This book aims at doing, so far as the scantier space allows, for the educational history of England what Bishop Stubbs' Select Charters did for its constitutional history. It sets out the text of the salient documents relating to the origin and development of educational institutions.

Educational charters, being largely both legal and ecclesiastical, tend to combine the prolixity of the preacher with the verbosity of the conveyancer. Hence, few of them can be presented at full length. As the chief object of the work is to show the origins of educational institutions, which are in many cases centuries earlier than hitherto supposed, the earlier bulk much more largely than the later documents.

In nothing, not even in religion, has the innate conservatism of the human race been more marked than in education. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the subjects and the methods of education remained the same from the days of Quintilian to the days of Arnold, from the first century to the mid-nineteenth century of the Christian era.

The history of English education begins with the coming of Christianity. But the education introduced by Augustine of Canterbury was identical in means and methods with that of Augustine of Hippo. The conversion of the English caused the establishment in Canterbury of a school on the model of the Grammar and Rhetoric Schools of Rome, themselves the reproduction of the Grammar and Rhetoric Schools of Alexandria and of Athens.