ABSTRACT
In England humanism was welcomed initially as a support to religion, with the grammar schools embracing it more for its possibilities of affirming faith than for any liberalizing qualities. Yet the educational history of England before the sixteenth century gives no clear indication of potential vigour or of a future role in exercising considerable leadership in education. England, by the time of Alcuin, had developed an educational tradition that was entirely religious. The monasteries appear to have remained virtually the sole centres of scholarship, which itself continued to be restricted to internal needs. The cathedral schools of England seem to have had even more modest beginnings. European education in this period was all of one piece and England followed, in fact was largely dependent upon, developments across the channel. William de Montibus is one of the first recorded representatives in England of the attempt to apply this approach to education.
