rasmuch as it is
goodly and honourable that there should be alwayes some divine service
in the court ... when his grace keepeth court and specially in riding
journeys: it is ordeyned that the master of the children and six men ...
shall give their continual attendance in the King's court, and dayly in
the absence of the residue of the chappell, to have a masse of our Lady
before noone, and on Sundayes and holy dayes masse of the day besides
our Lady masse, and an anthem in the afternoone."

It was part of the business of the Master of the Children to instruct
his young charges in "grammar, songes, organes, and other vertuous
things"; and, on the whole, the lot of the choristers might have been
deemed enviable. It is evident, however, that it was not always regarded
in that light, for a custom existed of impressing children. This
practice was authorized by a precept of Henry VI. in 1454, and one of
its victims was Thomas Tusser, afterwards author of "Five Hundred Points
of Good Husbandry," who thus alludes to the matter:

There for my voice I must (no choice)
Away of force, like posting horse;
For sundry men had placards then
Such child to take.

Moreover, it has been shrewdly suspected that the whipping-boy, who
vicariously atoned for the sins of a prince of the blood--in other
words, was thrashed, when he did wrong--was picked from the Children of
the Chapel. Certainly Charles I. had such a whipping-boy named Murray;
and judging from this instance the expedient was not commended by its
results.

Members of the choir were expected to be persons of exemplary life and
conversation, to ensure which state of things there was a weekly
visitation by the Dean. Every Friday he sought out and avoided from
office "all rascals and hangers upon thys courte." The tone of
discipline, to conclude from the poems of Hugh Rhodes, was undoubtedly
high; and, whatever difficulties he may have encountered in training the
boys to his own high standards, his "Book of Nurture" must always
possess considerable value as a reflex of the moral and social ideals of
a Master of the Children in the sixteenth century.

Rhodes's successor in the days of Elizabeth was Richard Edwards, a man
of literary taste and the compiler of a "Paradise of Dainty Devices."
The Master had now a salary of forty pounds a year; the Gentlemen
nineteen pence a day, in addition to board and clothing; and the
Children received largesse at high feasts