Early English meals and manners : with some forewords on education in early England / edited by Frederick J. Furnivall.

Date:
1868. [Reprinted 1894, 1904]
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: Early English meals and manners : with some forewords on education in early England / edited by Frederick J. Furnivall. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    51/524
    with, tho stipends of their choristers, hoys and men. “ Les gros poissom mangent les menus. Pro. Poore men are (easily) supplanted by the rich, the weake by the strong, the meane by the mighty.” • (Cotgrave, u. manger.) The law of natural selection ” prevails. Who shall say nay in a Christian land professing the principles of the great “ Inventor of Philanthropy ” 1 Wliitgift for one, see his Life of Strype, Bk. I. chap. xiii. p. 148-50, ed. 1822. In 1589 an act 31 Ehz. c. 6, was passed to endeavour to prevent the abuse, hut, like modern Election-bribery Acts with their abuse, did not do it. “ at this present, of one sort & other, there are about three thou- sand students nourished in them both (as by a late serveie it mani- festhe appeared). They [the Colleges at our Universities] were created by theh founders at the first, onelie for pore men’s sons, Avhose parents Avere not able to bring them up unto learning : but noAV they haA^e the least benefit of them, by reason the rich do so incroch upon them. And so farre hath this inconvenence spread it- self, that it is in my time an hard matter for a pore man’s child to come by a fellowship (though he he neuer so good a scholer & worthie of that roome.) Such packing also is used at elections, that not he which best deserveth, hut he that hath most friends, though he he the worst scholer, is ahvaies surest to speed; which AviU turne in the end to the overthrow of learning. That some gentlemen also, Avhose friends have been in times past benefactors to certeine of those houses, doe intrude into the disposition of their estates, Avith- out all respect of order or statutes devised by the founders, onelie thereby to place whome they think good (and not without some hope of gaine) the case is too too evident, and their attempt Avould soone take place, if their superiors did not provide to bridle their indevors. In some grammar schooles likeAvise, Avhich send scholers to these universities, it is lamentable to see AAdiat hriberie is used; for yer the scholer can be preferred, sucli hriherye is made, that pore men’s children are commonly shut out, and the richer sort received (avIio in times past thought it dishonour to hve as it Avere upon almes) and yet being placed, most of them studie httle other than histories, tables, dice & trifles, as men that make not the living by their studie the end of their purposes; Avhich is a lamentable hear- ing. Besides this, being for the most part either gentlemen, or ricli men’s sonnes, they oft bring the universities into much slander.^ For ' Compare Chaucer : ‘ wherfore, as seith Senek, ther is nothing more covenablo to a man of heigh estate than debonairte and pite ; and therfore thise flies than men clepen bees, whan thay make here king, they chesen oon that hath no pricke wherwith he may stynge.’—Persones Tale, Poet. Works, ed. Morris, iii. 301. * Ascham complains of the harm that rich men’s .sons did in his time at Cam- bridge. Writing to Archbp. Cranmer in 1545, he complains of two gravissima im~
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