ABSTRACT
AT some time unknown before 1306 a new departure was taken in organizing the Grammar Schools at Oxford which appears to point to a considerable increase in their number, accompanied perhaps by a falling off or failure in the supply of regent masters, to whom, under the “Ancient Statutes no longer in modern use”, their management was till then entrusted. For at a specially solemn congregation held at the beginning of Michaelmas term 1306, at which the Archdeacon of Oxford and the Bishop of Lincoln's Official Principal were present, representing the special episcopal control over grammar schools, perhaps in the absence of the Chancellor (for otherwise that control was exercised by him), it was provided that two M.A.'s should be yearly elected to superintend the grammar schools. If it had not been for the addition of the words “as has been the custom”, we might have supposed this to be an entirely new arrangement, whereas apparently it was only the statutable and episcopal recognition of what had already been the practice. The superintending masters were to be paid a salary, as to which it is somewhat mystically stated “that saving the proper seat of the vice-monitor, the whole residue should be divided into two equal parts, to be applied one to the M.A.'s and the other to the vice-monitor”; and, to prevent fraud, the two M.A.'s were to collect this salary together. Who was the vice-monitor? In the Merton School documents the vice-monitor seems to be the same as the Hostiarius or usher. He appears also at this time in the Grammar School of Canterbury and in that of St. Alban's, and he is probably the usher or second master, who is also mentioned. But why the usher should have half the salary collected besides his own special fees as usher, and where the schoolmaster himself comes in, is most obscure. Nearly half a century later we find that the University, having spent a large sum on the repairs of the Inn called “le Bufohall”, or Toad-hall, the regent masters agreed in December, 1352, that the University should have two-thirds and the visitors of grammar schools one-third of the rent received for the hall until the sum spent was repaid. This appears to be explained by another undated but probably late fourteenth-century statute to mean that in fact the whole sums called collections (collecta) paid to the grammar schools were divided into three parts, one to the superintendent masters, one to the teaching masters and the other to the vice-monitor. It is then stated that to encourage the grammar schoolmasters to teach their boys with greater diligence the superintending Masters of Arts should take two marks only from them, whether there was only one master or more, and four marks from the University revenues, two marks in each term, the superintending masters at the same time being absolved from the obligation of ordinary lectures on Priscian's De constructionibus to which they had been obliged, though they are still to lecture in two terms cursorily, and to visit the grammar schools once a week. If, however, the University rents assigned for the purpose proved deficient, 40s. a year for each superintendent master was to be made up out of the collections in the grammar school, i.e. the fees received by the grammar school masters. These superintending masters correspond to the Master of Glomery at Cambridge, a term in use there as late as 1540. There being only one at Cambridge, instead of two as at Oxford, points to a less number of grammar schools and schoolmasters.
