grammar schools to the posers, schoolmasters, and
preferers of them to our universities, the gifts of a great number of
almshouses builded for the maimed and impotent soldiers by princes and
good men heretofore moved with a pitiful consideration of the poor
distressed, how rewards, pensions, and annuities also do reign in other
cases whereby the giver is brought sometimes into extreme misery, and that
not so much as the room of a common soldier is not obtained oftentimes
without a "_What will you give me?_" I am brought into such a mistrust of
the sequel of this device that I dare pronounce (almost for certain) that,
if Homer were now alive, it should be said to him:

"Tuque licet venias musis comitatus Homere,
Si nihil attuleris, ibis Homere foras!"

More I could say, and more I would say, of these and other things, were it
not that in mine own judgment I have said enough already for the
advertisement of such as be wise. Nevertheless, before I finish this
chapter, I will add a word or two (so briefly as I can) of the old estate
of cathedral churches, which I have collected together here and there
among the writers, and whereby it shall easily be seen what they were, and
how near the government of ours do in these days approach unto them; for
that there is an irreconcilable odds between them and those of the
Papists, I hope there is no learned man indeed but will acknowledge and
yield unto it.

We find therefore in the time of the primitive church that there was in
every see or jurisdiction one school at the least, whereunto such as were
catechists in Christian religion did resort. And hereof, as we may find
great testimony for Alexandria, Antioch, Rome, and Jerusalem, so no small
notice is left of the like in the inferior sort, if the names of such as
taught in them be called to mind, and the histories well read which make
report of the same. These schools were under the jurisdiction of the
bishops, and from thence did they and the rest of the elders choose out
such as were the ripest scholars, and willing to serve in the ministry,
whom they placed also in their cathedral churches, there not only to be
further instructed in the knowledge of the world, but also to inure them
to the delivery of the same unto the people in sound manner, to minister
the sacraments, to visit the sick and brethren imprisoned, and to perform
such other duties as then belonged to their charges. The bishop himself
and elders of t