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520 MEDIEVAL ENGLAND
during the middle ages is insufficient; and for the first two
centuries after the coming of the Normans it is very meagre
indeed. Nevertheless, there are enough grounds to warrant the
surmise that every fair-sized town had a school at some time
during these two centuries but not always continuously, and
that schools existed for a time at least in places where none
might have been expected. Early in the twelfth century Theo
bald of fitampes, the first master known to have lectured at
Oxford, expressed the opinion, albeit in a rhetorical context,
that 'throughout Normandy and England not only in the
cities, but also in small towns, there are as many practised
schoolmasters as there are tax-collectors and other royal offi
Reginald, a monk of Durham, writing in the second
halfofthe century about the miracles worked by St. Cuthbert,
cials'. 1
tells how the key ofthe church of Norham, in which a priest
held classes for boys living near the Scottish border, was found
in the gullet of a great salmon netted in the Tweed, having
been pitched into a
deep pool by young Haldene, who was due
for a
beating on account of idleness. 3
Early in the fourteenth
century there were as many as eight grammar schools in the
county of Lincoln.
Song-schools attached to cathedral and collegiate churches
continued throughout the medieval period to teach small boys
*to synge and to rede'. But the standard, as one ofthe elder boys
in the song/school described by Chaucer in the Prioresses Tale
(11. 84-95) explains, was elementary: 1 lerne song, I can but
smal grammere/ He did not pretend to understand the Latin
words ofa service book, but learned them by heart.
And than he song it wel and boldely
Fro word to word acording with the note.
In the nine secular cathedrals the primary responsibility for the
choristers and the song/school rested with the precentor who
also might suppress unlicensed song-schools, kept by 'divers
chaplains, holy water-carriers and others', from competing
with that of the cathedral. Great interest was shown in the
1
Collectanea (Oxf. Hist. Soc.), ii, p. 158.
2
Regnalti monacbi Dtmelm. L&elks (Surtees Soc.), p. 149.