194

WOOLWICH WORKHOUSE SCHOOL, 1732.

your Majesty on this new Foundation will make us live . . . And live to call you Blessed." Fortunately Queen Anne smiled very graciously on education and on all good works, and helped this beginning of education for the poor greatly in the opening days of the eighteenth century. In 1704 there were 368 children in the workhouse, and 161 had been apprenticed to service, and 6 had died. In 1720 there had been educated and placed forth, since 1701, 1420 children, and in addition 123 had died. In this workhouse, according to Strype, the children were "taught to spin Wool and Flax, to Sow and Knit, to make their own Cloaths, Shoes, and Stockings, and the like Employments; to inure them betimes to labour. They are also taught to read, and such as are capable, to write and cast Accounts; and also the Catechism, to ground them in Principles of Religion and Honesty."

It was presumably also under the Act of 1662 that the Woolwich Vestry set up a workhouse school'. On July 11th, 1732, this Vestry ratified rules which provided that each child in the workhouse " was to have two hours every day in which to learn to read." Doubtless many other early examples of rate-aided education could be gleaned from local records, but these instances suffice to show that the rates were somewhat readily called upon for purposes of education by local authorities, and that the money was not only given to mitigate absolute ignorance, but was actually devoted to higher education. Indeed, in the eighteenth century the Legislature itself was not indisposed to help the cause of education. We have seen one instance in the case of the London workhouses, though it may be doubted if the Act of 1662 was really intended to facilitate the supply of education for the poor.

A second instance is Greenwich Hospital School. This famous school was founded in pursuance of letters patent dated

1 But compare the Hackney Vestry School founded 1613, see p. 192.

GREENWICH HOSPITAL SCHOOL, 1715.

195

Greenwich Hospital School.

March 12th, 1694-5, whereby King William III appointed Commissioners for the purpose of founding at Greenwich a hospital for seamen, their widows and children. According to the Commission, one object of the foundation was "that the Children of such Disabled Seamen And also the Widowes and Children of such seamen as shall happen to be Slain in Sea Service may in some reasonable manner be provided for and Educated." The King granted £2000 per annum towards the carrying on of the Hospital, and a meeting was held at the Guildhall on May 31st, 1695, for the purpose of obtaining further subscriptions. The King referred indirectly to the question of endowing the Hospital in his speeches to Parliament in November, 1694, and November, 16951; and in 1696 the Register Act, by which sixpence per man per month was to be paid out of the wages of all mariners to the Hospital, became law.

It was not, however, until 1715 that, in pursuance of provisions contained in the Commission and the Register Act, the school was started. In that year the Governor and Council of the Hospital ordered that "10 Boys should be instructed in Reading, Writing, and Navigation, by Mr Weston, Mathematical Master in the Town of Greenwich; and put out Apprentices to Masters of ships or others." In 1719 rules were settled by the Directors, and confirmed by a General Court, for the admission, maintenance, and education of the sons of seamen. The school was at first in the Hospital, and in 1731 it contained 60 boys. In 1789 the number had increased to 150 between the ages of eleven and thirteen years. In accordance with a decision of the General Court, in 1783 the school was removed to the existing building, without the walls of the Hospital3.

A further instance is the Foundling Hospital. This

1 Journal of the House of Commons, vol. xi. pp. 171, 339. 2 7 & 8 Will. III. c. 21.

3 See An Historical Account of the Royal Hospital at Greenwich by John Cooke and John Maule, Chaplains, pp. 14, 43, 48, 125-8.

196

FOUNDLING HOSPITAL SCHOOL, 1739.

institution was founded by Royal Charter in 1739 as a Corporation by the name of "The Governors and Guardians of the Hospital for the maintenance and education of exposed and deserted young children." An Act of 1740' confirmed and enlarged the powers of this Corporation. Section 5 enacted "That it shall and may be lawful to and for the said Corporation, or any Person or Persons authorised by them, to receive,.maintain and educate all or as many Children as they shall think fit, into or in any Hospital or Hospitals, House or Houses, which shall by the said Corporation be erected, purchased or hired for such Purposes. . . .' The children could be detained in industry till the age of twentyfour years if males, and if females until marriage or the age of twenty-one years.

A fourth instance is an Act of 1767 for the better regulation of the parish poor children, which enabled the poor parish children of London to be maintained and educated at the expense of the rates.

The dawn of voluntary effort in national education.

