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for searching only. CATHEDRAL SCHOOLS UNDER QUEEN ELIZABETH 413
An enormous list of authors to be read is given from `Cato, Colloquia Erasmi and Mr. Nowell's Catechism' to Cicero, Livy, Ovid, Horace, Virgil, Lucan; and in Greek, Homer, Hesiod, Demosthenes, and Isocrates. Among more recondite books mentioned may be noted `For recreacion's sake the epistles of Mr. Acham (Roger Ascham) or Paulus Manutius . . . For the phigures of grammar Susenbrotus, for historiographers Austin . . . Mantuan and Palangonius . . . for Greke poetts . . . Theognis or Phocilides.'
Among the 'statutes for the schollers' is the usual requirement to `use the Latin tongue in and about the schoole,' etc a
Here are all the types of composition and nearly all the textbooks. The prose sequence begins with the epistle, using the early texts of Erasmus or Vives. Macropedius and Hegendorphinus were also used at this period, but are not mentioned in these instructions. Next comes the theme, under the guidance of Aphthonius. Finally comes Ad Herennium to "teach the schollers to frame and make an oration according to the precepts of Rhetorick." Susenbrotus had supplied a more detailed classification of the figures of speech, which were elocutio, or rhetoric proper, to supplement the section on figures in 4d Herennium. Prince Edward had used the Aphthonius and the Ad Herennium, and they and the letter-writers are the conventional texts of the time, doubtless used always, though, being merely texts and not subjects, specified only incidentally. These texts would be supplemented by still others which we shall eventually unearth from hiding. One must remember always the abbreviated nature of these various kinds of indications as to curricula. Some are very brief, and none gives anything like complete detail. But from here a hint and there another we can build up a fairly complete picture of the prose sequence.
The poetic routine is also evidently at Durham in 1593 and Peter-borough in 1561 essentially that at Eton and Westminster in the 'sixties. In all cases, the grammar proper is to be completed in lower school, and versification as the last unit of the authorized grammar is to begin with the first form of upper school. Peterborough then expects the boys eventually to read prose authors on Monday and Tuesday, equally balanced by poets on Wednesday and Thursday. Their lectures in these authors are accompanied by composition in prose on Monday and Wednesday, and in poetry on Tuesday and Thursday. This is what Durham refers to in 1593 in saying that the boys should make verses upon a given argument (theme) every other
5 The Victoria History of the County of Durham, Vol. I, pp. 377-378.
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