1. See, for example, reviews by McMahon, Clara, History of Education Quarterly, 6 (1966):96–8; Charlton, Kenneth, British Journal of Educational Studies, 14 (1966):84–7; Kearney, H. F., Economic History Review, 19 (1966):419–20; and Bowker, Margaret, The Historical Journal, 10 (1967):468–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2. Preface to original edition. See also her articles in the British Journal of Education Studies, 3 and 4 (1955), 12 (1963) and Past and Present, no. 13 (1957).Google Scholar

3. In 1966 the main studies available on the parish clergy were: Richardson, H. G., “The Parish Clergy of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 3rd ser., 6 (1912):89–128; Cutts, E. L., Parish Priests and Their People in the Middle Ages in England (London, 1914); Pantin, W. A., The English Church in the Fourteenth Century (Cambridge, 1955); and discussion throughout the writings of Coulton, G. G. and Gasquet, Cardinal. Bill's, P. A. study of “The Warwickshire Parish Clergy in the later Middle Ages” (Dugdale Society Occasional Papers, no. 17), published a year after Simon's book, does no more than question the reputation for illiteracy among medieval clergy.Google Scholar

4. Bowker, Margaret, The Secular Clergy in the Diocese of Lincoln, 1495–1520 (Cambridge, 1968), 42–5 where she specifically addresses Simon's conclusion and argues, using numbers of university MAs presented to livings in Lincoln, that the clergy's educational attainments notably improved in the fifteenth century. See also Heath, Peter, English Parish Clergy on the Eve of the Reformation (London, 1969), chp. 5; Lipkin, Joel and Sacks-Lipkin, Bernice, “Data Base Development and Analysis for the Social Historian: The Educational Status of the Beneficed Clergy of The Diocese of Hereford, 1289–1539,” Computers and the Humanities, 12 (1978):113–25; Boyle, Leonard E., “The Constitution ‘Cum ex eo’ of Boniface VIII: Education of Parochial Clergy,” Mediaeval Studies, 24 (1962):263–302; “Aspects of Clerical Education in Fourteenth-Century England,” Acta of the Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, Binghamton, 4 (1977): 19–32; Haines, Roy M., “The Education of the English Clergy during the Later Middle Ages: Some Observations on the Operation of Pope Boniface VIII's Constitution Cum ex eo (1298),” Canadian Journal of History, 4 (1969):1–22, which is a more negative assessment; and Haines, , “Education in English Ecclesiastical Legislation of the Later Middle Ages,” Studies in Church History, 7 (Cambridge, 1971): 161–75.Google Scholar

5. Orme, Nicholas, English Schools in the Middle Ages (London, 1973), esp. chps. 2–4; Moran, Jo Ann H., Education and Learning in the City of York, 1300–1560 (University of York, 1979). See also Thorndike, Lynn, “Elementary and Secondary Education in the Middle Ages,” Speculum, 15 (1940):400–8; Bonaventure, Br., “The Teaching of Latin in Later Medieval England,” Mediaeval Studies, 23 (1961): 1–20; and Murphy, James J., “The Teaching of Latin as a Second Language in the 12th Century,” Historiographia Linguistica 7 (1980):159–75 on this point. For lay literacy and the distribution of books, see, among much else, Parkes, M. B., “The Literacy of the Laity,” in Literature and Western Civilization: The Medieval World , ed. Daiches, D. and Thorlby, A. (London, 1973), pp. 555–77; Clanchy, M. T., From Memory to Written Word: England 1066–1307 (Cambridge, Mass., 1979); Hoeppner Moran, J., “Literacy and Education in Northern England, 1350–1550: A Methodological Inquiry,” Northern History, 17 (1981): 1–23; Rickert, Edith, “Chaucer at School,” Modern Philology, 29 (1932):257–74; Garton, Charles, “A Fifteenth-Century Headmaster's Library,” Lincolnshire History and Archaeology, 15 (1980):29–38; Cavanaugh, Susan H., “A Study of Books Privately Owned in England: 1300–1450,” (Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, 1980); Rosenthal, Joel T., “Aristocratic Cultural Patronage and Book Bequests, 1350–1550,” Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, 64 (1982):522–48; Bell, Susan Groag, “Medieval Women Book Owners: Arbiters of Lay Piety and Ambassadors of Culture,” Signs, 7 (1982):742–68.Google Scholar

6. While Simon, Mrs. emphasizes the borough governance of the school at Hull in the fifteenth century (p. 22), she does not point out that it was also under lay control in the fourteenth century and thus cannot be part of the fifteenth-century development in laicization. Nor does she note that the 1483 endowment was not by a layman but by a bishop. The fact that a schoolmaster at Beverley was a layman in the fifteenth century (p. 28) is likewise not indicative of laicization since lay schoolmasters can by found in the thirteenth century and Beverley continued to be a Minster school.Google Scholar

7. Orme, , English Schools, chp. 7, esp. p. 206.Google Scholar

8. Miner, J. N., “Schools and Literacy in Later Medieval England,” British Journal of Educational Studies, 11 (1962): 16–27; Haines, , “Education in English Ecclesiastical Legislation.” CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9. Orme, , English Schools, chp. 7; Moran, , Education and Learning; “Learning and Laicization in the Diocese of York, 1340–1548” (forthcoming book manuscript) where a list of pre-1548 schools is appended.Google Scholar

