Education

Children were not forced by law to go to school, and most girls did not go at all. Some boys went to school with the village priest. For a small fee, he taught them to read, write, and do simple arithmetic. The boys had to sit on benches, often in the church porch, and learn their lessons by heart. Pupils who were badly behaved or lazy were flogged.

Rich men's sons went on to grammar schools, where they learned Latin, and nothing else. By the age of fourteen, they could read, write, and speak it as well as they could English.

Latin was the language of the church. The Mass and the Bible were in Latin. The books which the monks copied were in Latin. So were the chronicles which they wrote. All over Europe, educated men spoke and wrote to each other in Latin. Students travelled a long way to hear learned priests lecturing, in Latin, in the 'schools'. (We would call them universities.) In the twelfth century, English students crossed to the schools of Paris. By the year 1200, there were schools at Oxford, and at Cambridge soon after.

Many rich men sent their daughters to school in nunneries. The nuns taught them to read and write, and to behave like ladies. They might learn a little French and Latin as well. By the year 1500, though, a lot of lords had private tutors for their daughters. At the end of the Middle Ages, many noble women were very fine scholars.

Walter Robson: Medieval Britain; Oxford University Press, 1991/2000, page 84