160 JERSEY IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. At an early date the National Society supplemented the Parochial schools. Nine building grants were made by the English Treasury Board between 1835 and 1840'. The Manx Legislature seconded the efforts of the Imperial Government. By an Act of 1851 it made better provision for schoolmasters and school-management. By the Elementary Education Act, 1872, an Education Board and school committees were formed, and the principles of the English Act of 1870 were adopted. An Act of 1878 made attendance compulsory under the new system. This was supplemented by Acts of 1881 and 1884. The various Acts were consolidated and amended by the Education Act, 1893, which defined Elementary Education. This Act was amended in 1898, and by an Act of 1899 the present Council of Education assumed control. Education in Jersey. A brief note must be made with respect to education in the Island of Jersey. The control of education by the Church was as complete in Jersey as in the Isle of Man. Though probably customary parochial schools under the entire control of the clergy existed in Jersey from very early times, it does not seem possible to trace their existence as public schools to a date earlier than the beginning of the seventeenth century. But schools of the grammar school type can be traced farther back. King Henry VII., by letters patent dated November 15th, 14962, confirmed the establishment and endowment of the free grammar schools of St Magloire (now St Maunelier) in the parish of St Saviour's, and St Anastase in the parish of St Peter's. By this patent the founders were empowered to appoint masters for the teaching of grammar and the other lesser liberal sciences-presumably grammar and the Quadrivium-and to make regulations for the foundations. The future masters were to be appointed by the dean and 1 Report of the Committee of Council on Education 1864-5, pp. 538-9. 2 Falle's Account of Jersey, p. 222 THE UNIVERSITIES OF SAUMUR AND OXFORD. 161 clergy of the Island. As late as the end of the seventeenth century an attempt was made to vest the collation of masters in lay hands, and Charles de Carteret, Seigneur of Trinity, successfully claimed the right before the Court of Jersey. On appeal to the Privy Council this decision was reversed on November 16th, 1693, and the collation was declared to be in the dean and clergy of the Island'. These grammar schools were supplemented by special endowments that enabled Jersey scholars to attend the English universities. Such provision did not, however, exist before the beginning of the seventeenth century. In the last years of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, Laurens Baudains endeavoured to found a Jersey college of a university type. The scheme failed; but in the next reign Baudains, with the help of other persons and with the sanction of letters patent from the Crown, founded 'le don de Laurens Baudains'-a fund that enabled young Jersey men of ability and small means to go to Oxford or Cambridge. Before the existence of this educational foundation it was the practice for those who desired a university career to go to the University of Saumur where they acquired both good French and Calvinistic theology. It was to this connexion of the Jersey clergy with the University of Saumur that led to the separation of the Church in Jersey from the Established Church of England. The Islands were under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Bishop of Coutances until the reign of Queen Elizabeth. In 1499 the Islands had been transferred by Pope Alexander VI. to the diocese of Winchester; but this Bull had never been acted upon, and as late as April 15th, 1550, the modified authority of the French Bishop was recognized by the English Crown. We find, however, that before this date the inhabitants of Jersey had conformed to the Reformed Church of England, though the Papist element was not destroyed and a 1 Lequesne's Constitutional History of Jersey, p. 139. 2 See Acts of the Privy Council of England (1547–50), p. 412. 162 PAROCHIAL SCHOOLS IN JERSEY, 1623. temporary revival of Roman Catholicism took place in the reign of Queen Mary I. The Reformation in Jersey, owing to the presence of French Reformers' and to the Calvinism introduced by the students from Saumur, followed the Scottish rather than the English precedent. The Presbyterian discipline was introduced, and a synod for the Islands was held on June 28th, 1554. In her answer to a petition, Queen Elizabeth, by a loosely worded Order in Council dated August 7th, 1565, was supposed by the clergy to have acquiesced in the new discipline2; and James I., on August 8th, 1603, confirmed what he believed to have been the spirit of Elizabeth's Order. The Island was during the next few years in considerable ecclesiastical disorder, and in 1619 it was found desirable to revive the office of Dean of the Island. With the object, moreover, of