Greek in Italy and brought it back with them to England. William Grocyn
and Thomas Linacre, who had studied at Florence under the refugee,
Demetrius Chalcondylas, began teaching Greek at Oxford, the former as
early as 1491. A little later John Colet, Dean of St. Paul's and the
founder of St. Paul's School, and his friend, William Lily, the
grammarian, and first master of St. Paul's (1500), also studied Greek
abroad; Colet in Italy, and Lily at Rhodes and in the city of Rome.
Thomas More, afterward the famous chancellor of Henry VIII., was among
the pupils of Grocyn and Linacre at Oxford. Thither also, in 1497, came,
in search of the new knowledge, the Dutchman, Erasmus, who became the
foremost scholar of his time. From Oxford the study spread to the sister
university, where the first English Grecian of his day, Sir John Cheke,
who "taught Cambridge and King Edward Greek," became the incumbent of
the new professorship founded about 1540. Among his pupils was Roger
Ascham, already mentioned, in whose time St. John's College, Cambridge,
was the chief seat of the new learning, of which Thomas Nashe testifies
that it "was an universitie within itself; having more candles light in
it, every winter morning before four of the clock, than the four of
clock bell gave strokes." Greek was not introduced at the universities
without violent opposition from the conservative element, who were
nicknamed Trojans. The opposition came in part from the priests, who
feared that that new study would sow seeds of heresy. Yet many of the
most devout churchmen were friends of a more liberal culture, among them
Thomas More, whose Catholicism was undoubted and who went to the block
for his religion. Cardinal Wolsey, whom More succeeded as chancellor,
was also a munificent patron of learning, and founded Christ Church
College at Oxford. Popular education at once felt the impulse of the new
studies, and over twenty endowed grammar schools were established in
England in the first twenty years of the 16th century. Greek became a
passion even with English ladies. Ascham in his _Schoolmaster_, a