Page:A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England During the Middle Ages.djvu/139

 and Sentiments. 119 education was much more generally acceflible than we are accuftomed to imagine. From Anglo-Saxon times, indeed, every parifli church had been a public fchool. The Ecclefiaftical Inftitutes (p, 47 j, in the folio edition of the Laws, by Thorpe) diredls that " MafT-priefts ought always to hav^e at their houfes a fchool of difciples 5 and if any one defire to commit his little ones {lytVingas) to them for inftru6lion, they ought very gladly to receive them, and kindly teach them." It is added that "■ they ought not, however, for that inftru6tion, to defire anything from their relatives, except what they lliall be willing to do for them of their own accord." In the Ecclefiaftical Canons, publiflied under king Edgar, there is an enaftment which would lead us to fuppofe that the clergy performed their fcholaftic duties with fome zeal, and that priefts were in the habit of feducing their fcholars from each other, for this enad- ment (p. 396) enjoins " that no prieft receive another's fcholar without leave of him whom he previoufly followed." This fyftem of teaching was kept up during at leaft feveral generations after the Norman conqueft.