The English: A Social History, 1066–1945 (Text Only)

by Christopher Hibbert

  The vomiting of pins was, apparently, a sure sign that the Devil’s agency was at work. In 1716 Mary Hicks and her daughter Elizabeth, who was just eleven, were hanged for having, on their own confession, sold their souls to the Devil and obliged their neighbours to perform this painful miracle. But a man who accused a woman of making him vomit pins and of taking away his appetite was eventually arraigned at Surrey Assizes as a cheat and impostor. This was, however, not before he had succeeded in getting the woman convicted by Sir Thomas Lane, a firm believer in her evil powers. The witch’s accuser could only get relief, so he told Sir Thomas, by scratching her. He was told to scratch her to prove his point. He did so and, immediately regaining his appetite, ate a big piece of bread and cheese.26

  In 1736 the statutes against witchcraft were repealed but for many years suspicions continued to centre upon any persons whose eccentricities or secretiveness had aroused the hostility of their neighbours. Ducking and measuring a woman’s weight against that of a Bible were still used to discover witches long after the legal punishments had disappeared; while in the middle of the eighteenth century villagers still attacked women whom they considered to be in league with the Devil. In 1751 a notice appeared on market day at Winslow, Leighton Buzzard and Hemel Hempstead to the effect that a man and a woman were ‘to be publicly ducked at Tring for their crimes’. The woman was Ruth Osborn who was suspected of casting a spell over a dairyman and his calves. On the day appointed for her ducking she and her husband took sanctuary in the church from which the crowd dragged them to a pond, wrapped in sheets and with their thumbs tied to their toes. The woman died immediately, her husband a few days later. The man, a chimney-sweep, held primarily responsible for their death was executed and his body was hung in chains and remained suspended as a warning to others for a number of years. Charges arising out of the drowning of witches were, nevertheless, not uncommon in country districts up till the beginning of the nineteenth century.27

  24 Schoolboys and Schoolgirls

  Throughout the country in the seventeenth century there were still thousands of people like Thomas Tryon who got no education because his father, though ‘an honest sober man of good reputation’, had so many children that he was ‘forced to bring them all to work betimes’.1 There were, however, increasing numbers of schools for poor children to attend when their labour could be spared. From 1536 parishes had been required to give basic reading lessons and religious instruction to all children; and the duty of providing these lessons usually fell upon the parson, as it did, for instance, at Wigston Magna in Leicestershire where £14 from village funds was paid to the vicar and an assistant to teach poor local boys.2 Lessons were often given in church. John Evelyn recalled receiving his first lessons in the church porch at Wotton.

  Licences were also given to laymen ‘to teach boys the abcedarium and English letters’, writing and arithmetic. William Swetnam, a fishmonger, was granted a licence by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1596 to ‘teach and instruct children in the principles of reading … and also to write and cast accounts’.3 For children up to the age of seven there were dame schools in which instruction was given in such skills as knitting and spinning, though rarely in reading, and scarcely ever in writing; while for parents who wanted their children taught at home there were textbooks available ‘for the private instruction of little children and more ignorant servants’.

  Children were instructed with the help of pictorial rhyming alphabets, and of hornbooks, children’s primers consisting of a sheet containing the letters of the alphabet mounted on a wooden frame, shaped like a table-tennis bat, and covered by a sheet of transparent horn. The earliest hornbooks had letters, both in large and small type, printed beneath a cross, hence they were known as Christ’s Cross Rows. Beneath the letters was the Lord’s Prayer and this was followed by a row of Roman or Arabic numerals or both. The hornbook was often attached by its handle to the child’s belt. Yet, despite the pupil’s familiarity with it, it frequently proved ineffective. ‘This course we see hath been very effectual in a short time with some ripe-witted children,’ wrote one critic of its general usefulness. ‘But others … have been thus learning a whole year together and though they have been much chid and beaten for want of heed could scarce tell six of their letters at twelve months’ end.’4

