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for searching only. APPENIIIX III
NUMBER OF FORMS IN PAUL'S GRAMMAR
SCHOOL
OUR FIRST CLUES to the number and arrangement of forms at Paul's lie in the physical arrangement of the building. Erasmus, writing in i32x, tells us of Dean Colet:
He divided the School into four Apartments. The first, viz. the Porch and Entrance, is for Catechumens, or the Children to be instructed in the Principles of Religion; where no Chili is to be admitted, but what can read and write. The second Apartment is for the lower Boys, to be taught by the second Master, or Usher: The third for the upper Forms, under the Head-master: Which two Parts of the School are divided by a Curtain, to be drawn at Pleasure... . Thefourlh or last Apartment is a little Chappel for Divine Service.[
One thus has three divisions: first a school of catechumens; second a gram-mar school, divided at will by a curtain into two compartments, one for the usher, the other for the master; third a chapel.
Other evidence makes it clear that there was a vestibule, and that it had been planned for the purposes Erasmus mentions. In 1720, we hear of an inscription which was at that time "in the entrance between the School and the Master's house."g It read,
Hoc Vestibulo catechizentur pueri in fide moribusque Christiania, neq; non prius Grammatices rudimentis instituantur, priusquam ad proximam hujus Scholae classem admittantur i
Clearly, this inscription indicates that when it was written, the plan was to have a separate room in the vestibule for catechumens only, and to teach no grammar there. For that, the boys must be admitted into the next room, which was in the grammar school proper. We know also that there was a similar entrance to the original building and that in 1576 it was known as the vestibule.4 After a careful examination of the physical pro-portions of the first and second buildings, Gardiner concludes,
I am inclined to think that the vestibule or porch for Catechumens farmed part of the ground floor of the Master's houses
His evidence is really conclusive that the vestibule was what its name implies, "the entrance between the School and the Master's house."" It must thus have been its the original building and planned for the uses Erasmus mentions.
Who was to teach the catechumens in the vestibule Erasmus does not say. He mentions only two teachers, and makes it clear that they were master and usher, with rooms inside the school proper. But we know from Dean Colet himself that a chaplain was to have attended to the catechumens. He provides in xs18 that the chaplain,
1 Knight, Colet, pp. slo-xl; Allen, Opvs Epinolarvm, Val. IV, PP. 507 ff. r Gardiner, St, Paul's School, p. 456. 1 Knight, Calet, p. 435-
+ Gardiner, St. Paul'. SCA001, p. 455. ' Gardiner, St. Paul's School, p. 455. e See ibid., plan II, and cj. McDonnell, St. Paul's School, p. 64.
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