Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 63.djvu/268

264 founded and endowed with an eighth of his income a school mainly for the children of his nobility. Possibly, however, even serfs could attend this school. He also secured the freedom from tribute of the Saxon school in Rome. From this time forward we find that steady educational progress can be noted. King Ethelstan, by a law of 936 A. D., bestowed certain special benefits on learned clergy and thus founded the doctrine of 'Privilege of Clergy'—the right of a person (lay or clerical), who could read, to special rights in relation to the criminal law. This privilege in the middle ages certainly aided the spread of learning and though, when abolished in England in 1826, it had long outgrown all meaning and even all harmfulness, its importance as an educational factor must not be forgotten.

The development of education from the ninth century onwards was in the hands of the national church for many generations. It was the practice, both in England and in France, from the end of the eighth century, for the mass-priests to hold at their houses schools for young children and, at any rate from the tenth century, it was usual for parents to pay school fees. The Church of England by thus creating an elaborate educational system rapidly established a new claim to the possession of a national character. With the coming of the Normans in 1066 and the sudden increase of papal influence, we might expect to find, as we do find, the bishops speaking on educational questions in an authoritative manner. Rome realized the importance of exercising control over schools, and of fostering their increase, and she developed this policy in spite of the stern anti-Roman position eventually exhibited by William I. We must note here two canons on the question of education which, though promulgated at national synods sitting at Westminster, really emanated from Rome. Canon XVII. of 1138 A. D. ordained that schoolmasters should not, under penalty of ecclesiastical punishment, 'hire out' their schools. This canon made for efficiency. The man who took the fees must teach the school. Canon VIII. of the year 1200 ordained that nothing should be exacted by the church from schoolmasters in return for the license to teach. This canon shows how widespread was church control over education in the opening of the thirteenth century. This power of granting licenses to teach created a valuable and valued monopoly, and local records (such as the records of Beverley Minster) prove that many a stern fight took place between licensed and unlicensed schoolmasters for the lucrative right of instructing youth, and that on occasions the secular and spiritual courts came into