Ascham was educated at the house of Sir Humphrey Wingfield, a barrister, Ascham tells us, in the "Toxophilus" under a tutor named R. Bond. His preferred sport was archery, and Sir Humphrey "would at term times bring down from London both bows and shafts and go with them himself to see them shoot". Hence Ascham's earliest English work, the "Toxophilus", the importance which he attributed to archery in educational establishments, and probably the reason for archery in the statutes of St Albans, Harrow and other Elizabethan schools.