A bit less education for the Girls: Puritans and Cavaliers

'Those that think one language enough for a woman may forbear the languages, and learn only Experimental Philosophy'

A 17th century book of instruction for girls

By the Restoration educational horizons  for well-bred upper class girls had narrowed down to preparation for marriage and a life of leisure. those learned Tudor ladies were no more.  The prospectus for Mrs Makin's school for young ladies reads:
'Gentlewomen of eight or nine years old that can read well may be instructed in a year or two (according to their Parts) in the Latin and French Tongues...Those that please may learn Limning (a kind of painting), Preserving, Pastry and Cookery.  Those that will allow longer time may attain some general knowledge in Astronomy, Geography, but especially in Arithmetick and History.  Those that think one language enough for a woman may forbear the languages, and learn only Experimental Philosophy.' (Mrs. Makin's school prospectus, c. 1673, Dorothy Gardiner, English Girlhood at School, 1929)

This is the prototype for the girls' school in the 17th century.  By the time of Charles I the daughters of Royalist families were regularly being sent to such establishments as noble families gradually ceased to maintain large private courts where young girls could be sent to be suitably 'finished'. With the Civil War, the execution of Charles I, and the establishment of the Commonwealth in the mid 17th century all that was swept away by the strict moral code of the Puritans for a time, but such establishments returned to favour, along with a more lax moral attitude, with the Restoration of the Monarchy under Charles II (1660)

In these schools for young ladies great emphasis was placed on manners and deportment.  Hannah Woolley,  in her advice to 'The Female Younger Sort' takes the line familiar from the books of courtesy:
'...be courteous and mannerly to all who speak with you...When you come to School salute your Mistress in a reverent manner and be sure to mind what she injoyns you to do or observe...Having done this, salute civilly your Schoolfellows...Show not your ill-breeding and want of manners by eating in the school, especially before your Mistress.'
(Hannah Woolley, The Gentlewoman's Companion or a Guide to the Female Sex, 1675, Gardiner op.cit)

Needlework and embroidery formed an important part of the curriculum, although most of it appears to have been not practical but  the kind elegant young ladies might use to occupy themselves.  The subjects advertised have a curious similarity to the occupations of Victorian girls, and show indirectly that well-to-do young ladies were being released from the necessity of running the household, and had time on their hands:  in the past young girls learned cooking, preserving, spinning, weaving, sewing, cleaning.  Mrs. Woolley's prospectus, however, advertises:  'All works wrought with a Needle, all transparent works, Shell-work, Moss-work, also cutting of Prints and adorning Rooms or Cabinets or Stands with them.  All kinds of Beagle-works upon Wyers or otherwise.  All manner of pretty toys for Closets, Rocks made with Shells or in Sweets.  Frames for looking-glasses, Pictures or the like.  Feathers of Crewel for the Corner of Beds.'

Hackney became popular for such schools, because of its healthy situation, just outside London.  Pepys went on an excursion there to see them on 20th April 1667:
'That which I went chiefly to see was the young ladies of the schools whereof there is great store, very pretty' (Pepys Diary 20 April 1667)
Many condemned these schools as worldly and kept their daughters at home employing governesses and tutors.  Aubrey in his Miscellanies calls the finishing schools 'places where young maids learn pride and wantonness' (John Aubrey, Miscellanies upon various subjects, 1626)
and Thomas D'Urfey's popular and scurrilous play Love for Money; or, The boarding school, 1691, was a severe blow to their popularity.

The daughters of devout Puritans were not to be found in such dubious establishments.  They were usually educated at home, frequently by their parents, generally along traditional lines, emphasising their domestic role.  Anthony Walker, a Puritan, but writing after the Restoration of the Monarchy says of his daughters' upbringing:
'her (his wife's) first Care was, to keep their Minds uncorrupted by Vanity or Pride, therefore kept them at home, not to save Charges, but avoid Inconveniences.'
(Anthony Walker, The Holy Life of Mrs. E. Walker, 1690)

Puritan parents would have been as one with the influential Tudor Catholic Juan Vives who had been tutor to the Princes Mary, daughter of Henry VIII, in emphasising  domesticity, piety and seclusion in the education of girls, for although Vives did believe in a wider curriculum for girls than most Puritans would accept, he did not mean  it to be at the expense of their chief role: 'Let her both learn her book and besides that to handle wool and flax (Vives, Instruction of a Christian Woman c.1529) This is a sentiment any Puritan would have echoed, or any ancient Greek or Roman for that matter.

The education of the Puritan Walker girls  included some surprisingly liberal, even frivolous subjects, which would not have been taught in the strictest Puritan households or have been approved of.  In addition to housewifery taught by their mother, they had a 'French Dancing Master in the House, and had a Writing and Singing-Master come to them.'

The upbringing of Lady Grace Mildmay was more typical of a Puritan girl's education.  Born in 1552, so being educated in the Tudor period, but a good example of a Puritan education, she was brought up by a poor relation governess and her mother, who used to beat her severely, and 'never so much as for lying'.  She studied writing, accounts, the herbal, needlework, and the lute, to which she sang psalms.  She read the Bible every day, and in her notes for the upbringing of her own daughter says, 'it is not possible for parents to be good or to have any virtues in them who seek not to make their children good.' and 'It is a matter of great importance to bring up children unto God, and to cause them to forsake the vanities and follies of this short and momentary lyfe.'. (Diary of Lady Grace Mildmay,  quoted in Quarterly Review, vol. 215, 1911)

Nor was religion neglected in non-Puritan households.  Lady Anne Halkett,  born in 1622, daughter of Thomas Murray, tutor to the future Charles I, says of her childhood: 'for many years together I was seldome or never absent from divine service, at five a'clocke in the morning in the summer, and at sixe a'clocke in the winter, till the usurped power (ie the Puritans who beheaded Charles I and set up the short-lived Commonwealth) putt a restraint to that pubicke worship so long owned and continued in the Church of England, where, I blese God, I had my education.' ( Autobiography of Anne, Lady Halkett, Camden Society Publications, 2nd series, no. 13 1875)
Lady Anne Halkett was educated at home and had masters to teach her and her sister French, to play the lute and virginals and to dance, a gentlewoman to teach them all kinds of needlework.  Incidentally, this is the lady who rescued Charles I's second son James from captivity during the Civil War.  As James II he rewarded her with a pension.

It is interesting that even in Puritan families music still remained an important part of the curriculum, although its role might be suitably adapted.  It was clearly an enormously important part of everyday life, and in girl's schools retained its importance for some time; Purcell;s Dido and Aeneas was originally written for a girls' school to perform to parents and friends, which gives some indication of the general musical standards expected.  In boys' schools, however, music was rapidly driven out by the expansion of the curriculum.

Niky Rathbone: childhoodblog@gmail.com