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 SCHOOLS

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SCHOOLS

struction more widely diffused in England in Catholic times than in the first haK the nineteenth centurj'. "The proportion of the population which had access to Grammar Schools, and used them was much larger than now" (Leach, p. 97). Rashdall similarlj^ con- cludes that "at least in the later Middle Age the smallest towns and even the larger villages possessed Schools where a boy might learn to read and acquire the first rudiments of ecclesiastical Latin: while, ex- cept in very remote and thinh' populated regions, he would never have had to go very far from home to find a regular Grammar School ("The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages", II, 602). The Refor- mation, with the confiscation and plunder of the monasteries and chantries, involved the destruction of much of the educational machinery of the nation. The evil consequences are testified by Ascham, Lati- mer, Cranmer, and Harrison Watson.

However, the old appreciation of the value of educa- tion in a short time reasserted itself. The ecclesi- astical control of all schools, now in the hands of the Reformers, was strengthened by new legislation. The religious instruction given in the schools was that of the Established Church, and the scholars were re- quired to participate in the prayers and church ser- vices. The steady pressure of this machinery on the minds of the young was bound to be fatal to the old religion. During EUzabeth's long reign the great majority of Catholics were practically compelled to send their children to the nearest grammar school, if the children were to receive any education at all. For the better-off families the chaplain or priest main- tained in hiding commonly also acted as tutor. But as time went on the situation grew worse. Then, in order in some degree to provide priests and also to fur- nish some means of Catholic education for at least the children of the nobihty and gentry who clung to the old Faith, there were founded the English seminaries and colleges on the Continent. First among these was the English College at Douai, started in 1568 by Al- len, afterwards cardinal. Its primary object was the training of priests for the English mission, but it also accepted lay students. Within a few years it con- tained over 150 pupils. Before the year 1700 it had sent back to England over 300 priests, more than a third of whom suffered death for the Catholic Faith (see Douai). It endured till the French Revolution, when, as we shall see, it gave birth to the two Colleges of Ushaw and Old Hall. Irish and Scotch colleges were also established at Douai for a similar purjrose. In 1578 was founded the English College at Rome. It was designed to provide places for sixty ecclesiastical st udents. After a very short time it wiis entrusted to the Jesuits, who managed it till the suppression of the Society in 1773. There were also founded English colleges at Valladolid in 1589, and at Seville in 1592, by Father Parsons, and at Madrid in 1612 by FathcT Creswcll. The English College at Lisbon was started in 1622 by William Newman, a secular priest. All these latter colleges sent many priests to England especially during their first decades, but as time went on, perhaps through their remoteness and the Anglo- Spanish Wars, they failed to keep up the intimate con- nexion with P^ngland which was always retained be- tween the rnother-roimtr>' and Douai and St. Orner. The three Spanish colleges were merged into the sin- gle foundation at Valladolid in 1767.

The most important college founded b(!yond the sea of which the primary object was the education of lay students, was the Jesuit school begun at St. Omer by Father Parsons in 1592. It had an eventful career of 200 years on the continent of Europe, and then coming back to England settled at Stonyhurst, whence it be- came the progenitor of the great majority of the Jesuit schools scattered throughout the British Empire to- day. Starting with twenty-three boys, it h:ul hy 1603, according to the spies of the English Govern-

ment, "a hundred and forty gentlemen's sons of great worship". In 1632 there were over 200 pupils, the sons of the chief noblemen and gentry who remained loyal to the old Faith. Boys going to and returning from the college were more than once captured and imprisoned, and bills of high treason were returned against the parents of pupils there. It turned out many martyrs and confessors of the Faith, and indeed, during the latter part of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, past St. Omer's boys scattered up and down the countrj'^ formed the main part of the "old guard" of the dwindling body of the lay Catholics in England.

Meantime the cruellest part of the penal code was the statutes directed against Catholic education. Thus in the twenty-third year of Elizabeth's reign an Act was passed forbidding the keeping or maintaining of any schoolmaster who had not a licence from the Protestant bishop. The penalty was £10 per month, with a year's imprisonment for the schoolmaster. This statute was strengthened by another in the first year of James I, imposing a fine of forty shillings a day. Later this was made even more stringent by the Act of Uniformity in 13 Charles II, requiring all tutors and schoolmasters, besides obtaining the bishop's li- cence, to conform to the Established Church, under penalty of three months' imprisonment for each offence. Concomitantly it was forbidden to educate Catholic children abroad. Thus in 27 Elizabeth it was made punishable as a praemunire to send aid to any foreign seminar^' or Jesuit college, or to any person in the same. Further in 1 James I it was enacted that the sending of a child or other person to a foreign college should entail a fine of £100 and render the child incapable of inheriting real or personal property. The severity of this law was again increased in 3 Charles I. Finally, in 1699 a clause of a cruel Act under William and Marj^ offered £100 reward to every informer who would effect the conviction of any Pop- ish priest for keeping a school or educating or boarding a Catholic youth for that purpose, the penalty being made imprisonment for life. Relentless persecution of this kind, carried out with such rigour that the col- leges of Douai, St. Omer, sCnd Valladolid, between them, within a century and a half had mustered a grand roll of 250 martyrs, besides numberless con- fessors, triumphed; and by 1770 the Catholic Church in England w;is reduced to a scattered remnant of some 6,00 souls (Amherst).

Occasionally, during these dark days, in lulls of the storm, or in quiet places, a small Catholic school wiis started and struggled on with varying fortunes for a shorter or longer time. Thus, vmder James II (1685- 8) two schools were started in the neighbourhood of I^ndon, but perished soon afterwards. Another, be- gun at Twyford, near Winchester, about the same time, had a somewhat better fate and survived till the Stuart rising in 1745. The poet, Alexander Pope, wjus a pupil at this school, and the distinguished biologist, Father Turberville Needham, was an assistant master here. It had less than thirty pupils when Bishop Challoner visited it in 1741. There was also for a time about this period a small school managed by the Franciscan Fathers at Edgbaston, near Birmingham. Another, known iis Dame Alice School, existed for a number of years in Lanciushire. But the history of each was usually much the same— a short, timid, and precarious life, some untoward accident, and the feeble institution came to an untimely end.

Just, however, when the complete extinction of Catholicism seemed at hand, t,he revival began. By the middle of the eighteenth century the persecution commenced to abate. The old fear of the Church had waned. Toleration for other forms of dissent had been growing. About 1750 CathoIi(s began to breat li<; a little more freely. One evidence of this was the stiirting of a school at Sedgley Park, near Wolver- hampton, by Bishop Challoner in 1762. Yet so great