Forasmuch as God's glory, his honour, and the wealth public is advanced and maintained by no means more than by virtuous education and bringing up of youth under such as be learned and virtuous schoolmasters, whose good examples may as well instruct them to live well as their doctrine and learning may furnish their minds with knowledge and cunning, [I] have thought it good,... to erect the said Free Grammar School and to provide a reasonable and competent stipend for the schoolmaster of the same...

For what maketh a nation to be a glorious nation, but that the people are a wise and an understanding people? What is it whereby we come so near unto the Highest, or to that blessed estate from which by our first parents we are so fallen, and to which we must be renewed and restored, if ever we shall inherit again the tree of life, as by true understanding and knowledge, especially if the same be sanctified unto us? Yea, what is it else whereby we excell the beasts, but by this divine reason, with which the more we are enlightened by the spirit of the Lord, through the means of learning, the more we differ, the more we do excel?