VISITATION ARTICLES AND EDUCATION.

69

wanteth? and by whose default? whether they be diligently and godly brought up in the fear of God, and wholesome doctrine? whether any of them have been received for money or reward, and by whom? whether the statutes, foundations, and other ordinances touching the same grammar school, and schoolmaster, and the scholars thereof, or any other having doing or interest therein, be kept? by whom it is not observed, or by whose fault? and the like in al points you shal enquire and present of your choristers and master.' If this Article of Visitation was carried out, the result for education must have been of very great value. But the fact of such an Article being issued is in itself proof that there was in the air an educational policy as thorough in its detail as it was broad in its principle. Church and Crown alike were intent on educating the people. In Article XXII. of Archbishop Parker's "Visitation Articles" of 1569 we find the enquiry: "Item, Whether youre schoolemasters be of a sincere religion, and be diligent in teaching and bringing up of youth. Whether they teach any other grammar, then such as is appointed by the queene's majestie's injunction annexed to the same, or not." We also find a similar Article (LVII) in the articles to be enquired of within the province of Canterbury in 1576, and also in Article VII. of Archbishop Grindall's "Visitation Articles" of the same year'. Not only were the Crown and the Church anxious on the subject of education, but the Legislature itself, giving voice to the wishes of the ministers of the Crown, took part in the movement.

Legislative

enactments

In 1554 an Act was passed entitled "an Acte touching Ordinances and Rules in Cathedrail Churches and Scooles." By the third section of this Act it was provided "that the Quenes Highnes respecting may have like powre and aucthoritee to make ordeine and establishe Statutes Ordinaunces and Foundations 21 Mariae, st. III. c. 9.

1 Cardwell's Documentary Annals.

education.

70

GRAMMAR SCHOOL REFORM ACTS.

for the good Order and Gouvernement of suche Gramer Scooles, as have beene erected founded or established in any parte of this Realme by the most noble Princes King Henrye the Eight or King Edwarde the syxte, and of the Ministers and Scollers of the same Scoole, and to alter and transpose suche other Statutes and Ordinaunces ther made heretofore from tyme to tyme as to her Highnes shall seme most convenient." This Act exhibited an intention of a laudable character, and Mary's successor was no whit less anxious for the efficiency of the New Grammar Schools. By an Act of 1558-91 "wherby the Quenes Highness maye make Ordinaunces and Rules in Churches Collegiate Corporacions and Scooles" it was recited that rules and constitutions had not been as yet ordained and established for some of the schools founded by Henry VIII. or Edward VI. or Mary or Cardinal Pole, and the Act therefore gives to Elizabeth the power to make the necessary statutes, ordinances and orders.

An Act of the same year2 "to annexe to the Crowne certayne Religious Howses and Monasteries and to refourme certayne Abuses in Chantreis" reserved, by section 9, from annexation lands or property limited or appointed by any of the annexed corporations "to any Scole Master or to the finding of any Scole or Scolers to lerning." Moreover, by section 10 of the same Act it was provided that the Act should in no wise extend to any College hostel or hall in, or to any Chantry founded in, either of the Universities, or to any Chantrey founded in any other place for the mayntenaunce of a Gramer Scoole or lerning or where the Chantrye Preest is also appointed to teache children." But the Queen reserved to herself the power to change the names of such Chantries, and all superstition in them, "for the more advancement of vertue trewe religion or lerning as to her Highnes wisdome shalbe thought meete and convenient." The desire of the Legislature to intervene on behalf of

1 1 Eliz. c. 22.

2 1 Eliz. c. 24.

PROTECTION OF ELEMENTARY EDUCATION.

71

national education was further shown by a provision for the protection of elementary education contained in the Statute of Apprentices of 1562-3'. This statute, which was repealed in 1875, consolidated and amended the long line of enactments that dealt with (to use modern phraseology) arts and crafts and technical education. The Act dealt partly with the compulsory service of unmarried women between the ages of twelve and forty years, and of both sexes between the ages of ten and twenty-one years in husbandry, and partly with the apprenticeship of young persons to the various trades, crafts, arts and mysteries of the time, "to be enstructed or tought in any of the Artes Occupacions Craftes or Misteries which they or any of them (the masters) doo use or exercise." In section five certain persons are exempted from compulsory service, and among these are "a Gentleman borne" and "a Student or Scoler in any of the Universitees, or in any Scoole." Such legislation, and other legislation that will be subsequently quoted, show that learning was regarded as a national matter in the spacious days of the Queen whose scholarship the learned Ascham held in such respect.

