Apprentices
From many of these old-fashioned schools boys and girls were
apprenticed. Connected with old parishes there are still funds for
placing out boys and girls to trades and crafts. All through the
Middle Ages, and right on into modern times, children were set to
work when quite young, and it was a common custom to send them away
from home for this purpose. The children of the upper classes, the
boys especially, were trained in the households of other nobles and
squires. The idea was to bring them up "hardy", though to us it
seems a somewhat unnatural way of doing it. An Italian, who visited
England about the year 1500, was much struck by this English
custom, and he did not at all approve of such young children being
given over to the bringing up by strangers. Both boys and girls
from quite well-to-do homes were very often thus sent out, when
they were between seven and nine years of age, and apprenticed for
seven or nine years, not only to learn some trade or craft, but to
private houses where they were set to do menial and drudging work
of all sorts. The idea was "that they might learn better manners"
than they would do at home. In many wealthy homes it is still the
practice to send boys to boarding-school when they reach ten years
of age for the greater part of each year, away from home and home
influence, before they are sent on to a public school and, later,
to a university.
All through the Middle Ages the only way by which a man could
become a craftsman was by being first of all an apprentice, and the
rules by which a lad was bound to a master were very strict. Things
did not alter much in this respect in the sixteenth, seventeenth,
and eighteenth centuries. An apprentice was always bound for seven
years in the presence of magistrates. The master had to find his
apprentice in food, clothing, lodging, and to instruct him in his
art, or "mystery" as it was called. The apprentice lived in his
master's house, and was bound to serve him.
[Illustration: _Apprentice, Sixteenth Century. From a
contemporary woodcut_]
His master could chastise him if he was idle or "saucy", and even
have him sent to the house of correction for further punishment.
Both masters and apprentices could complain of each other to
the magistrates at the Quarter Sessions, and the hearing of the
complaints often took up a lot of time. According to many of the
complaints, of which records still exist, some of the apprentices
must have had rather a hard time--"seven years, hard". Some
complained of having to eat mouldy cheese and rotten meat; others,
of their ragged clothes; others, that their masters beat them with
pokers, hammers, pint-pots, to say nothing of whips and sticks;
prevented them from going to church; and others, that their masters
turned them out of doors, or ran away and left them. The masters,
on their side, often complain that their apprentices are idle, that
they rob them, that they stop out at night and keep company with
bad characters, and so on. So it seems they did not always get on
well together.
But then there were the others--those who made the best of it.
Where the master did his duty, and the apprentice took pains to
learn, they got on pretty well together. It was not an easy life
for the apprentice, but it made him a craftsman.
The children of those who belonged to the poorer classes were
apprenticed to unskilled occupations in a similar way, and if the
parents neglected to do this the parish authorities interfered and
found places and masters for them.
In some parts of the country there were little schools where
children were taught straw-plait and lace-making. Some of these
lasted right down to days which people still living can remember,
in Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire.
[Illustration: _Apprentices, Eighteenth Century. Two apprentices
at the looms of their master, a silk-weaver of Spitalfields,
London. A striking contrast in industry and idleness. After an
engraving by Hogarth published in 1787_]