— English translation by bishop Thomas Fuller in 1662[1][2] The Grammarians' War (1519–1521) was a conflict between rival systems of teaching Latin.
The War involved Latin primers called Vulgaria, which were thus named because they contained "vulgar" (in the 16th century sense, i.e. everyday and common) sayings or phrases that schoolchildren were expected to use in normal life, such as "Sit away or I shall give thee a blow," and, "Would God we might go play!
Horman had published his Vulgaria in 1519, and it was adopted by William Lily, the headmaster of St Paul's School, who had written several laudatory poems prefacing it.
This replaced an earlier Vulgaria written by John Stanbridge, headmaster of St Mary Magdalen's School in Oxford.
This was an attack on Whittington, mocking the airs and graces that he had assumed as "chief poet of England", and criticizing his abilities as a writer.
112 and Carlson 1992) argue that in fact there was less concrete difference, as far as the pedagogy was concerned, between Whittington and Horman/Lily than their argument indicates; and that they had more in common with one another as contemporaries than they did with the grammarians who had preceded them.
[4][2] Skelton's heavy criticism of the "Greek" way of thinking, where they do not master the basics of grammar before progressing to reading classical writings, and so are unable to compose even basic sentences to start with because they lack the basics that in his view they need, is preserved in his Speke, Parrott:[13] Let Parrot, I pray you, have lyberte to prate, For aurea lyngya Greca ought to be magnified, Yf it were cond perfytely, and after the rate, As lyngua Latina in scole matter occupyed; But our Grekis theyr Greke so well have applyed That hey cannot say in Greke, rydynge by the way, "How, hosteler, fetche my hors a botell of hay!"