The English grammar schools to 1660 : their curriculum and practice. / Includes bibliographical references and index.

  • Watson, Foster, 1860-1929.
Date:
1908
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: The English grammar schools to 1660 : their curriculum and practice. / Includes bibliographical references and index. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    period, can be supported by contemporary evidence which seems to have been sometimes overlooked or minimised, as, for instance, the speech' of the Speaker of the House of Commons in 1562. The Protestant government of Edward VI did not at first contemplate the abolition of the educational functions of the chantry priests. In the Injunctions of Edward VI, 1547, we find : ' That all chantry priests shall exercise themselves in teaching youths to read and write and bring them up in good manners and other virtuous exercisesl' Many writers of Reformation times bewail the new state of educational deficiency, e.g. Thomas Lever, Roger Ascham, Bishop Latimer, Harrison, the writer of the Examination of Complaints, Cranmer, Thomas Becon. 'J'he duties which were imposed by King Edward VI's Injunctions on all chantry priests to teach in schools were represented by an obligation on all clergy, which continued after the dissolution of the chantries in 1548, to provide for the education of youths, definitely fixed at the same time by the following article in the Injunctions of King Edward VI in 1547: 'And to the intent that learned men may hereafter spring the more, for the execution of the premises every person, vicar, clerk or beneficed man within this deanery, having yearly to dispend in benefices and other promotions of the Church an cl. shall give competent exhibition to one scholar: and ' ' On the 15th January, 1562, Thomas Williams, of the Inner Temple, Esq., being chosen Speaker to the lower house, was presented to the Queen, and in his speech to her...took notice of the want of schools ; that at least an hundred were wanting in England which before this time had been. He would have had England flourishing with ten thousand scholars, which the schools in this nation formerly brought up. That from the want of these good schoolmasters sprang up ignorance : and covelousness got the livings by impropriations; which was a decay, he said, of learning, and by it the tree of knowledge grew downward and not upward ; which grew greatly to the dishonour, both of God and the Commonwealth' (Strype). - Cardwell, Donimentary Annals, \. p. ?o. ^ i.e. ^loo.