boiled fowls, boiled kidneys, sour curds, tea, apricots, apples, and
grapes, sweetmeats, and salt fish; to each of which laymen and churchmen
did equal justice, finishing the feast with a sacrifice to Bacchus.

* * * * *



THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.


* * * * *


BOYHOOD OF CRANMER--SCHOOLS BEFORE THE REFORMATION.


Cranmer received his early education from a parish-clerk. This may seem
singular, for he was of gentle blood, and was entered at Cambridge
amongst "the better sort of students." But probably such shifts were not
unusual before the Reformation. The monasteries indeed had schools
attached to them in many instances. In Elizabeth's time a complaint is
made by the Speaker of the Commons, that the number of such places of
education had been reduced by a hundred, in consequence of the
suppression of the religious houses. Still it must often have happened
(thickly scattered as the monasteries were) that the child lived at an
inconvenient distance from any one of them; mothers, too, might not have
liked to trust less robust children to the clumsy care of a fraternity;
and probably little was learned in these academies after all. Erasmus
makes himself merry with the studies pursued in them; and it is