A. F. Leach: A reply

Abstract

n 'A. F. Leach: A Re-Appraisal',l Mr. Chaplin rightly stresses the extent of Leach's research into the history of mediaeval schools, and that the subject has been neglected by historians since. This constitutes the problem. There have been many advances in mediaeval history since the days of Stubbs, whose example Leach consciously followed,2 but so far as education is concerned the materials for a reassessment remain widely scattered; nor has there been any concerted attempt to separate the wheat from the chaff in Leach's work. My own approach was that of one interested in sixteenth and seventeenth century schooling who found that Leach's interpretation of events at the Reformation did not tally with the later evidence. This led to a detailed examination of the case argued in English Schools at the Reformation; then, since this case depended directly on a reading of earlier ecclesiastical and educational history, it was necessary to look further back. While the enquiry was still in train some of the results were put together for this JOURNAL, rather rapidly and briefly, in response to Mr. Tate's articles on sources for the history of grammar schools.3 These seemed likely to establish anew, as the main guide to research, an interpretation hitherto accepted without question but which now appeared very questionable, particularly in relation to the effect of Reformation legislation on the schools. Professor Jordan evidently approached the matter from much the same angle and, though his strictures on Leach seem to me justified,4 he goes a good deal further than I do by stressing the wholesale decay of mediaeval forms of schooling. Mr. Chaplin does his arguments an injustice by omitting from a key quotation-in order to criticize a minor addition about monasteries-the main point, here italicized: 'The evidence, at least in the counties under review, would seem rather to suggest that the number of mediaeval foundations in which lay children might