HISTORY OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

{    { PT.  7 } - These were worked in perfect co-ordination with the universities, and in most cases exhibitions were provided for the poorer scholars. The Grammar schools which existed, says a reliable authority, were not mere monkish schools or elementary schools. Many of them were the same schools which now live and thrive. All we schools of exactly the same type, and performing precisely the same sort of functions as the public schools and grammar schools of today. There were indeed also choristers schools and elementary schools. There were scholar-ships at schools and exhibitions thence to the universities, and the whole paraphernalia of secondary education. Nor was secondary education understood in any different sense to that in which it was understood up to fifty years ago. It was conduction on the same lines and in the main by instruments of the same kind, if not identically the same, as those in use till the present generation. [ 4 ] It cannot be said with justi...

  { PT.  6 } - Nor was education generally neglected in the country. The lists of students attending Oxford and Cambridge [ 3 ] in so far as they have been preserved point to the fact that in the days immediately preceding the Reformation these great seats of learning were in a most flourishing condition, and that for them the religious revolt fell little short of proving disastrous. The explanation of the sudden drop in the number of students attending the universities is to be found partially at least in the disturbed condition of the country, but more particularly in the destruction of the religious houses, which sent up many of their members to Oxford and Cambridge, and which prepared a great number of pupils in their schools for university matriculation, as well as in the confiscation of the funds out of which bishops, chapters, monasteries, religious confraternities, and religious guilds, presented exhibitions to enable the children of the poor to avail themselves of the...

  { PT.  5 } - Selling and Hadley, both monks, Linacre, one of the leaders of medical science in his own time, Dean Colet of Westminster whose direction of St. Paul's College did so much to improve the curriculum of the schools, [ 1 ] Bishop Fischer of Rochester described by Erasmus as a man without equal at this time both as to integrity of life, learning, or broadminded sympathies with the possible exception of Archbishop Warham of Canterbury, [ 2 ]  and Sir Thomas More, Lord Chancellor of England and one of the earliest martyrs for the faith in the reign of Henry VIII., were but a few of the prominent men in a movement that made itself felt throughout the entire country. Nowhere did Erasmus find a more enthusiastic welcome or more generous patrons and nowhere were his writings more thoroughly appreciated than in England. Nor is it true to say that the advocates of classical learning were animated by hostility to the Catholic Church in their demand for an improvement in...

  { PT.  4 } - It is not true to assert, as some writers have asserted, that before the Reformation England was a land shrouded in the mists of ignorance; that there were no schools or colleges for imparting secular education till the days of Edward VI,; that apart from practices such as pilgrimages, indulgences, and invocation of the saints, there was no real religion among the masses; that both secular and regular clergy lived after a manner more likely to scandalise than to edify the faithful; that the people were up in arms against the exactions and privileges of the clergy, and that all parties only awaited the advent of a strong leader to throw off the yoke of Rome. These are sweeping generalisations based upon isolated abuses put forward merely to discredit the English mediaeval Church, but wholly unacceptable to those who are best acquainted with the history of the period. On the other side it would be equally wrong to state that everything was so perfect in England th...

     { PT.  3 } - The Parliament of 1523 did show some resistance to the financial demands necessitated by the war with France, but the king's answer was to dissolve it, and to govern England by royal decrees for a space of six years. Fearing for the results of the divorce proceedings and anxious to carry the country with him in his campaign against the Pope, Henry VIII. convoked another Parliament ( 529 ), but he took careful measures to ensure that the new House of Commons would not run counter to his wishes. Lists of persons who were known to be jealous of the powers of the Church and to be sympathetic towards any movement that might limit the pretensions of the clergy were forwarded to the sheriffs, and in due course reliable men were returned. That the majority of the members of the lower House were hostile to the privileges of the Church is clear enough, but there is no evidence that any important section desired a reformation which would involve a change of do...

  { PT.  2 } - In selecting his ministers Henry VII. passed over the nobles in favour of the middle classes, which were gaining ground rapidly in the country, but which had not yet realised their strength as they did later in the days of the Stuarts. He obtained grants of tonnage and poundage enjoyed by some of his Yorkist predecessors, had recourse of the system of forced grants known as benevolences, set up the Star Chamber nominally to preserve order but in reality to repress his most dangerous opponents, and treated Parliament as a mere machine, whose only work was to register the wishes of the sovereign. In brief, Henry VII., acting according to the spirit of the age, removed the elements that might make for national disunion, consolidated his own power at the expense of the nobility, won over to his side the middle and lower classes were promoted and from whom no danger was to be feared, and laid the foundations of that absolute government, which was carried to its logic...

  { PT.  1 } - CHAPTER  1                                                                   RIGHTEOUS CONDITION OF ENGLAND BEFORE THE REFORMATION - Wilkins,/Concilia Magnae Britanniae/, iii.  1773. / Historia Regis Henrici Septimi a Bernardo Andrea Thosolate/ Andre of Toulouse/ edited by J. Cairdner, 1858. Capella-Sneyd, /A Relation or True   Account of the Isle of England ... under Henry VII./written by Capella, the Venetian Ambassador, 1496-1502, and edited by C. A. London Chronicle during the reigns of Henry VII. and Henry VIII./ ( Camden Miscellany, vol.  iv., 1859 ). Sir Thomas More's /Utopia/ ( written 1516, edited by E. Arner, 1869 ). More's English works, edited by William Rastell, 1557. Bridgett, /Life and writings of Sir Thomas More/ 1891. Busch-Todd, /England under the Tudors/, 1...