  After leaving their dame school the brighter children might pass on, perhaps through the lower or ‘petties’ form of a grammar school – in which reading, writing and the rudiments of grammar were taught by undermasters or pupil-ushers – to one of the country’s grammar schools. The numbers of these had much grown since the Middle Ages. There were, indeed, more per head of population at this time than there were to be in the Victorian age. By 1547 there was a grammar school in every sizable market town; and a study of ten counties in the 180 years between 1480 and 1660 has revealed the foundation of 410 new schools.5

  Some of the country’s most famous schools were founded in this period. Shrewsbury in 1551, Repton in 1559, Rugby in 1567, Uppingham in 1584, Harrow in 1590. Whitgift, Oakham, Gresham’s and Tonbridge were also founded in the sixteenth century; Blundell’s in 1604, Charterhouse in 1611. Other new schools were of highly variable quality. Some, particularly those which, like the school at Alford, Lincolnshire, would admit only pupils who could ‘read perfectly and write legibly’, gained as creditable a national reputation as Shrewsbury and Repton where the sons of the gentry were sent as boarders. Yet there were more than a few which could only attract boys who could not find places elsewhere.

  Several of the old endowed schools which offered free places to poor children also provided places for children who paid for their lessons by cleaning the classrooms: at Manchester Grammar School two poor scholars were paid to sweep the premises twice a week and at Lichfield six pupils received £1 6s 8d a year to buy books provided they kept the school clean and well dusted.6 Moreover, since the establishment of Christ’s Hospital, other similar establishments had been founded all over the country, at Bristol, Exeter, Plymouth, Norwich, Nottingham, York, Reading and elsewhere. The children at these schools were usually provided with uniforms, poor boys at the charity school at Skipton in Yorkshire being issued with ‘coat, waistcoat, breeches and round cap of purple cloth, two pairs of purple stockings, one pair of shoes, two shirts, two neckcloths and two handkerchiefs’.7

  After the formation of the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge in 1698 there was a great increase in the number of charity schools in the country. The society itself, the first of whose stated purposes was ‘to promote and encourage the erection of charity schools in all parts of England and Wales’, established six schools in the first six months of its existence; and by 1704 in its schools in London and Westminster alone there were 1386 boys and 745 girls in attendance.

  This school being only designed for the Benefit of such Poor Children, whose Parents or Friends are not able to give them Learning, [the statutes of one of these charity schools decreed] the Master shall not receive any money of the children’s friends … [upon] any pretence whatsoever; nor shall the Master teach any children beside the poor of this Parish; but shall content himself with his Salary, upon pain of forfeiting his place.8

  A typical subscription form declares:

  Whereas Profaneness and Debauchery are greatly owing to a gross Ignorance of the Christian Religion especially among the poorer sort; and whereas nothing is more likely to promote the practice of Christianity and Virtue than an early and pious Education of Youth; and whereas many poor people are desirous of having their Children taught … [this school will afford them] a Christian and Useful education.9

  There were lessons from seven o’clock in the morning to eleven, and from one o’clock to five in the summer; from eight to eleven, and one to four in winter. Before and after lessons there were prayers; reading was concentrated upon the psalter and the Bible; and arithmetic was taught only to those who had mastered reading. Strong emphasis was placed upon good diction and morality; and mas
ters were enjoined to discourage and correct, ‘by all proper methods’, ‘the Beginnings of Vice, and particularly Lying, Swearing, Cursing and taking God’s name in vain’.10 In attaining these ends the masters were to consider corporal punishment as a last resort.11 They were also required to be:

  A Member of the Church of England, of a sober life and conversation, and not under the age of 25 years.

  One that frequents the Holy Communion.

  One that hath a good Government of himself and his Passions.

  One of a meek temper and humble Behaviour.

