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Theory of Common Education in Elizabethan Puritanism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

K. R. M. Short
Affiliation:
Lecturer in History, Westminster College, North Hinksey, Oxford

Extract

Professor L. A. Stone, writing on the ‘educational revolution’ of the period 1560–1640, came to the conclusion that one of the ‘most striking characteristics of the English Puritans was their belief in the value of education as a weapon against the three great evils of Ignorance, Prophaneness and Idleness’. He found that a significant number of puritan gentry and merchants supported the ‘teaching of the three R's and religion to the many, and Latin and religion to the few’ through the many scholarships and foundations that appear in this period. One may, however, question Stone's contention that the Puritans' educational motives were tied to the inculcation of obedience to the established social and political order. It is more than likely that, by spreading the Word of God, defeating what he calls the aesthetic and emotional attractions of the counter-reformation, and establishing a truly protestant nation, Puritans sought to educate a breed of reformed men dedicated to the coming of the Kingdom of God in their own lifetime. This, conceivably, was what was meant by a genuinely learned and protestant society.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1972

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References

page 31 note 1 Stone, L. A., ‘The Educational Revolution in England, 1560–1640’, Past and Present, No. 28 (July 1964)Google Scholar.

page 31 note 2 Hill, C., Society and Puritanism in Pre-Revolutionary England, London 1964, 223Google Scholar.

page 32 note 1 Wedgwood, C. V., ‘The Divisions Harden’, in The Reformation Crisis, ed. Hurstfield, J., London 1965, 109Google Scholar.

page 32 note 2 Greenham (d. 1594), a fellow of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, was presented to the living of Dry Dray ton, Cambridgeshire, in late November 1570. Three years later he married the widow of Robert Bownde, a former physician to the duke of Norfolk. During the years that lay between 1573, when he was cited for refusing to wear the surplice, and 1591, Greenham developed a reputation both for preaching and for his ability to ‘comfort consciences’. His ideas went unpublished until after his death, but the students that attended his household seminary during these years certainly bore the impression of his contribution to Elizabethan Puritanism. Most of the details concerning Greenham's London years are mentioned in H. Gareth Owen's ‘Tradition and Reform; Ecclesiastical Controversy in an Elizabethan London Parish’, Guildhall Miscellany, ii (July 1961). The work of Richard Greenham is more fully discussed in the author's unpublished MS., ‘The Godly Society: Education, Discipline, and Morality in Elizabethan Puritanism’.

page 32 note 3 Jordan, W. K., Philanthropy in England, 1480–1660, London 1959Google Scholar: Simon, J., Education and Society in Tudor England, Cambridge 1966Google Scholar.

page 33 note 1 Bridenbaugh, C., Vexed and Troubled Englishmen, 1590—1642, Oxford 1968, 311Google Scholar.

page 33 note 2 Bucer, M., Opera Latina, xv bis, ‘Du Royaume de Jesus-Christ’, ed. Wendel, Francois, Paris 1954Google Scholar, passim. The definitive study of Bucer is Pauck, Wilhelm, Dai Reich Gottes auf Erden: Utopie und Wirlichkeit: eine Untersuchung zu Butzers ‘De Regno Christi’ und zur Englischen Staatskirche des 16. Jahrhunderts, Berlin 1928Google Scholar. See also Gilbert, A. H., ‘Martin Bucer on Education’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology, xviii (1919), 321–45Google Scholar.

page 33 note 3 R. Greenham, Works, 5th ed. London 1612, 157.

page 34 note 1 William Perkins, Works, Cambridge 1605, i.

page 35 note 1 Usher, R. G., The Presbyterian Movement in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, London 1905, 99Google Scholar ff.

page 36 note 1 Perkins, op. cit., 914.

page 36 note 2 Greenham, op. cit., 666.

page 36 note 3 Ibid., 277. The judgment of God upon transgressors is developed in its most blatant form by Thomas Beard, The Theatre of God's Judgments (1631).

page 36 note 4 Ibid., 27.

page 37 note 1 Ibid., 18. Other Puritans not only advocated corporal punishment for children but flogging for mature individuals.

page 37 note 2 Ibid., 278.

page 37 note 3 Loc. cit. The schoolmaster at Dry Drayton was a John Spenser, who was possibly related to Edmund Spenser.

page 37 note 4 Ibid., 662.

page 38 note 1 Ibid., 663.

page 38 note 2 Ibid., 662.

page 38 note 3 Ibid., 663.

page 39 note 1 Ibid., 280, 635–8.

page 40 note 1 Ibid., 278.

page 40 note 2 Ibid., 799. William Perkins said (Works, iii. 314) that although a woman might not teach publicly she might ‘teach at home, and in the absence of (her) husband, it is her duty to teach her children’.

page 40 note 3 Greenham, Works, 71–91; Collinson, P., The Elizabethan Puritan Movement, London 1967, 227, 349Google Scholar. It would also seem likely that Greenham was fully aware of the educational principles advocated by Thomas Becon in his comprehensive New Catechism etc., London 1559–60. The usual catechism would have been bishop Ponet's, printed in The Two Liturgies set forth in the Reign of Edward VI, Parker Society, Cambridge 1844, 485525Google Scholar. This was also the basis for Alexander Nowell's famous Elizabethan catechism. See A Catechism written in Latin by Alexander Nowell, Dean of St. Paul's, together with the same catechism translated into English by Thomas Norton, ed. Corrie, G. E., Parker Society, Cambridge 1853Google Scholar. See also John More and Edward Dering, A short catechism for householders, and A briefe and necessarie catechisme, in Dering's Workes, London 1597.

page 43 note 1 Greenham, op. cit., 80.

page 43 note 2 R. Greenham, Two learned and Godly sermons preached by that reverend and zjelousman M. Richard Greenham, London 1595, A3.

page 43 note 3 Greenham, Works, 799. William Perkins (in Works, iii. 694) suggests that ‘the first instruction of children in learning and religion must be ordered that they take it with delight, for which purpose they may be sometimes allowed in moderate manner to play and solace themselves in recreations fitting for their years’.

page 43 note 4 Greenham, Works, 664.

page 43 note 5 Ibid., 665 f.

page 44 note 1 William Perkins indicated in a diagram which appeared at the beginning of his Works just how comprehensive the Bible was for day-to-day living.

page 44 note 2 Miller, P., The New England Mind: the Seventeenth Century, N.Y., 1939, 200Google Scholar.

page 44 note 3 Greenham, op. cit: ‘A Profitable Treatise Containing a Direction for Reading and understanding of the Holy Scriptures’, 173–7.

page 47 note 1 Jeremiah Dyke, A Caveat to Archipous, London 1619.

page 48 note 1 Knappen, M. M., Two Elizabethan Puritan Diaries, Chicago 1933, 8Google Scholar. Knappen's Ph.D. thesis was on Greenham: ‘Richard Greenham and the Practical Puritans under Elizabeth’ (Cornell, 1927)Google Scholar.