Page:A short history of social life in England.djvu/146

126 sixteen grammar schools founded during this period were exclusively for boys. Besides these, were the new schools of Winchester and Eton, which take such a leading part in the educational world of to-day. Both were established for the supply of educated clergy—Winchester with a warden and some seventy scholars "to study grammar and to live together to the honour and glory of God and our Lady,"

Not only was all education—public and private—under ecclesiastical control, but to the Church was due the elaborate pilgrimages, which were such a characteristic feature of these times. True, the movement had lost much of the simple enthusiasm and artless faith of former days, and too often resembled a party of holiday-makers, merely journeying together for company and protection. A love of wayfaring, gossip, and good company, together with the merry incidents of the road, attracted many under the guise of pilgrims to undertake the journey to the famous English shrines of St Thomas Becket at Canterbury or Our Lady of Walsingham, To cross the rough Channel and tramp the long distance across France to the tombs of SS. Peter and Paul, one of the severest penitential disciplines