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538 MEDIEVAL ENGLAND
Byngham, as a training college for grammar schoolmasters, as
he had been shocked to find in the eastern parts of England no
less than seventy grammar schools closed for lack ofmasters that
had been flourishing fifty years before. This scarcity ofschool"
masters may in a measure be attributed to the fact that the
stipends attaching to the masterships of the free grammar
schools dependent upon a bishop's or a chancellor's licence
were no longer adequate. But with the need there came at least
a partial remedy in the form office grammar schools endowed
by private benefaction. As with the colleges at the universities,
the fifteenth century witnessed the exercise ofremarkable enterx
prise on this account. Several collegiate schools, in addition to
those already mentioned, were founded by noblemen and
prelates; schools were promoted by town guilds like that at
Stratford on Avon; and chantry schools were multiplied. In
London the monopoly of the three
privileged schools was
broken when in 1441 John Carpenter, sometime provost of
Oriel, later bishop of Worcester, founded St. Anthony's
school, which became for many years the leading school in the
city.
The most important development in English learning and
education in the fifteenth century resulted from the awakening
interest of English scholars in the revival of classical studies in
Italy. Classical scholarship had made little progress in England
since the days of John of Salisbury and Robert Grosseteste.
The first contacts with Italian humanism were due to Lancas^
trian patronage. Although the visit of Poggio to England from
1418 to 1422 at the invitation of Cardinal Beaufort bore very
little fruit, the concern of Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, for
the humanities set English learning and letters moving in new
channels, particularly at Oxford. In deference to him the uni>
versity revised its Arts course in 143 1 so as to include the Nova
Rhetorica of Cicero, the
Metamorphoses of Ovid, and the works
ofVirgil as alternative texts for the study ofrhetoric. There folx
lowed his
princely gifts of books which made accessible to
scholars translations from Greek authors that served to direct
attention to Greek literature. Timely encouragement was given