Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/137

 and Sentiments. 117 the teacher, who feems to be lefturing viva voce, and his feat and delk, are all worthy of notice. We have very little information on the forms and methods of teaching in fchools at this period, but fchools feem to have been numerous in all parts of the country. We have more than one allufion to them in the naive ftories of Reginald of Durham. From one of thefe we learn that a fchool, according to a cuftom " now common enough," was kept in the church of Norham, on the Tweed, the parifti prieft being the teacher. One of the boys, named Aldene, had incurred No. %0. A Norman School. the danger of corre6tion, to efcape which he took the key of the church door, which appears to have been in his cuftody, and threw it into a deep pool in the river Tweed, then called Padduwel, and now Pedwel or Peddle, a place well known as a fifliing ftation. He hoped by this means to efcape further fcholaftic difcipline, from the circumftance that the fcholars would be fliut out by the impoflibility of opening the church door. Accordingly, when the time of vefpers came, and the priefl arrived, the key of the door was miffing, and the boy declared that he did