49. We have now seen in some slight detail two of the sources from which modern elementary education in England sprang-namely, endowments, ancient and modern, rate-aid and statuteaid and we have noticed that during the last quarter of the seventeenth century and the first quarter of the eighteenth century there was exhibited an activity in relation to the education of the poor which, when the character of the period and the policy of the age are considered, may be regarded as little else than extraordinary, but which was probably a reaction from both. We must now turn to the third and perhaps most important source

1 13 Geo. II. c. 29; see also 7 Geo. III. c. 39.

27 Geo. III. c. 39, ss. 10, 11 and 22. This most important Act (repealed 7 & 8 Vict. c. 101, s. 52) established the principle of "Boardingout" for children received into the workhouse, and created a body called 'The Guardians of the Parish Poor Children" for the effective inspection of children so boarded out.

66

BAXTER'S EDUCATIONAL PROPOSALS, 1674.

197

of modern elementary State education-namely, voluntary effort in the creation of schools which, being unendowed, were exempt from the jurisdiction of the Church, and, being necessary to society, were disregarded by that stern law the letter of which they so frequently infringed. The Act of Uniformity of 1662 pressed with great severity on the dissenting schoolmaster, while the action of the Church in supplementing the law by oppressive diocesan inspection did all that was possible to extinguish voluntary effort. Yet there were not wanting in the Established Church distinguished divines who sympathised greatly with men of the type of Richard Baxter. In 1674 Baxter and Dean Tillotson, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, drew up a "Healing Act" for a union between Conformists and Non-Conformists, and these proposals included freedom for Dissenters under certain circumstances to be schoolmasters. The agreement was approved by the leading Non-Conformists but the Bishops refused to confirm the treaty'. This agreement appears to be of importance in the history of English education, as it to some extent accounts for the development of schools for the poor that could not have existed had the Church insisted on its legal rights. Indeed, it seems more than likely that the earliest English voluntary schools owed their existence to this or some similar agreement.

These earliest schools were due to the efforts of Thomas Gouge (1609-1681). He had held the living of St Sepulchre's Church, London, but was ejected on Bartholomew's Day under the cruel Act of 1662. In 1672 he determined to attempt the evangelisation of Wales, and he received the permission

1 See Birch's Life of Tillotson, p. xxix., and Reliquiæ Baxteriana, Part II. pp. 109-140, 156-160.

2 The obscurely reported case of The Rector and Parishioners of St George's, Hanover Square, v. Steuart (1740, Strange's Reports, p. 1126), was at one time considered to have decided that "a charity school is not within ecclesiastical cognizance"; see Burns's Ecclesiastical Law, vol. III. pp. 558 (footnote), 573. But in Phillimore's Ecclesiastical Law, vol. II. p. 1409, the case is quite differently interpreted.

3 Was this undertaken in ignorance of the evangelising efforts made

WELSH UNDENOMINATIONAL TRUST, 1674.

198 of the Bishops to undertake this work. He preached, catechised, and largely distributed the Bible, the Liturgy, The Whole Duty of Man, and other books printed in Welsh. When he first visited South Wales "he inquired in each town how many were willing that their children should learn to read and write English, and to repeat the catechism. He engaged teachers for both sexes, paying them at the rate of 1d. or 2d. a week per scholar'.'

Establishment of schools in Wales.

At midsummer, 1674, a Trust was formed to found schools and distribute religious literature in Wales. The printed Report of the Trust, dated Lady Day, 1675, was signed by Tillotson, Whichcot, Ford, Durham, Stillingfleet, Meriton, Gouge, Pool, and Firmin. Bates, Owtram, Patrick, Burton, Baxter, Fowler, Griffith and others also aided the Trust. This Report was issued in the same year as the agreement was arrived at between Baxter and Tillotson; and in view of this fact, and of the further fact that many of the signatories to the Trust were distinguished Dissenters, it seems difficult to resist the inference that a connexion existed between the Gouge schools and that agreement. Tillotson contributed £50 towards the printing of the Welsh Bible, which appeared in 1677. It was an octavo edition of 8000 copies, of which 1000 were given to the poor and the rest sold at 4s. apiece. By 1674, Gouge, as the result of two years' work, had brought 500 Welsh children to school; and at the date of the Report in 1675 there were 1,850 children at school, of whom 538 were educated by voluntary Welsh subscriptions3. We are

by the Commission appointed by the Republican Parliament in 1649 and which was at work as late as 1653, less than twenty years before Gouge started his schools? As has been seen the work of the Republican Commission survives in the form of the Cardigan Free Grammar School. It would seem that Gouge in Wales must have met with some traces of the Republican educational movement and of the work of Vavasor Powell (1617-1670). If this is so it brings our modern State-aided system into touch with the system of State-aid for education introduced by Cromwell. 1 Dictionary of National Biography, tit. Gouge.

2 Ibid.