10. Orme, , English Schools, chp. 2 and pp. 194–5.Google Scholar

11. Simon, , Education and Society, p. 235, 240.Google Scholar

12. Kreider, Alan, English Chantries: The Road to Dissolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1979), pp. 60–4.Google Scholar

13. Charlton, Kenneth, Education in Renaissance England (London, 1965), pp. 124–30, 157–68.Google Scholar

14. Strauss, Gerald, Luther's House of Learning: Indoctrination of the Young in the German Reformation (Baltimore, Md., 1978). For some of the reaction to Strauss's thesis, see Edward's, Mark U. review in History of Education Quarterly, 21 (1981):471–7.Google Scholar

15. Orme, , English Schools, p. 285, 288; Kreider, , English Chantries, p. 234, n78.Google Scholar

16. Orme, , Education in the West of England 1066–1548 (University of Exeter, 1976), pp. 31–2; “The Medieval Schools of Worcestershire,” Transactions of the Worcestershire Archaeological Society, 3rd ser., 6(1978):49–50.Google Scholar

17. Simon, , “Town Estates and Schools in the Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries,” in Simon, Brian (ed.), Education in Leicestershire 1540–1940 (Leicester, 1968), p. 3, 6.Google Scholar

18. Cressy, , Literacy and the Social Order, pp. 166–7.Google Scholar

19. Simon, , Education and Society, chp. 13 and pp. 375–7.Google Scholar

20. Cressy, , Literacy and the Social Order, esp. chp. 7 and Table 7.7. It is to be regretted that the literacy data from the depositions, combining all social classes and sexes, is not graphed or included in Table 7.7 Google Scholar

21. Schofield, R. S., “Measurement of Literacy,” in Goody, J. (ed.), Literacy in Traditional Societies (Cambridge, 1968), pp. 311–25; “Dimensions of Illiteracy, 1750–1850,” Explorations in Economic History, 10 (1972–3):440–1; Furet, François and Ozouf, Jacques, Lire et Écrire, 1 (Paris, 1977), pp. 19–28.Google Scholar

22. Laslett, Peter, The World We Have Lost (New York, 1965), p. 208; Spufford, Margaret, Contrasting Communities (Cambridge, 1974), p. 181; “First Steps in Literacy: The Reading and Writing Experiences of the Humblest Seventeenth-Century Spiritual Autobiographers,” Social History, 4 (1979):407–35; Moran, , “Literacy and Education:” 8.Google Scholar

23. Cressy, , Literacy and the Social Order, p. 86.Google Scholar

24. Houston, R. A., “The Development of Literacy: Northern England, 1640–1750,” Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 35 (1982), pp. 199–216, esp. p. 204. Houston's calculation of illiteracy (65 percent male and 93 percent female) accords reasonably well with Cressy's statistics on gentry, tradesmen and craftsmen, yeomen and husbandman from Durham in the early seventeenth century. It is a little less near the range of male illiteracy for Yorkshire (74–73 percent) or Durham (77–68 percent) given in the 1640 subscriptions, which, however, are based on only two parishes each. The occupational and sexual hierarchy of illiteracy accords very well with Cressy's conclusions. In the process of comparing Houston's data with Cressy's study, the question arises as to just how useful Cressy's graphs and tables will be to future researchers since a composite graphing of the deposition evidence was not attempted and some of the graphs and tables, broken down along occupational, regional and sexual lines, are not directly comparable (e.g. 7.1, 7.2, 7.3 and 7.4).Google Scholar

25. Cressy, , Literacy and the Social Order, p. 168.Google Scholar

26. Ibid., pp. 176–7.Google Scholar

27. Ibid., pp. 186–7.Google Scholar

28. Simon, , “The History of Education in Past and Present,” Oxford Review of Education, 3 (1977):76; Cressy, , Literacy and the Social Order, p. 96.Google Scholar

29. Simon, , “Towns and Schools,” 3–26; Spufford, Margaret, “The Schooling of the Peasantry in Cambridge shire, 1575–1700,” in Land, Church and People , ed. Thirsk, Joan (Reading, 1971); Contrasting Communi ties, chp. 6. See also: Fletcher, A. J., “The Expansion of Education in Berkshire and Oxfordshire 1500–1670,” British Journal of Educational Studies, 15 (1967), p. 51–9; Smith, A., “Endowed Schools in the Diocese of Lichfield and Conventry, 1660–1699,” History of Education, 4 (1975), pp. 5–8; “Private Schools and Schoolmasters in the Diocese of Lichfield and Coventry,” History of Education, 5 (1976), pp. 117–26. One of the best surveys of elementary education, which he chose not to include in his book, is David Cressy's list of schoolmasters in the dioceses of London and Norwich. “Education and Literacy in London and East Anglia 1580–1700,” (Ph.D., Cambridge University, 1972). See also Rogers, C., “Development of the Teaching Profession in England, 1547–1700,” (Ph.D., University of Manchester, 1975).Google Scholar