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Educational Opportunity in Tudor and Stuart England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

David Cressy
David Cressy*
Affiliation:
Pitzer College
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Extract

A guarded optimism seems to govern most appraisals of Tudor and Stuart education. Some writers have been so impressed by the achievements of the period, especially of the years 1560 to 1640, that they see not only an educational ferment involving an increase in the number of schools but also an expansion of opportunities which brought schooling within reach of the hitherto deprived lower members of society. The expansion of printing as well as the expansion of education leads R. D. Altick to suggest, “that in the Tudor and Stuart eras the ability to read was more democratically distributed among the English people than it would again be until at least the end of the eighteenth century.” W. A. L. Vincent asserts in The Grammar Schools; their continuing tradition 1660–1714 that, “the first sixty years of the seventeenth century was a period when the grammar schools of England and Wales flourished, and when education of the sort preparatory to the university was available to all who wished to avail themselves of it.” Even more enthusiastic in this vein is W. K. Jordan, who claims, in The Charities of Rural England, that by 1660 “a widespread and well-endowed system of education has been created within the reach of any poor and able boy who thirsted for knowledge and who aspired to escape the grip of poverty.”

Type
Article II
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 16 , Issue 3 , Fall 1976 , pp. 301 - 320
Copyright
Copyright © 1976 by New York University 

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References

Notes

1. Altick, R. D., The English Common Reader (Chicago, 1963), p. 18.Google Scholar

2. Vincent, W. A. L., The Grammar Schools; Their Continuing Tradition 1660–1714 (London, 1969), p. 6. See also Vincent, W. A. L., The State and School Education 1640–1660 (London, 1950), p. 9.Google Scholar

3. Jordan, W. K., The Charities of Rural England, 1480–1660 (London, 1961), p. 165. Other enthusiastic estimates of the extent of education may be found in Carter, E. H., The Norwich Subscription Books, 1637–1800 (London, 1937), p. xxi, and Leach, A. F., English Schools at the Reformation (Westminster, 1896), pp. 97–99.Google Scholar

4. See for example, Stone, Lawrence, “The Educational Revolution in England, 1560–1640,” Past and Present, 28(1964): 41–80; Simon, Joan, Education and Society in Tudor England (Cambridge, 1967); Charlton, Kenneth, Education in Renaissance England (London and Toronto, 1965), Lawson, John and Silver, Harold, A Social History of Education in England (London, 1973); Cressy, David, Education in Tudor and Stuart England (London, 1975).Google Scholar

5. Simon, , pp. 293, 295–298.Google Scholar

6. Ibid., p. 294.Google Scholar

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8. Ibid., pp. 44–45, 66–68. See also Stone, Lawrence, “Social Mobility in England, 1500–1700,” Past and Present, 33(1966): 44–45.Google Scholar

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14. Ibid., pp. 142–3.Google Scholar

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18. The example of Coventry, and some others, is in Carlisle, N., A Concise Description of the Endowed Grammar Schools in England and Wales, 2 vols. (London, 1818), vol. 2, pp. 646–7 and passim. Spedding, J., ed., The Letters and Life of Francis Bacon (London, 1868), vol, 4, pp. 252–3 has Bacon's views on Sutton's bequest. More examples are in “Reports of the commissioners for inquiring concerning charities,” Parliamentary Papers, 1823–40.Google Scholar

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20. In addition to classical and modern languages the school offered, at a price, arithmetic, merchant accounts, and “writing of twelve several hands.” London Gazette, 879 (April 1674).Google Scholar

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22. Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 647–9.Google Scholar

23. Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 598–9.Google Scholar

24. Ibid., vol. 1, p. 340.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25. Ibid., vol 1, p. 793.Google Scholar

26. Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 518–9.Google Scholar

27. Ibid., vol 1, p. 491.Google Scholar

28. Ibid., vol 2. p. 528. “Minute and records book of the Lavenham exhibition endowment,” privately held, Lavenham, Suffolk.Google Scholar

