His manners attended to, young Gregory wrote for one or two hours, read Fabyan’s _Chronicle_, and gave the rest of the day to his lute and virginals. When he rode, his master used to tell him stories of the Greeks and Romans, which he had to repeat; and his recreations were hunting, hawking and shooting with the long bow.
A harsher system prevailed with Queen Elizabeth’s wards, according to Sir Nicholas Bacon. They went to church at 6 o’clock, studied Latin until 11, dined from 11 to 12, had music from 12 to 2, French from 2 to 3, Latin and Greek from 3 to 5, then prayers, supper, and “honest pastimes” until 8, then music until 9, and so to bed.
The curricula in these various schools doubtless emphasized the usual Latin subjects (Greek was not taught in England before 1500) of the Middle Ages. Thus we find an account of the “disputations” in a London grammar-school, dating from 1174. But that athletic sports were popular even at that early time, appears from the same narrative, in which we read of football, sham fights, water-quintain, archery, running, leaping, wrestling, stone-casting, flinging bucklers, sliding and skating (on bones), besides the brutal sports of hog-, boar- and cock-fighting, bull- and bear-baiting.
At the other extreme we find the account of a school-day in 1612. Work begins at 6, and those who come first have the best places. At 9 o’clock, there is given 15 minutes for breakfast and recreation; then work continues until 11 or past (to balance the 15 minutes off). Dinner follows, and then work until 3 or 3.30, then 15 minutes off, and work until 5.30, when school closes with a piece of a chapter, two staves of a psalm and prayer by the master.
It is probable, however, that these two descriptions are but two sides of the same medal; that Fitzstephen’s holidays were balanced by work days as tedious as those described by Brinsley.[9]
A singular fact to be noted in the English courtesy books is the almost complete absence of allusions to women. Barring the _Good Wife_ and _Wise Man_, which are distinctly middle class in tone, we have practically nothing to represent the elaborate directions for conduct in some of the foreign treatises. Yet it cannot be doubted that the English system of patronage led to social problems and rules for the demeanour of young men and women together, such as prevailed abroad. Undoubtedly, too, the association of a lord’s pages and a lady’s maidens must have furthered the arrangement of marriages, perhaps not always in the way desired. Take, for example, the case of Anne Boleyn. After seven years’ service with the royal ladies of France, she came home and was placed in the household of Queen Katharine. Meanwhile, there was attendant upon Cardinal Wolsey a certain young Lord Percy, who, whenever his master was with the king, would “resort for pastime into the queen’s chamber, and there would fall in dalliance among the queen’s maidens.” In the end, he and Mistress Anne were secretly troth-plight; but Wolsey discovered the arrangement and sent the girl home, whereat she “smoked” (we say _fumed_) until she was recalled and heard of the great love the king bore her “in the bottom of his stomach”; then she “began to look very hault and stout, having all manner of jewels or rich apparel that might be gotten for money.” And doubtless there are many other similar complications to be found among old records, and more have perished, or were never written down at all.