SCHOOLS AFTER THE REFORMATION
1. A little of the property which had belonged to the religious houses
was saved and turned to useful purposes. Just a very few of the old
alms-houses were allowed to continue their work, like St. Cross at
Winchester, and some schools and colleges were founded.
2. There are some of those schools which bear the name of King Edward
VI. But Edward VI was only a lad of sixteen years of age when he died,
so that he had practically nothing to do with either the good or the
evil which was done in his name. In other towns, besides London, good
men set to work and managed to get back some small part of the property
of old religious houses for school work. In some places they were
allowed to have part of an old ruin, which they patched up and made
to serve as a school-room. This was the case, for instance, at St.
Alban's, where the Lady Chapel of the monastery was the grammar-school
until about twenty-five years ago.
3. It is quite true to say that many of our present =grammar-schools=
rose out of the ashes of the monasteries. But they were not great
buildings to hold scores of scholars. Many of them were only founded
for ten or twelve scholars from a particular town or district. The sum
set apart for a master to teach them was very small, so that he was
usually allowed to take other scholars who paid for their education.
4. These schools had their "ups and downs", but many of them in the
eighteenth century were in a very bad way. Some had scarcely any
scholars, and the buildings were much out of repair. However, most of
them are alive and active to-day, and many of them have histories of
which they may be proud, and a past which should help them to excel in
the future.
5. Children were often taught in the church and =church porch= in
country places. John Evelyn was so taught in the early part of the
seventeenth century, and many more people could read and write than we
sometimes imagine; but knowledge was not within the reach of all.
6. The condition of the poor occupied a good deal of attention, and
the =poor-laws= were used to improve matters in many ways. At Norwich,
for instance, in the year 1632, a children's hospital was provided
for boys between the ages of ten and fourteen. They were to be taught
useful trades, and fed and clothed. For dinner they were to have 6
ounces of bread, 1 pint of beer, and, on three days of the week, 1 pint
of pottage and 6 ounces of beef; on the other four days, 1 ounce of
butter and 2 ounces of cheese. For supper they were to have 6 ounces of
bread, 1 pint of beer, 1 ounce of butter, and 2 ounces of cheese. For
breakfast every day they had 3 ounces of bread, 1/2 ounce of butter,
and 1/2 pint of beer.
7. About the year 1685 the Middlesex magistrates established a "College
for Infants", as they called it, where poor children might be trained
and taught; and the same plan was followed in other places.
8. Then, too, about the same time, we find private persons establishing
=charity schools= for a similar purpose. The boys and girls, however,
in these schools were not always boarded and fed, but lived at home
and went to school day by day. The rules drawn up for them by their
founders seem very quaint and almost laughable to us. We must remember
that there were good reasons for those rules when they were made.
There were charity schools in almost every town, and most of them were
carried on in the old way till well into the nineteenth century.
9. The =dress= of the school-boys looks queer to us, because it is
the style of dress worn when the school was founded. A =blue-coat=
boy wears still the dress worn in the sixteenth century. The little
=charity-school boys= wore leather breeches, coloured stockings, coats
of a quaint cut of brown or blue or green or grey, and flat caps, with
two little pieces of fine linen fluttering under their chins--bands as
they were called. This was the boys' dress of the seventeenth century,
and they wore it long after it was out of fashion. The girls, too, had
frocks and cloaks of a wonderful cut and colour, white aprons, and
"such mob-caps".
10. They went to school in queer old buildings on Sundays and on
week-days. They were often taken to church, where they were perched
up aloft by the organ in dreadfully uncomfortable galleries, so
uncomfortable that it is a wonder that some of them did not fall over
into the church below. There they led the singing--what little there
was. Their hours in school were pretty long, but they managed to get
in a very fair amount of play, and always had time for falling into
mischief.
11. People often laugh at these old-fashioned charity schools, and
the work they did. That is a pity, because they were founded long
before Parliament troubled itself about the education of the people.
All honour to those good old-fashioned men and women who did what they
could to provide teaching and training for poor boys and girls, and to
put them in the way of being able to earn their own living.
=Summary.=--Most of Edward VI _grammar-schools_ were founded out
of small portions of property which had belonged to religious
houses. Generally they were only for a small number of scholars.
In the eighteenth century many of these schools were in a very
poor condition. Most of them now are alive and flourishing. In
the seventeenth century a good many attempts were made to teach
the children of the poor on a small scale. Some took charge of
the children altogether; others, the _charity schools,_ were
day-schools. These lasted without much change till the middle of
the nineteenth century. The blue-coat boys' dress and the dress of
these charity children was the dress of the time when they were
founded.