it taste better.

Caxton gives similar advice to Lyttle John:

'Blow not in your drink nor in your potage (soup)
Nor farse (fill) your dish too full of bread
Bear not your knife towards your visage (face)
...Claw not your visage touch not your head
With your bare hand sitting at table...
Lean not upon the table for that rude is
And if I shall to you plainly say
Over the table ye shall not spittle convey.

He adds that famous saying:
'manners make man.'
   Caxton's Book of Curtesy c. 1488  EETS extra series Vol. 3

The Babees Book gives advice which is a lovely mixture of the outdated and the modern:

'lan a clean trencher before you, and eat your broth with a spoon, don;'t sup it up.  Don't leave your spoon in your dish.  Don't lean on the table or dirty the cloth.  Don't hang your head over your dish, or et with a full mouth, or pick your nose, teeth and anils...Don't dip your meat into the salt cellar, or put your knife in your mouth...Eat properly.
     EETS Vol. 32.

Dining at home 17th century Roxburghe Ballads, ed. J.O. Collier 1847

Contemporary accounts of life in the courts of nobles and princes show it to have been colourful, rich and highly formalised, like a splendid pageant.  On the other hand, as these books of advice indicate, it was also crude and dirty.  The medieval and Renaissance page must have moved from one extreme to the other, as his parents did, and although here and there we may see similarities, would have been much rougher and tougher than the modern child of equivalent background.  It is easy forget when reading such familiar advice on how to behave at table that these children soon grew into powerful, ruthless over-mighty subjects who frequently plunged the country into chaos over their quarrels, and were the leaders of the private armies the king drew on for his foreign wars.  The niceties of the chivalric code might make life more pleasant when they were at peace, but the real business of boys, when they grew up, was fighting.   Edward the Black Prince went on his first campaign with his father Edward III at the age of 15, as a squire, having attended numerous tournaments and mock fights from an early age.  He saw no important fighting on this occasion, but the following year, 1346, he played an important part in the Battle of Crecy and was knighted.  Knighthoods were normally granted to several of the most deserving squires after a victorious battle.