obtaining a settled system of Church government, the ministers of the Island were requested to draft a code of canons and constitutions to be submitted to the Archbishop of Canterbury (Abbot), the Bishop of Lincoln (Williams), and the Bishop of Winchester (Andrews). These prelates revised the draft code, and as amended it was accepted by the clergy of the Island, and received the Royal Assent on June 30th, 1623. Canons 40 and 41 were as follow: Jersey educational DES MAISTRES D'ESCHOLES. "40. Il y aura un Maistre d'Eschole en chasque Paroisse, chosi par le Ministre, Surveillans, & principaux d'icelle, & par aprés presenté au Doyen pour canons, 1623. estre authorizé en cette Charge; & ne sera loisible à aucun de l'exercer sans y estre ainsy apellé : & les Ministres auront soin de les visiter, & exhorter à faire leur Devoir. 1 See Lequesne's Constitutional History of Jersey, pp. 145-55. 2 See Falle's Account of Jersey, p. 160, and Lequesne's Constitutional History of Jersey, pp. 152, 162. THE LAST LINK WITH FRANCE. 163 "41. Ils useront de toute laborieuse diligence à instruire les Enfans à lire, escrire, prier Dieu, respondre au Catéchisme; les duiront aux bonnes Mœurs, les conduiront au Presche, & Prieres Publiques, les y faisant comporter comme il appartient'." These parochial schools appear to have existed long before the passing of these canons, which, in effect, merely established them upon a legal basis. The reunion of the Church in Jersey with the Established Church of England was, in a measure, rendered secure by the fact that the scholars intended for orders in Jersey now went to Oxford or Cambridge, and not to Saumur. The foundation of Laurens Baudains was soon supplemented by the Established Church itself. In 1637 the Archbishop of Canterbury was enabled to endow three fellowships at Oxford for the Islands, and on April 1st of that year we find Sir Philip Carteret, Deputy Governor, and the Jurats recommending a candidate for the first fruits of that gift.' This particular appointment is important, because it shows the transition stage in the university education of the youth of Jersey. The recommendation concluded with these significant words: "We beseech your Grace to accept him, as he has left his hopes of preferment in the University of Saumur, in France, where he has proceeded Master of Arts with good approbation"." These fellowships were subsequently supplemented by the foundation by George Morley (1597-1684), the Calvinistic Bishop of Winchester, of five scholarships at Pembroke College, Oxford. Thus Oxford took the place of Saumur as the University of Jersey. The educational system of Jersey was not worse than that which obtained in England. Indeed, Falle, the historian of Jersey, could write in the early part of the eighteenth 1 Falle's Account of Jersey, pp. 166, 214. Addenda (1625-49), p. 555. 164 JERSEY AND STATE EDUCATION. century, “That here, even among the meaner sort of people of either sex, there are few but can read and write, fewer indeed than are commonly seen elsewhere." But he complained bitterly of the want of a public library: "reading would give our gentlemen juster notions of things, enlarge their minds, and render them more useful and serviceable to their country'." The system of Church education remained in force in Jersey until the beginning of the nineteenth century, when the great English school societies extended their operations to this Island. The first Government building grant was made in 1836, when the Gorey National School received the sum of £100o. From this date elementary education in Jersey may be considered to have followed the normal English course of development, annual grants having followed building grants as in England. By a "Règlement" dated August 9th, 1872, and passed as a result of the discontinuance of the annual grants from the Privy Council, a system of national elementary education analogous to that established in England in 1870 came into operation throughout the Island. These active educational movements in the Isle of Man and in Jersey have been referred to at the end of the present chapter for the purpose of leading up to the series of events which were destined to revive national education in England and which began, with the dimmest of dim beginnings, toward the end of the seventeenth century. 1 Falle's Account of Jersey, pp. 177, 178. In 1736 Philip Falle presented the Island with his collection of books, the beginning of a large public library. 2 Report of the Committee of Council on Education, 1864-5, p. 538. 3 Reference to the history of education in the Empire of India has been omitted from this chapter, as the great movement which began with the petition of the chaplains at Calcutta for the establishment of schools in 1788, and which secured State support by the Charter Act, 1813, could not be adequately treated here. A slight but interesting sketch of the subject is given in Mr R. W. Frazer's British India, pp. 384–390. |