It was not the fault of the Elizabethan policy that it had to deal with machinery deliberately wrecked by the predecessors of the great Queen. All that could be done under such circumstances seems to have been done.

Reform.

Not

only was a real effort made to reform the Elizabethan administrative abuses that existed throughout Educational the grammar school and University systems, but special machinery was created to deal with abuses in particular foundations. The Commissioners for Charitable Uses, appointed pursuant to the statutes 39 Elizabeth, cap. 6, and 43 Elizabeth, cap. 4, had power to enquire into any abuses of charitable bequests or donations, and to rectify the same on decree. The Act creating these Commissioners. 1 5 Eliz. c. 4. See s. 5; ss. 17-20.

THE COMMISSIONERS FOR CHARITABLE USES.

72 was only repealed in 1888, and decrees were made as late as the early part of the nineteenth century. Some 33 schools were reformed by the Commissioners, but the efficiency of this method of reform was marred by the fact that an appeal lay to the House of Lords by way of the Court of Chancery, and in the lamentable days of the eighteenth century, when equity had ceased to flow from the conscience of the King, or flowed so slowly that it was transmuted into inequity, the efficiency of Elizabeth's admirable creation was hampered by the fear of an appeal The criminal harm that was done to secondary education by the Court of Chancery in the days before the Judicature Acts of 1873 and 1875 must never be forgotten. In this matter no blame can be alleged against the Tudors. Elizabeth and her ministers did almost all that was possible to be done towards the re-creation of the machinery that her father and her brother's ministers had destroyed.

The Universities.

17. It will be convenient in this place, where naturally the incorporation of the Universities by statute would be mentioned, to make some more general notes on the question of State interference with university education in England. The two great English universities have for long ages enjoyed a peculiar freedom that seems to have had its origin rather as a matter of prescriptive right than as the result of definite legislation. Such an apparent anomaly was to the mediaval mind, which certainly never regarded the King as the sole fountain of justice, probably no anomaly at all. There was nothing unnatural in an university which was imperium in imperio, a veritable republic of letters with its own franchises and municipal laws, in ages when every manor had effective customary laws, when large areas such as the Duchy of Cornwall had for many purposes an independent common law," and when the very fact of learning implied privileges of a remarkable character. The free nature of the Universities

THE FREE NATURE OF THE UNIVERSITIES.

73

must, previous to the fifteenth century, have been complete or else such a statute as that which was passed in 1421 would have been needless. It is not indeed till early in the fifteenth century that any parliamentary interference with the Universities can be traced.

By a statute of the year 1407' the franchise "now late granted to the Scholars of the University of Oxenford" is exempted from the liberties confirmed by statute in the first year of the new King and this refusal to allow the franchise was specifically confirmed by statute in 14112. In 1408 we find that Lord Thomas Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury, ordains "that no book or treatise composed by John Wicklif, or by any other in his time, or since, or hereafter to be composed, be henceforth read in the schools, halls, inns or other places whatsoever within our province"-a sufficient limitation of general reading-" and that none be taught according to such [book] unless it have been first examined, and upon examination unanimously approved by the Universities of Oxford or Cambridge, or at least by twelve men chosen by the said universities, or by one of them under the direction of us, or our successors; and then afterwards [the book be approved] expressly by us, or our successors, and delivered in the name, and by the authority of the universities, to be copied, and sold to such as desire it." This constitution on the one hand was a limitation of the free right to learn and teach in the Universities, and was therefore a limitation on the free development of these centres of learning, but on the other hand it placed enormous powers in the hands of the University authorities-a power, if we may believe the evidence of Erasmus as to the state of learning in the Universities a century later, which was scarcely used for the advancement of learning.

In 1421 came legislation that placed some check on the

19 Hen. IV. c. 1.

2 13 Hen. IV. c. 1.

3 Johnson's Laws and Canons. See p. 35 supra.