OCRed data provided
for searching only. GRAMMAR SCHOOLS OF ENGLAND ABOUT 1530 135
what stage of development the grammar schools had arrived by 1530.
These four schools are all built on the same fundamental principles, having the same general curriculum and routines. Since this is the triviurn, the curriculum is organized upon the grammar, including prosody, and upon the works on rhetoric-logic. Grammar necessarily came first, and was taken up in time-honored order. The boys must first learn to parse and construe in order to begin reading the Latin. Almost necessarily, at least the elements of parsing and construction would be in the vernacular. So the boys would require first an accidence covering the inflections and conjugations of the eight parts, and an elementary syntax centered upon the fundamental principles of construction. There were two chief rival sets of texts by Englishmen for doing this. The older set was by Stan-bridge, and consisted of three parts; the .dccidentia, the Gradus Comparationum, and the Parvula. The other set consisted of the 4editio of Dean Colet, and the Rudimenta of William Lily, these being the texts developed for Paul's. The '4ccidentia and Gradus of Stanbridge together cover the same general ground as Coleys Aeditio, and the Parvula corresponds to Lily's Rudimenta. The Accidentia consists of a catechism in English upon the eight parts of reason or speech. The definitions are not illustrated with paradigms in full form, though the case endings, etc., hie, haec, hoc, and the four regular conjugations are included. The Gradus deals with comparatives and the irregular verbs, being thus sometimes referred to as Sum, es, fui. The corresponding material is in the Aeditio of Dean Colet. It will be remembered that the Aeditio of Colet was revised into the accidence of the first part of the authorized grammar. So this material was shaping itself into traditional form early in the century. Similarly for constructions, the Parvula of Stanbridge corresponds to the Rudimenta of Lily, giving in English the simple rules of construction.
The first business of the boy was to memorize these elements of the two fundamental grammar operations of parsing and construction, and to begin to apply them in learning to read, write, and speak Latin. So he must first memorize his accidence, and then keep repeating and using it till there could be no possibility of his ever losing it. Since this was individual work, these beginners may not be organized as a form, but may be referred to as "learners of the Accidence," below the first form as in the Cuckfield copy of the early Eton curriculum. In the Saffron Walden copy of the Eton time table,
[ Volume
One ] 
