It is said that Alexander, Bishop of Coventry, in 1237,
directed that there should be in country villages parish clerks who
should be schoolmasters.
[Footnote 29: If that is the correct translation of _profestis diebus
disciplinis scolasticis indulgentes_. Dr. Legg thinks that it may refer
to their own education.]
It is certain--for the churchwarden accounts bear witness to the
fact--that in several parishes the clerks performed this duty of
teaching. Thus in the accounts of the church of St. Giles, Reading,
occurs the following:
Pay'd to Whitborne the clerk towards his wages and he to be
bound to teach ij children for the choir ... xij s.
At Faversham, in 1506, it was ordered that "the clerks or one of them,
as much as in them is, shall endeavour themselves to teach children to
read and sing in the choir, and to do service in the church as of old
time hath been accustomed, they taking for their teaching as belongeth
thereto"; and at the church of St. Nicholas, Bristol, in 1481, this duty
of teaching is implied in the order that the clerk ought not to take any
book out of the choir for children to learn in without licence of the
procurators. We may conclude, therefore, that the task of teaching the
children of the parish not unusually devolved upon the clerk, and that
some knowledge of Latin formed part of the instruction given, which
would be essential for those who took part in the services of
the church.
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