  One who can write a good Hand and who understands the grounds of Arithmetic …

  One who keeps good order in his Family.12

  In the sixteenth century teaching had been an ill-paid and not highly respected profession. ‘Our calling creeps low,’ wrote Richard Mulcaster in 1581, ‘and hath pain for companion.’ Rarely considered a suitable full-time career for a well-educated man, it was practised mostly by those looking for other work, clergy waiting for a benefice, men who had failed in other occupations, or the infirm. One John Bagford, ‘a teacher of little children to spell and read English’, was ‘a very sickly, weak and impotent person, by reason whereof [he was] altogether uncapable to follow any other employment’.13 A survey of schoolmasters in Worcestershire has shown that only twenty per cent of them were teaching full-time as a career.14 The experiences of the author of Mount Tabor were not exceptional:

  Before Master Downhale came to be our Master in Christ-school [he wrote of his schooldays in the 1560s], an ancient Citizen of no great learning was our schoolmaster; whose manner was to give us out several lessons in the evening, by construing it to every form, and in the next morning to examine us thereupon … Now when the two highest forms were despatched some of them whom we called prompters would come to sit in our seats of the lower forms, and so being at our elbows would put into our mouths answers to our master’s questions, as he walked up and down by us; and so by our prompters’ help, we made shift to escape correction; but understood little to profit by it.15

  Schoolmasters necessarily had very short holidays and their pay compared unfavourably even with the small stipends of the lower clergy. At Melton Mowbray in about 1600 the grammar schoolmaster was paid £10 a year by the town and the usher £5. At Rotherham the schoolmaster of the free school, ‘a bacheler of arte of honest conversacion’, also had £10, though he received additional allowances of 12s ‘for his gowne; for the fyre to his chamber, 3s 4d and his Barber and launder free’. The master of the song-school at Rotherham was even more poorly paid at £6 3s 4d a year; while some ushers had even less than this. In 1583 the usher at St Bees, Cumbria, received only £3 6s 8d.16

  Even with all the additional payments he could lay his hands on, for teaching ‘modern’ subjects as extras, writing letters for the illiterate and accepting bribes from rich parents for giving their children preferential treatment, the sixteenth-century schoolmaster was hard put to it to make a reasonable living.

  By the middle of the seventeenth century, however, higher standards were expected of schoolmasters than in the past. At Chigwell in 1629 the Latin schoolmaster was required to be ‘a graduate of one of the universities not under seven and twenty years of age, a man skilful in the Greek and Latin tongues, a good poet, of a sound religion, neither papist nor puritan, of a grave behaviour, of a sober and honest conversation, no tippler nor haunter of alehouses, no puffer of tobacco, and above all, that he be apt to teach and severe in his government’.17 Twenty-five years later ordinances were issued requiring the dismissal of teachers found guilty of ‘profane cursing or swearing, perjury … adultery, fornication, drunkenness, common haunting of taverns or alehouses, frequent quarrelling or fighting, frequent playing at cards or dice, profaning of the Sabbath day or [encouraging or practising] any Whitsun ales, wakes, morris dances, may poles, stage plays or such like licentious practices’.18

  And schoolmasters did tend, in general, to be more conscientious and less impatient than they had been formerly. In many schools flogging was still the principal form of discipline. At Eton in the 1660s, when the use of tobacco was considered highly effective in warding off the plague, one boy recalled that he had never been ‘so whipped in his life as he was one morning for not smoking’.19 But nearly all seventeenth-century writers urged that the birch should be used in moderation. ‘The great indiscretion and intemperance of masters hath brought a very great contempt and hatred upon the profession,’ it was observed in 1661. ‘It doth generally more hurt than good, by making those that are dull more dull and dispiriting the ingenious.’20 This belief was by then quite widely held; and schoolmasters were consequently much more effective instructors.

  Adam Martindale, the son of a Lancashire yeoman, who was born in 1623, had sad experiences with a succession of incompetent masters from the age of seven when he was sent to school in St Helen’s, two miles from his father’s house, ‘a great way for a little fat, short-legged lad to travel twice a day’. His first teacher was interested only in money; his second was ‘an old humdrum curate’, a ‘simpleton’ and a ‘tippler’; his third a woman who had a mere ‘smattering of Latin’; his fourth a very poor, young married man who showed open favouritism to boys whose parents could afford to give him presents; his fifth ‘beat the children passionately for no good reason’. At the age of twenty-one, in 1644, he himself became a master at Over Whitley Grammar School in Cheshire, a ‘newly founded school’. ‘The income was not very great but well paid,’ Martindale wrote in his autobiography, ‘… and mine accidental gettings (having a full school and pretty store of rich men’s sons in it), and opportunities for earning monies by making writings for neighbours were a good adition to my salary … My scholars were, for all my youth, submissive and reverent.’ 21

