Spare the Rod, Spoil the Child: more on 16 and 17th century schooling

'My master peppered my arse with well good speed

it was worse than a fennel seed (hot)

he would not leave till it did bleed

much sorrow have he for this deed

what availeth it me though I say nay?

The birched schoolboy,c.1500  EETS original series vol. 32 ed. F.J. Furnival, 

Opinions differed on whether children were best sent to schools or kept at home with tutors.  While at school children might benefit from the society and competition of other children, they were also more exposed to bad examples.  Vives believed that boys were better off at school, but only when they were old enough to have formed good habits when, it was assumed, they would be safe from being corrupted.  Daughters, on the other hand, being 'frail things, and of weak discretion ' should rarely be allowed out of the house.  (Foster Watson,  Vives and the Renascence education of women, 1912)  Rabelais believed that children were best educated in a one-to-one relationship with a tutor, and he had considerable influence on French education.  After the restoration of the English monarchy French ideas were brought to England with the returning exiles.

In practise many parents seen to have combined the two systems, as Queen Elizabeth I's astrologer Dr. John Dee did.  In 1587 he 'covenanted with John Basset to teach the children the Latyn tong, and I do give him seven duckats by the quarter.'  His youngest son was then five.  In 1590 the children were at Mr. Lee's school in Mortlake where 'I gave him his house-rent and forty shillings yerely for my three sons and my daughter.'  (For comparison Shylock, in Merchant of Venice lends Antonio three thousand ducats for Bassanio to woo Portia so schooling must have been quite cheap)
  (The private diary of Dr. John Dee ed. J.O. Halliwell.  Camden Soc. ist series no. 19, 1842)
In 1596, however, John Dee engaged a governess for his younger daughters:  'Mary Goodwyn came to my servyce to govern and teach Medina and Margaret.'

Dame school. From Tuer, History of the Hornbook, 1896

If taught at home little children generally learned their first letters at the knee of some neighbour who taught a small group of children to read for a small sum; the traditional 'dame school', which continued to be common right into the 19th century.  William Stukeley, for example, says that:'  About 1690 I lernt the first Rudiments of Letters of Mrs. Collingwood, an old decay'd Gentlewoman at Holbeach who taught all the Children in the Parish.'
     (.Memorials of the Holles Family, 1493-1656, Camden Soc. 3rd series vol. 55, 1937)

Children were generally taught their letters with the hard-wearing hornbook.  These seem to have first appeared in the late 14th century (see Andrew Tuer, The history of the hornbook, 1897)

'Qan a chyld to scole shall set be

A bok hym is brout

Naylyd on a brede of tre,

That men callyt an abece'

   (Tuer, op.cit)

Miss Campion with her hornbook,. Tuer, History of the Hornbook

They were in use until the early 19th century.  Usually they were a rectangular piece of wood with a handle at the bottom on which was pasted a printed sheet of paper.  At the top this had the alphabet, then the numbers one to ten, followed by the Lord's Prayer, in English.  The paper was protected from wet and sticky little fingers by a thin transparent sheet of horn, then often used instead of expensive glass, and fastened down with strips of brass.  The backs were sometimes covered with leather, stamped with the figure of St. George, or carved.  Leather hornbooks are also known, while rich people's children sometimes had expensive and beautiful hornbooks of ivory with the letters painted on, or holders made of silver filigree.
There is a description of children learning to read with a hornbook in The Reading Lesson: a dialogue for children learning to read:
  'Tsake the table of the crosse-row in thy left hand, and festraw wherewith thou shalt touche the letters one by one.  Stand upright.  Hold thy cap under thy arme, attentively how I move my mouth.'
  ( M.St. Clare Byrne, The Elizabethan Home, discovered in two dialogues by Claudius Hollyband and Peter Erondell.  rev. ed. 1930 Hollyband and Erondell were French Huguenot refugees, arriving in England around 1564.)

