glorious treasures under one roof." In other words, while one pupil became Archbishop, Precentor, and Treasurer, the other became Chancellor, i.e. Librarian and Schoolmaster.

Then follows the famous eighth-century catalogue of the York Minster Library. "There you will find," says the Master, with pardonable exaggeration, "the footsteps of the old fathers, whatever the Roman has of himself in the sphere of Latin, or which famous Greece passed on to the Latins, or which the Hebrew race drinks from the showers above, or Africa has spread abroad with light-giving lamp."

Theology comes first: Jerome, Hilarius, Bishop Ambrose, Augustine, S. Athanasius, or old Orosius; the great Doctor Gregory, Pope Leo, Basil, Chrysostom; and England is represented by Aldhelm of Sherborne and "Bede the Master." Among the less known names of theologians are Johannes, viz. Johannes Biclariensis, a Spaniard, who "flourished" in the latter half of the sixth century; Fulgentius, a rhetorician, c. 395; and Victorinus (Marius) who combated the Arians in 350. Boethius, 470-525, presumably for his De consolatione, figures rather oddly among the theologians. Cassiodorus (Magnus Aurelius Senator), a little later than Boethius, 468-575, perhaps took place largely because of his Reckoning of Easter, a most important point in the controversy between the Eastern and the Western Church, and in England between Celt and Saxon.

Then there were the "ancient historians," Pompeius Trogus, an Augustan writer, and Pliny. There were "the keen Aristotle himself, and the great rhetorician Tully," not, we may be sure, that Cicero's own oratory was studied, but his not very original treatise on rhetoric, the De Oratore. Then come four lines full of the names of poets. Among them appear, and that at the bottom of the list, only three classical authors, Maro Virgilius, as the exigencies of verse make him, Statius, and Lucan. Placed at the top, the Miltons no doubt to Alcuin, were Sedulius, who wrote a Paschal Hymn, c. 460, and Juvencus who turned the Bible into verse rather more than a century before, c. 330. Next are

mentioned Alcimus, whose name of Avitus Alcuin for some reason transferred to Orosius, 523; Prosper, 379-455; Paulinus of Nola, 353-431; Arator, who in the middle of the sixth century versified, of all curious books to versify, the Acts of the Apostles; Venantius Fortunatus, 535-600; and L. Cecilius Lactantius Firmianus, c. 330, who ought rather to have appeared among the theologians.

The grammarians naturally appeared in force: Valerius

Probus, one of the earliest of all, who lived under Nero; Focas, ie. Phocas who wrote a Life of Virgil in verse in the fifth century; Ælius Donatus, whose name was synonymous with a primer of grammar in the later Middle Ages, a knowledge of whom under the endearing title of "old Ďonatus" William of Wykeham required before admission to Winchester College; Priscian, 450-515; Servius, the great Virgilian commentator of the fourth century, who is even now quoted; Eutychius, or Eutyches, "On Verbs"; Pompey, a fifth-century grammarian; and Comminianus, or more probably Commodianus, c. 249, who was more of a poet than a grammarian, and wrote Latin verses in dispraise of Juno and the old gods-" Against the gods of the Gentiles."

Then Alcuin concludes: "You will find, reader, many other masters eminent in the schools, in art, in oratory, who have written many a volume of sound sense, but whose names it seemed longer to write in song than the usage of the bow (plectrum) allows." This is tantalising indeed, as we should like to know who the other authors were. It is idle to speculate, though one cannot help wondering whether on the one hand Ovid, so often quoted in the twelfth century, was not omitted because his name was impossible for hexameters, (though Naso presented a way round); and whether, on the other, Caedmon or Aldhelm's Saxon poems found a place in this School and Minster library.

Alcuin reigned as schoolmaster at York for some years before he was persuaded by Charlemagne to transfer his doctor's throne to the Frankish court and land, from which he only retired in old age to be Abbot of Tours. He always retained, however, a keen interest in England and things English, especially in York and its minster, and above all its school. From his published letters we cull one written to Offa, King of the Mercians (p. 9). Offa had apparently written to ask him to leave Aachen for Lichfield to found a school there. Instead, Alcuin sends one of his pupils, whose name unfortunately. is not given, praising him as a good speaker, but apparently somewhat indolent and given to drink, as he recommends Offa to provide him with pupils and keep him up to the mark as a teacher, not allowing him to wander about idly or to become the servant of drunkenness. In another letter to the canons of York, written about 793, he refers with affection to his school time both as boy and master. "You," he says to the seniors, "nourished my tender years of childhood with a mother's love, you endured with pious patience the frolics of