  By this time teachers like Martindale were not exceptional, and boys were as likely as not to be as fortunate as William Woolaston of Shenstone in Leicestershire who was born in 1659:

  When I was in the tenth year of my age, and had only learned at home to read, there came a straggling fellow (from whence I never knew) to Shenston … and opened a Latin school for country lads, such as he was capable of teaching. To this man I went the first hour after I had heard of him … and since [then I have] always placed this man’s coming amongst the particular providences of my life.22

  Improvement in the standards of teaching was appropriately matched by an increase in literacy, although the increase was slow and the rate of illiteracy was still high among women and in country districts. It has been calculated that over three-quarters of the population of London was literate in the late Tudor and early Stuart periods; but that over the country as a whole about two-thirds of the people were still illiterate; and since reading was taught before writing, and sometimes to the exclusion of writing altogether, many people who could read could not even write their own name.23 By the end of the seventeenth century, however, the rate of literacy in England had risen considerably, though whether steadily or by fits and starts is uncertain;24 and in the 1640s, the percentage of students in the country undergoing higher education was not again to be reached until after the First World War.25 Visitors to London in 1641 were astonished by the number of bookshops and by the large congregations of people who listened to sermons and took notes. Foreigners also noted the pains which poor people took to obtain schooling for their children.

  ‘Every man strains his fortune to keep his children at school,’ wrote the Royalist James Howell in a letter in 1651. ‘The cobbler will clout it till midnight, the porter will carry burdens till his bones crack again, the ploughman will pinch both back and belly to give his son learning.’26 Other contemporary observers agreed with him; and by 1707 there was said to be ‘scarce any Husband-man’ who would ‘take his son from the school to the Plow, till he [had] got some smattering’ of Latin.27 John Bunyan was sent to school. ‘Notwithstanding the meanness … of my Parents,’ he wrote, ‘it pleased God to put it into their Hearts to put me to s
chool, to learn both to read and write.’

  Charges in schools varied widely. Most, even those that termed themselves ‘free’, made some charge, though this might be as little as 4d as a registration or admission fee. Others were extremely expensive, charging as much as £18 a year plus £12 a year for clothing. Boarding accommodation was rarely offered, pupils who did not live in the town, being found lodgings near the school at about 2s a week, including laundry. Where boarding accommodation was offered, it was often as uncomfortable as that provided at Bramley grammar school where rats ran through the dormitories and the wind blew snow through the holes in the roof at night.28 Some schools adjusted their charges in accordance with the status of the parents. At Shrewsbury a lord paid a 10s fee for the admission of his son, a knight 6s 8d, a gentleman 3s 4a for his eldest son, 2s 6d for younger sons. Men of lower degree were charged 2s, a fee reduced to 1s if they were natives of Shropshire and 8d if they lived in Shrewsbury. Burgesses of Shrewsbury paid no more than 4d.29 At the Merchant Taylors’ there were 100 free places for the poor, fifty places for boys whose parents were prepared to pay 2s 6d a quarter, and 100 for those who could afford 5s a quarter.30

  In all schools the curriculum was still largely devoted to Latin, an emphasis that led ‘manie children to bee worse’ in English construction after two or three years at school than they were when they started. ‘You shall have scholars almost ready to go the University,’ one critic of this emphasis on Latin wrote, ‘who yet can hardly tell you the number of pages, sections, chapters or other divisions in their books to find out what they should.’ In some schools, as at Charterhouse from 1627, pupils were beginning to be taught ‘to cypher and cast an account, especially those that are less capable of learning, and fittest to be put to trades’. But it was not until later on in the seventeenth century that ‘modern’ subjects were recognized as being important enough to take the place of lessons previously devoted exclusively to Latin, and even then parents were often charged extra for these additions to the old curriculum.