124 THE PAROCHIAL SCHOOLS ACTS, 1803, 1861. private teachers were considered sufficient for the city of Edinburgh. This licensing of private teachers lasted well into the nineteenth century. In the case of parochial schools, however, the system was gradually supplemented by voluntary schools. In 1803 it was necessary to pass an Act' regulating the salaries of masters in parochial schools and to secure the provision of adequate school-houses. In 1834 the first Government Grant (£10,000) was made2. The Parochial and Burgh Schools Act, 18613, introduced some needed changes. It gave the heritors power to establish female teachers and it largely modified the provisions of the Act of 1803 by which schoolmasters were required to sign the Confession of Faith and Formula of the Church of Scotland. The Act substituted Modification of Church control in 1861. for the Confession the form of Declaration contained in the twelfth section. The statutory right of superintendence of schools was not taken from the ministers by this Act, and certain powers of management and superintendence were given by it expressly to the Presbyteries. The denominational question has, however, never really arisen in Scotland, and she can claim the distinction of having given a large proportion of her children, in every parish of the kingdom, for two hundred consecutive years a sound elementary education. Irish education and the State. 4 24. When we turn to Ireland we find the same course of development. By a Statute of the Irish Parliament of 1537 it was provided that any person on admission to any dignity, benefice, office or promotion spiritual, should take a corporal oath to "endeavour himself to learne, instruct, and teach the English tongue, to all and everie being under his rule, cure order, or governance, and in likewise shall bid the beades in the English tongue, and preach the word of God in English, if he can preach, and also for his own part shall use and exercise 1 43 Geo. III. c. 54. 3 24 & 25 Vict. c. 107. 2 4 & 5 Will. IV. c. 84. THE IRISH EDUCATION ACT, 1537. 125 the English order and habite, and also provoke as many as he may to the same, and also shall keepe, or cause to be kept within the place, territorie, or paroch where he shall have preeminence, rule, benefice or promotion, a schole for to learne English, if any children of his paroch come to him to learne the same, taking for the keeping of the same schole, such convenient stipend or salarie, as in the said land is accustomably used to be taken." This Act, which reads as rather confirming a custom than instituting a system of parish schools, was, it would seem, purely political. The Irish monasteries had only been suppressed two years, Ireland was violently anti-English, and the first English king of Ireland took this not uneconomic step to anglicise a turbulent and baronial land. The teaching of English and not of letters was the object of the Act, but it nevertheless has an importance in this history of State education as one of the earliest legislative Acts directing under legal penalties the teaching of youth. The Act provided that if anyone took the oath and failed to observe it, he should be fined for the first offence 6s. 8d., for the second offence he should be fined 20s., and if on a third occasion he failed to observe his oath his benefice was void. Thus we see that not only in the mid-sixteenth century was education in Ireland entirely in the hands of the Church, but also that the State stood behind the Church and enforced national education of a kind through the medium of the Church. Irish Educa tion Act, 1537. Subsequent legislation in no way secularised the educational position, for by "An Act for the Erection of Free Schooles" of 1570', passed by the Irish Parliament, the predominance of the clergy was even more strongly affirmed. This Act, by the terms of its preamble, applied to those "whose ignorance in these so high pointes touching their damnation proceedeth only of lack of good bringing up of the 1 12 Eliz. c. 1. 126 THE IRISH FREE SCHOOLS ACT, 1570. youth of this realm either in publique or private schooles, where through good discipline they might be taught to avoide these lothsome and horrible errours." A free school in every Irish diocese. It enacted by its first section "That there shall be from henceforth a free schoole within every diocesse of this realm of Ireland, and that the schoolemaster shall be an Englishman, or of the English birth of this realm." It is, perhaps, a somewhat melancholy reflection that, at this late date, the exigencies of the position rendered it necessary for the Irish birth of Ireland to be excluded by an Irish Parliament from the privilege of teaching. This reflection is, however, lost (at least to educationalists), in the thought that the free school was open to all. The Act further provided that the Archbishops of Armagh and Dublin and the Bishops of Meath and Kildare, were to appoint the schoolmasters in their dioceses, but that in all others the "lord deputie, or other governour or governours of this realm for the time being" should appoint "from time to time