Hornbooks (Wikipedia)

So after learning their basic letters children might be sent to school.  By the time of the English Civil War, 1642, and from then on into the 18th century, there were many small schools for the education of local children, run by groups of trustees. William Stukely went to one after his dame school, and this was probably common:
  'In 1692 I was put to the Free-School at the Church there, which was founded by the family of the Farmers...my Father being one of the trustees of that Charity.'
   (Stukely, op.cit)

These small schools were normally fee-paying with some free places provided for the poor, subsidised by charity and providing an elementary level of education.  They flourished until most of them were gradually incorporated into a state system in the 19th century.

The alternative was one of the small schools run by local clergymen to supplement their incomes, much as priest had done before the Reformation.  These inevitably varied in quality and probably did not provide as good a basic grounding as a proper school.  Sir John Bramstone remembers the Vicar of Blackmore, Andrew Walmsley, sending the pupils into the fields with their tasks  'to see that his catle trespassed noe bodie.' (Autobiography of Sir John Bramstone, K.B. Camden Soc. 1st series vol. 32)

The vicar was not all that a vicar should be as a moral guardian either: 'he suffered his boyes to rob ponds, and kill...the pidgons of his neighbours...He at first seemed angrie, but the pidgeons were baked and we eate them.'  Sir John contrasted this with the tuition he and his brother later received at Thomas Farnaby's school:' Oh Heuens! Where has thou binn bread?'  asked Farnaby on seeing their first Latin exercise.

Sir John Bramstone also described the Vicar as 'of a temper very unfitt for a schoolmaster, very passionate, and being ouer angrie with any one, he was like a furie to wife, children, seruants, scholars, all the house.'  Sir John's younger brother, having the ill luck to encounter the Vicar in one of his passions, 'he gave 50 blows with the great rod...he sayd to me, 'Your brother hath binn a very naughtie boy, and I was forct to correct him a little'  (Bramstone, op.cit)

The schoolmaster and his pupils, note the birch.  Informatio Puerorum, c.1500
(Percy Muir, Early Children's books and their illustration, 1975)

Another survivor of the clergy-schools was the Rev. Richard Baxter, Puritan divine:
'In the village where I was born there was four readers successively in six years tyme, ignorant men, and two of them immoral in their lives, who were all my schoolmasters...they taught school and tippled on weekdays, and whipped the boys when they were drunk.'
    (Autobiography of Richard Baxter...abridged from the Folio (1696)  ed. J.M. Lloyd, 1925.)

Educational theorists had only limited success in restricting the use of beating in schools.  Even the colloquies of Erasmus describes masters as 'ready and generous as possible with floggings'
  (Colloquies of Erasmus, trans. Craig R. Thompson, 1965)
Some respected authorities such as Vives strongly recommended its use:  'Never have the rod off the boys' back; especially the daughters should be handled without any cherishing'
    (Vives, Instruction of Christian Women, op.cit)

The famous biographer John Aubrey(1626-1697), who was very interested in children's upbringing, disapproved of this, but perhaps it is fortunate that he never had the opportunity to put his own disciplinary methods into practise on children, for he recommended the use of thumb-screws rather than boxing the ears which, he thought, might injure the brain.  (John Aubrey, A Plan of Education, in  John Aubrey's Brief Lives, ed. Oliver Lawson, 1949)

All too many schoolmasters used the rod as an educational aid, or quite indiscrinately Some like Dr. Gill were well known for their 'whipping fitts'  (Aubrey, op.cit)  Whipping schoolmasters and over severe parents gradually come to be mentioned with general disapproval, however.  Sir Robert Burton (1577-1640)criticised over severity on  the Anatomy of Melancholy:  Parents and such as have the tuition of and oversight of children offend many times in that they are too stern, always threatening, chiding, brawling, whipping or striking; by means of which their poor children are so disheartened and cowed that they never after have any courage.' (Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, 1st ed. 1621)

so Sir Thomas Raymond (b. c.1610) blamed his father and masters for 'nipping in the bud of a tender masculyne spiritte' by their harsh treatment 'I being not soe quick at repeating without books as my younger brother was...not only harshly used by the pedagugui (teacher) but to my great shame and discouragement, placed in the form belowe my younger brother...It being indeed greate pitty that no better care is taken for choyce of able men to have the care of instructing and educateing of youth.'
    (Autobiography of Thomas Redmond and memoirs of the family of Guise of Elmore, Gloucestershire, ed. G. Davies, Camden Soc. 3rd series, vol. 28)