29. “Reports … concerning charities,” vol. 32, p. 872, vol. 22, p. 186.Google Scholar

30. West Suffolk Record Office, Bury St. Edmunds, E5/9 school governors' minute book.Google Scholar

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32. Colchester Corporation Records, grammar school register (Essex Record Office, microfilm T/B 217).Google Scholar

33. Ibid.Google Scholar

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35. cf. Stone, Lawrence, “The Size and Composition of the Oxford Student Body 1580–1910,: in Stone, Lawrence, ed., The University in Society (Princeton, 1974), vol. 1, pp. 3–110. Cambridge University Archives, AB. Degrees, vol. 4, 1501–1702.Google Scholar

36. For the ambience and value of the university see Curtis, Mark H., Oxford and Cambridge in Transition (Oxford, 1959) Kearney, Hugh, Scholars and Gentlemen (London, 1970); and Morgan, Victor, “Cambridge University and ‘The Country’ 1560–1640,” in Stone, , University in Society, vol. 1, pp. 183–245. My calculations of percentages graduating are based on Venn, , Biographical Register and the manuscript admission and degree registers.Google Scholar

37. Harrison, William, The Description of England (1577), ed. Edelen, Georges (Ithaca, N.Y., 1968), pp. 113–4, 118; Smith, Sir Thomas, De Republica Anglorum (London, 1583), pp. 27, 30. Episcopal visitation records show that 61% of the incumbent clergy in the Diocese of Norwich had degrees in 1603, a proportion that rose to 88% by 1636. Norwich Record Office, VIS/3, 2.Google Scholar

38. Schofield, R. S., “The Measurement of Literacy in Pre-industrial England,” in Goody, Jack, ed., Literacy in Traditional Societies (Cambridge, 1968), pp. 311–25; Stone, Lawrence, “Literacy and Education in England 1640–1900,” Past and Present, 42(1969):69–139; Cressy, David, “Literacy in Seventeenth Century England: More Evidence,” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, forthcoming, and “Levels of Illiteracy in England, 1530–1730,” The Historical Journal, forthcoming.Google Scholar

39. Protestation Returns, House of Lords Record Office, analysed by R. S. Schofield, Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure.Google Scholar

40. A full explanation of this procedure will be found in Cressy, , “Levels of illiteracy.” Google Scholar

41. See the Privy Council instructions to Archbishop Grindal in 1580, in Strype, John, History of … Edmund Grindal (Oxford, 1821), p. 378, and the increasing control over the licensing and activity of schoolmasters in Cressy, , Education in Tudor and Stuart England, pp. 28–34.Google Scholar

42. Spedding, , ed., Letters and Life of Francis Bacon, vol. 4, pp. 252–3.Google Scholar

43. Conservative attacks on education gathered momentum with the civil war and its aftermath, but John Brinsley in 1622 had found it necessary to defend the schools against charges that they spawned “strange licentiousness and outrageous courses,” Consolation for our Grammar Schools, p. 3. See also the remarks of James Howell in 1651, Jacobs, J., ed., Epistolae Ho-Eliance (London, 1890), vol. 1, pp. 523–6, and the remarks of the Marquis of Newcastle quoted in Lawrence Stone, communication to Past and Present, 24(1963):101.Google Scholar

44. Chamberlayne, Edward, Angliae Notitia, The Second Part of the Present State of England (London, 1682), pp. 320–22. Christopher Wase challenged this sort of view in Considerations Concerning Free-Schools, pp. 1, 51.Google Scholar

45. Kennett, White, The Charity of Schools for Poor Children (London, 1706), p. 24, An Account of the Charity Schools Lately Erected (London, 1708), np. See also Jones, M. G., The Charity School Movement (London, 1964), reprint and Simon, Joan, “Was There a Charity School Movement?” in Simon, Brian, ed., Education in Leicestershire (Leicestersaire, 1968), pp. 55–100.Google Scholar