Of Grammar schools there was not a scarcity, "there having been more erected and endowed within thirty years before the Reformation, than there had been in thirty years preceding. So that, as Dr. Knight suggested, there wanted rather a regulation than an increase of them[1]." But not in any Grammar school, as I suspect, was the science of Arithmetick a branch of the original institution. A knowledge of the primary rules of it was not a previous qualification for admission into them. What was required of a scholar expectant was "that he should be able to rede and write sufficiently his own lessons in Latyn and Englyshe[2]." Not any usher or assistant was provided to teach this "Ground of Arts," or to supply to the scholar a cup out of this "Well Spring of Sciences:" nor was an hour in a week appropriated for this essential branch of erudition. This was an oversight in the establishment of schools which at that time, and long afterwards, had its inconveniences. And, whatever may be the present usage, it is within recollection that fifty years ago there were sent from capital schools to the university youths of good abilities, and not by any means wanting in grammar and classical learning, yet so little versed in the vulgar figures as to be obliged to have recourse to the matter of a day-school in the town for instruction in the four fundamental rules of Arithmetick.
Record, as an academic, must have discovered this omission in the institution of the Grammar schools in his days; and, as I apprehend, it was one design of his treatise to endeavour to obviate
- ↑ The Life of Dr. John Colet, dean of St. Paul's, p, 100.
- ↑ Ibid, p. 124.
Mr. Boys, Cyphering was not an art deemed a necessary acquisition by sir Robert, though to the young inhabitants of a Cinque Port, and of the parishes contiguous, one should have imagined that some of the time appropriated for their instruction might have been as usefully employed in figures as "in varying of Latin, practicing exercises of Anthonii Progymnasinata, or in pearcing some of the words of a lesson." p. 230, 231.