my boyhood, and with the discipline of fatherly chastisements educated me till I was grown up, and strengthened me with the learning of holy rules." Then addressing the juniors he adds: "You who in age are my sons, but by the holiness of your lives my fathers, never, I beseech you by God's mercy, forget the master of your learning. For He who sees my heart is witness how devotedly it always desired your profit in ecclesiastical study and spiritual learning. Remember me. I am yours in life and death, and perhaps God in his pity will grant that you will bury in old age him whose infancy you nourished." Then he concludes with some good advice, which savours rather of the fifteenth century than the eighth, "to avoid fine clothes like the laity" and "to tread the holy threshold of the church instead of gadding about the muddy streets of a dirty town." Three years later Alcuin writes to congratulate the then Archbishop of York, Eanbald II. (not his fellow pupil, Eanbald I.), on his accession. He congratulates himself, "the lowest slave of the church," that "I have educated one of my sons to be thought worthy of being the steward of Christ's mysteries, and to labour in my stead in the church, where I was nurtured and educated, and to preside over those treasures of wisdom to which my beloved master, Archbishop Albert, left me heir." In a passage, which is unfortunately corrupt, he then urges Eanbald to "provide masters for the boys, and to separate the clerks after the fashion of the Gauls; those who read books, who serve the chanting, and who are assigned to the writing-school, having for each class their own masters." This division of the grammar, the song, and the writing school, is a curious anticipation of the provision we shall meet with at the end of the fifteenth century by Bishop Stillingfleet and Archbishop Rotherham. They in founding their colleges of S. Andrew, at Nether Acaster, between York and Selby, and Jesus at Rotherham, respectively, provided, besides schools and schoolmasters of grammar and song, as Wykeham had done at Winchester, and Chicheley at Higham Ferrers, also for a writing master to teach "all manner of scrivener's craft," including, at Rotherham, "casting accounts." Alcuin specially recommends this, "so that in the chief seat of our race there may be found the fountain of all goodness and learning; and so the thirsty wayfarer or the lover of ecclesiastical learning may be able to draw that which his soul desires." It would appear,

therefore, that the school was intended, not only for clerics and ecclesiastical amateurs, though no doubt chiefly for them, but also for the outside public, the thirsty wayfarer. The

further advice to set up "guest-houses, that is hospitals, where the poor and the traveller may be received daily and receive relief at your (the archbishop's) expense," is perhaps the origin of S. Peter's, afterwards S. Leonard's, Hospital. The whole letter is a striking recognition of the doctrine laid down by Pope Gregory to Augustine of Canterbury that the revenues of the Church were chargeable with education and poor relief, as well as the support of the churches and clergy.

There is perhaps no more illuminating passage in early English history than these references of Alcuin's to the school of York. We see it here in its very beginning and earliest development; and we see the immense importance attached to it it in the minster functions. Under Archbishop Egbert, Albert is the teacher. So convinced is he of the importance of learning that, when he becomes Archbishop, he does not cease to teach. At his death a division destined to be permanent takes place. One of his favourite pupils succeeds to the archbishopric, with the care of the church, its fabric, ornaments, and revenues; another succeeds to the chancellorship, with its library, its legal and above all its educational duties. In the lifetime of Alcuin a further development takes place, or at least is recommended. Instead of one master teaching everything, as Albert and Alcuin himself had done, from arithmetic to theology, a division of labour is suggested, and separation of the schools for grammar, song, and writing. The writing became afterwards a separate and inferior study. It was relegated to monks or a professional class of scribes, clerics of course, but of an inferior order. The twin masters of grammar and song continued to prevail throughout the Middle Ages. But though the Precentor, as a minster officer, took precedence of the Chancellor, the Chancellor's deputy, the Grammar Schoolmaster, occupied a superior position to that of the Precentor's deputy, the Song Schoolmaster. The latter tended to sink, as in Bishop Langley's foundation at Durham, into an elementary or preparatory schoolmaster, "to teach the petties," reading and writing. The placing of the Precentor above the Chancellor was probably a Norman innovation, since at Harold's College of the Holy Cross at Waltham, we learn from the Inventio Crucis, edited by Bishop Stubbs, that the second officer was Master Athelard, called Magister Scolarum.

Of York School, after the days of Alcuin, we learn no more for two hundred and fifty years, that is, till after the Norman Conquest. It is impossible to prove that it went on

CONTINUANCE OF YORK SCHOOL AT CONQUEST. xv

all the time. But there is every reason to think so, and no reason to think otherwise. A very few years after Alcuin's days the digest called the Corpus Juris Canonici has preserved to us a decree made under Pope Eugenius at a synod held in 826 (p. 1), which shows that the custom for the cathedral churches to maintain schools was recognised as having the force of law. "It is reported to us," says the decree, "that in some places neither masters nor a cure are found for a grammar school" (studio literarum). Therefore it is decreed that "everywhere care and diligence is to be taken by all bishops and their subjects, and in other places in which there is need, that masters and doctors shall be appointed, to teach continuously grammar schools and the precepts of the liberal arts, because in them especially the commandments of God are shown and declared." What was declared to be the duty of all bishops was not likely to be neglected in the great city of York by the primates of the Northumbrian kingdom, at a time when England was the literary light of the world. We are told in the Life of Alfred the Great by the so-called Asser, the MS. of which belonged to the tenth century, about one hundred years after Alfred's death (Annales Alfredi, ed. F. Wise, Oxford, 1722, pp. 42-3), that, while his elder children were brought up in the Court, and were able to read Saxon poems and books, "Ethelward, the youngest, by the divine counsels and the admirable prudence of the King, was sent to the grammar school (ludis litterariæ discipline), where with the children of almost all the nobility of the country, and many also who were not noble, he prospered under the diligent care of his masters. Books in both languages, namely, Latin and Saxon, were diligently read in the school. They also learned to write." As I have remarked in my History of Winchester College (Duckworth and Co., 1899, p. 15): "Whether Alfred's son was really educated in the grammar school there or not, at all events the tenth century writer believed that he was; "" or perhaps one should say he thought such a thing possible and likely enough to be believed. Again, at Warwick, a town which at its highest was a village compared with York, among the possessions of the collegiate church there, solemnly confirmed to it by the first Norman lord and by Henry I., was "the school of Warwick as it existed in the time of King Edward" the Confessor. If Warwick Collegiate Church maintained its school, a fortiori did the cathedral church of York.

In York of all places a Cathedral Grammar School was least likely to have ceased. York was never destroyed by the