[Illustration: _No. 226. The Ale-Wife’s End._]
EDUCATION.--LITERARY MEN AND SCRIBES.--PUNISHMENTS; THE STOCKS; THE GALLOWS.
I put together in a short chapter two parts of my subject which may at the first glance seem somewhat discordant, but which, I think, on further consideration, will be found to be rather closely related--they are, education and punishment for offences against the law. It can hardly be doubted, indeed, that, as education becomes more general and better regulated, if the necessity of punishment is not entirely taken away, its cruelty is greatly diminished.
During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, there was certainly a general feeling of the necessity of extending and improving education. It was during this period that our great universities rose into existence, and flourished, and these schools, which provided for the higher development of the mind, had their thousands of students, instead of the hundreds who frequent them at the present day. But the need of some provision for education was felt most in regard to that less elevated degree of instruction which was required for the more youthful mind,--in fact, it was long before the people of the middle ages could be persuaded that literary education was of any use at all, except for those who were to be made great scholars; the clergy itself, unfortunately, did not see the necessity of popular education, and although the schools in parish churches were long continued, they appear to have been conducted more and more with negligence. It was the mercantile class in the towns which made the first step in advance, by the establishment of those foundations which have continued to the present time under the name of grammar schools. These schools are traced back to the thirteenth century, when the merchant guilds, by whom they were founded, began to assume a greater degree of importance, and they were usually intended for the general benefit of the town, but were combined with an ecclesiastical establishment for performing services for the souls of the members of the guilds, in consequence of which, at the Reformation, they became involved in the superstitious uses, and were dissolved and refounded in the reign of Edward VI., so that they are now generally known as king Edward’s foundations. The great object of these schools was to give the instruction necessary for admission into the universities; and they were in some degree the answer to an appeal which came deeply from the mass of the people,--for there was at this time a great spontaneous eagerness for learning, both for the sake of the learning itself, and because it was a road to high distinction, which was not open to the masses in any other direction. It was a very common practice for poor youths to go about the country during vacation time, to beg money to keep them at school during term. In Piers Ploughman, among the objects of legitimate charity, the writer enumerates money given to--