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Education and Learning at a Medieval English Cathedral: Exeter 1380–1548

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

Nicholas Orme
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Extract

During the last hundred years our knowledge of the educational institutions of medieval England has steadily increased, both of schools and universities. We know a good deal about what they taught, how they were organised and where they were sited. The next stage is to identify their relationship with the society which they existed to serve. Whom did they train, to what standards and for what ends? These questions pose problems. They cannot be answered from the constitutional and curricular records which tell us about the structure of educational institutions. Instead, they require a knowledge of the people—the pupils and scholars—who went to the medieval schools and universities. We need to recover their names, to compile their biographies and thereby to establish their origins, careers and attainments. If this can be done on a large enough scale, the impact of education on society will become clearer. In the case of the universities, the materials for this task are available and well known. Thanks to the late Dr A. B. Emden, most of the surviving names of the alumni of Oxford and Cambridge have been collected and published, together with a great many biographical records about them. For the schools, on the other hand, where most boys had their literary education if they had one at all, such data are not available. Except for Winchester and Eton, we do not possess lists of the pupils of schools until the middle of the sixteenth century, and there is no way to remedy the deficiency.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 32 , Issue 3 , July 1981 , pp. 265 - 283
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1981

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References

1 Emden, A. B., A Biographical Register of the University of Cambridge to 1500, Cambridge 1963 (hereafter cited as BRUC)Google Scholar; idem., A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford to 1500, 3 vols, Oxford 1957–9Google Scholar (hereafter cited as BRUO, i–iii); idem., A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford, 1501–40, Oxford 1974 (hereafter cited as BRUO, iv)Google Scholar.

2 Kirby, T. F., Winchester Scholars, London & Winchester 1888Google Scholar; SirSterry, W., The Eton College Register, 1441–1698, Eton 1943Google Scholar.

3 Ordinale Exon, ed. Dalcon, J. N., i (Henry Bradshaw Soc, xxxvii, 1909), 2–6Google Scholar; Edwards, K., The English Secular Cathedrals in the Middle Ages, 2nd edn, Manchester 1967Google Scholar, passim.

4 Erskine, A. M., ‘The medieval financial records of the cathedral church of Exeter’, Journ. of the Society of Archivists, ii. no. 6 (1962), 254–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Lists of the canons and dignitaries are printed in Neve, J. Le, Fasti Ecctesiae Anglicanae, 1300–1541: ix, Exeter Diocese, ed. Horn, J. M., London 1964Google Scholar, and those of the other clergy in Orme, N., The Minor Clergy of Exeter Cathedral, 1300–1548, Exeter 1980Google Scholar.

6 These statistics are based on the names in Le Neve, Fasti Ecclesiae.

7 Exeter Cathedral Archives, Dean and Chapter (hereafter cited as D&C) 4721/1–33 (Choristers’ releases).

8 D&C 2433; 3551 fo. 46v; 3552 fo. 33v.

9 This figure is based on a number of small endowments, too complex to be listed here, and includes payments for attending obit masses.

10 On the song school and its masters, see Orme, N., ‘The early musicians of Exeter Cathedral’, Music & Letters, lix (1978), 395–410CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 John Derke and James Northbroke (ibid., 405–6).

12 Nicholas Toker (ibid., 406).

13 Ordinale Exon, i. 6, 7; Oliver, G., Monasticon Dioecesis Exoniensis, Exeter & London 1846, 55–6Google Scholar, where the date should be 1236 (D&C 600).

14 Orme, N., Education in the West of England, 1066–1548, Exeter 1976, 78, 81Google Scholar.

15 Dalton, J. N., The Collegiate Church of Ottery St. Mary, Cambridge 1917, 93Google Scholar.

16 D&C 2595/1.

17 D&C2415.

18 D&C 3625 fo. 15; Ordinale Exon, i. 2.

19 This total, like that of the choristers (above note 9), is based on calculations too complicated to be summarised.

20 D&C 3550 fos. 67, 69.

21 Oliver, G., Lives of the Bishops of Exeter and a History of the Cathedral, Exeter 1861, 473–4Google Scholar; Oliver, Monasticon Dioecesis Exoniensis, 55–6.

22 Lambeth Palace Library, Reg. Thomas Arundel, ii. fo. 168.

23 Orme, Education in the West of England, 56.

24 Ibid.

25 Emden, BRUO, i. 289, 434–5; ii. 945, 1191.

26 Orme, Education in the West of England, 56.

27 Oliver, Lives of the Bishops of Exeter, 465.

28 D&C3551 fo. 55v.

29 Ibid., fo. 62.

30 Bishop William Alley’s survey of clergy in Exeter diocese, 1561 (Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 97 (hereafter cited as CCCC), p. 20).

31 D&C3551 fo. 51.

32 D&C3674 p. 55.

33 In addition to the examples mentioned above, note Hugh Deane (secondary 1540–1), who occurs teaching grammar at Crediton school in 1560–1 (Devon Record Office, Crediton Governors, 1660 A/21).