for ever.' The Act next directed "the schoolehouse for every diocesse to be builded and erected in the principall shire towne of the diocesse, where schoolehouses be not alreadie builded, at the costes and charges of the whole diocesse, without respect of freedomes, by the devise and oversight of the ordinaries of the diocesse, or of the vicars generall (sede vacante) and the Shiriffe of the shire." Finally it enacted that the Lord Deputy with the advice of his council should appoint the schoolmaster's salary, of which one-third was to be found by the Ordinary of the Diocese and two-thirds by the parsons, vicars, prebendaries and other ecclesiastical persons by an equal contribution to be made by the said Ordinary. In the matter of statutory enactments for the provision of schools, we see therefore that Ireland, in theory at any rate, stood on not altogether an inferior basis to Scotland. Indeed the imperative tone of the Legislature is more noticeable in the case of Ireland than that of Scotland, while the education is IRISH ACT OF UNIFORMITY, 1665. 127 placed exclusively in the hands of the Church; though it must be remarked that the funds for school-building were collected with the aid of a lay official-the sheriff1. The Restoration conformity legislation was applied to Ireland equally with England and Scotland, and a reference to such legislation will in point of date bring these comparative notes on the three Kingdoms into line. By an Act of 16652, it was provided that Deans and other dignitaries, heads and fellows of Colleges or Hospitals etc., "and every parson, vicar, curate, lecturer, and every other person in holy orders, and every schoolmaster keeping any publique or private school, and every person instructing or teaching any youth in any house or private family as a tutor or schoolmaster" should subscribe the proper declaration. Section 6 required schoolmasters and private tutors to take the oath of allegiance and supremacy which was to be administered by the Ordinary. A penalty was imposed on schoolmasters and others who taught without licence ("for which he shall pay twelve pence onely"), and before subscription and acknowledgment, and before taking the oath of allegiance and supremacy. For the first offence against this provision the schoolmaster was subject to three months' imprisonment without bail or mainprise, and for a second or subsequent offences a similar term coupled with a fine of £5. Conformity legislation, 1665. We thus see that at this point the history of education in England, Scotland and Ireland respectively touched. Complete and irksome control by State and Church over education was exercised in the three Kingdoms, and the result was, as we have seen, a temporary suspension of education. In matters of detail Ireland had the chief cause for complaint. The distinction between Norman and native born, which was 1 See also 7 Will. III. c. 4; 8 Geo. I. c. 12, s. 9; 5 Geo. II. c. 4, s. 9, and 50 Geo. III. c. 33, ss. 1, 2. The endowment of Trinity College, Dublin, and the foundation of a Free School were undertaken by the Commonwealth Parliament. See Act 74 of 1649. 2 17 & 18 Chas. II. c. 6, s. 5. 128 IRISH EDUCATIONAL SOCIETIES. abolished in England in the fourteenth century, still existed in Ireland in the seventeenth century, and the charge for a licence to teach, which had been abolished in England in the year 1200 A.D., was still maintained in Ireland at this late date. Uneconomic educational administration in Ireland produced its inevitable result. In the last quarter of the eighteenth century the character and amount of education had fallen so low as to create alarm among both legislators and religious societies. The compulsory legislation had in a great measure failed. In the year 1788 we find that out of 838 benefices only 352 had schools in conformity with the Act of 15371. But before that date a new movement was in progress. In 1786 the Society of Friends founded a school society in Dublin, and these schools seem to have welcomed children of all denominations. On January 18th, 1787, the Duke of Rutland in his speech as Lord-Lieutenant to the Irish Low state of education, 1786. Parliament said: "I hope that some liberal and extensive plan for the general improvement of education will be matured for an early execution." On April 18th, 1788, On April 18th, 1788, a Bill presented on March 3rd, 1788, to the Irish Parliament received the Royal assent. This Act provided for the appointment of a Commission to consider the state of education in Ireland3. In 1806 a further commission was appointed by an Act of the Imperial Parliament to enquire into "the general funds and revenues granted for the purposes of education, and into the state and conditions of all schools in Ireland" (July 21st, 1806). The first chairman of this Commission, which presented fourteen Reports between 1806 and 1813, was the sixth Duke of Bedford, Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland 1806-75. 1 See Report on Foundation Schools (Ireland), 1838, pp. 4–6. 3 28 Geo. III. c. 15. 4 46 Geo. III. c. 122. 5 The father of Lord John Russell. |