34 D&C 3550 fos. 89v, 92.

35 Ibid., fo. 138v.

36 Orme, Education in the West of England, 52–3.

37 The Register of Edmund Stafford [Bishop of Exeter], ed. Hingeston-Randolph, F. C., London & Exeter 1886, 32Google Scholar.

38 John Orum (Emden, BRUO, ii. 1406) and Richard Rotherham (ibid., iii. 1593).

39 Barlow, F. et al. , Leofric of Exeter, Exeter 1972, 32–55Google Scholar; Lloyd, L. J., The Library of Exeter Cathedral, Exeter 1967Google Scholar, passim.

40 D&C 3550 fos. 79.92.

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42 Public Record Office, Prob 11/2A fo. 161–v.

43 D&C 2668, 2686; Clark, J. W., ‘On the work done to the library of Exeter Cathedral in 1412 and 1413’, PTOC. Cambridge Antiquarian Soc, xli (1901), 294–313Google Scholar.

44 Oliver, Lives of the Bishops of Exeter, 366–75.

45 Register of Edmund Stafford, 412.

46 Oliver, Lives of the Bishops of Exeter, 334, 359–60.

47 A room called the library is also mentioned in 1462 in the vicars’ own college of residential buildings in the close, but no information is forthcoming about its contents (Exeter Cathedral Archives, Vicars Choral, 3347–9).

48 Emden, BRUO, i. 628; ii. 775; iv. 162, 251, 489.

49 D&C 2924.

50 On these accounts see Erskine, ‘Medieval financial records of Exeter’, 254–66.

51 Orme, Minor Clergy of Exeter.

52 Vicars Choral/Books I, fo. 5–6, 12v–13.

53 For the sources of these statistics see below, notes 60–1.

54 A handbook of theology and law for parish priests, by John de Burgh, fl. 1370–98 (Emden, BRUC, 107).

55 The Register of Edmund Lacy, Bishop of Exeter: Registrant Commune, ed. Dunstan, G. R., iv (Canterbury & York Soc, lxiii. 1971), 13–14Google Scholar.

56 CCCC, 55 pp.

57 Walter Walker and William Mogryge (ibid., pp. 3, 15).

58 Richard Growdon, Robert Butston and Peter Holwill alias Hopkyns (ibid., pp. 9, 48, 54).

59 Oliver Loveley, John Wright and Richard Gyll (ibid., pp. 3, 9, 11). William Tanner (ibid., 15) was ‘doctus’.

60 The statistics are based on an analysis of the canons and dignitaries listed by Le Neve, (Fasti Ecclesiae) collated with Emden’s biographical registers (BRUC & BRUO).

61 The evidence from wills is based on those of men who died while apparently resident canons or dignitaries (but not bishops). All the relevant wills have been consulted in the Public Record Office, the registers of the archbishops of Canterbury at Lambeth Palace Library and the registers of the bishops of Exeter in the Devon Record Office, Exeter.

62 Oliver, Lives of the Bishops of Exeter, 320–76.

63 See below, pp. 281–2.

64 Emden, BRUO, ii. 1184.

65 Devon Record Office, Exeter, Reg. George Neville, fo. 137v.

66 Emden, BRUO, i. 653.

67 Register of Edmund Stafford, 408–10, 411–14,420–1.

68 The three were John Orum, Richard Rotherham and Richard Snetisham (Emden, BRUO, ii. 1406, iii. 1593, 1725).

69 Ibid., ii. 1154.

70 Worcester, William, Itineraries, ed. Harvey, J. H., Oxford 1969, 116–19Google Scholar.

71 William Tanner and John Wright, CCCC, pp. 15, 9.

72 Ordinale Exon, ed. Dalcon, i. 294.

73 Calendar of Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, vii. no. 260 (pp. 107–8).

74 In 1528 the chapter decided that visiting Oxford scholars who preached in the cathedral should be paid 6s. 8d. (D&C 3551 fo. 48V). For the friars see above note 73.

75 Epistolae Academicae Oxqn, ed. Anstey, H., i (Oxford Historical Soc, xxxv. 1898), 174–5Google Scholar.

76 The Register of Edmund Lacy: Registrum Commune, ed. Dunstan, G. R., iii (Canterbury & York Soc, lxii. 1967), 53Google Scholar.

77 London, College of Arms, MS I/11 fo. 24. The text of the sermon was ‘Manus Domini tetigit me’ (Job, xix. 21).

78 D&C 3552 fo. 40.

79 Rose-Troup, F., The Western Rebellion of 1549, London 1913, 104–7Google Scholar.

80 Ibid.; P.R.O., State Paper Office, SP 10/9 no. 48.

81 The Register of Edmund Lacy: Registrant Commune, ed. Dunstan, G. R., v (Canterbury & York Soc, lxiv. 1972), 238–9, 252Google Scholar.