A schoolboy learning his letters from a hornbook.
  (Tuer, History of the Hornbook, 1896)

Sir Roger North's brother Dudley, although his spirit was not ruined by harsh treatment, nevertheless remembered his master's severity all his adult life.  Although his other brothers got on well at Mr. Stephens' school, 'The master took a great aversion to him, and most brutally abused him; correcting him at all turns, with or without a fault, till he was driven within an ace of despair, and(as I have often heard him declare) making away with himself'
   ( Roger North (1651-1734) Lives of the Right Hon. Francis North, Baron Guildford...The Hon. Dudley North...And the Hon. and Rev. Dr. John North...1st pub. 1744)

However, severe discipline tempered with kindness does not seem to have done more robust children hamr.  Thomas Ellwood was quite unaffected by attempts to disciplin him:
  'I could not easily conform my self to the grave and sover Rules and (as I then thought) severe Orders of the School; but was often playing one waggish Prank or another among my Fellow Schollars, which, subjected me to correction, so that I have come under the Discipline of the Rod twice in a Forenoon.  which yet brake no Bones.'
   Life of Thomas Ellwood, written by his own hand,  1714.

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A Puritan Education

'The end then of learning is to repair the ruins of our first Parents by repairing to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love him, to imitate him, to be like him, as we may the nearest by possessing our souls of true virtue, which being united to the heavenly grace of faith makes up the highest perfection.'
   John Milton (1608-1674) Of Education, 1644

In the early 17th century educationalists, particularly the Puritans among them, began to favour including practical subjects in the curriculum.  Many of their ideas were pioneered in the works of the Czech educator John Amos Comenius, whose Orbis Sensualium Pictus was first published in Germany in 1658 and was translated into English in 1678 by his friend Charles Hoole.   His ideas were set out in Janua Linguarum Reserata or, the gate of tongues unlocked, 1631.  He believed in universal education, in the vernacular, until., about the age of twelve, combined with practical education in some skill. These ideas and his work on kindergartens and the value of play in learning  continue to inspire educators to the present day, especially in Germany,

The first educational book to successfully use illustrations as a teaching aid.

Charles Hoole recommended the pictures 'to entice witty children to it, that they may not conceit it a torment to be in the School, but dainty-fare.'
   The Usher's Duty, 1659, In A New Discovery in the old Art of Teaching Schoole, 1660, ed. E.T. Campagnac, 1917

Hoole was one of an influential group of mid 17th century Puritan educationalists which included Samuel Hartlib, John Milton and Sir William Petty, who gives a charming picture of the everyday pastimes of children at this time:
  'For we see children to delight in drums, pipes, fifes, guns made of elder sticks...painting flags and ensigns with elderberries and cornpoppy, making ships with paper, setting even nut shells a-swimming...making pictures in their writing books, making tops, gigs and whirligigs, gilting balls, practising divers juggling tricks upon the cards etc...And for the females they will be making pies with clay, making their babies (dolls) clothes and dressing them therewith, they will put leaves on sticks as if they were roasting meat; they will imitate all the talk and actions which they observe in their mother and her gossips...'
  Epistle to his honoured friend Master Samuel Hartlib, 1647

Samuel Hartlib was an agriculturalist and was keen to see practical agriculture more widely taught.  These educationalists gave more importance to science, and to its study through actual observation, weighing, measuring etc.  The Nonconformists began to found their own schools in the later 17th century, because the universities were closed to them because of their non-conforming religious beliefs, and their curriculum has a strong practical bias.  This made their schools popular with families who did not necessarily agree with their religious views but wanted a good general education for their sons.  Defoe attended Newington Green Academy in the late 17th century and describes the curriculum as including classical languages, French, Italian, maths, natural science, history, geography, logic and politics.
I. Pinchbeck, & M. Hewitt, Children in English Society, vol. 1, 1969

Comenius, the master and his pupil

Physical education for boys, continued to be considered very important. In the mid 16th century, Roger Ascham (1515-1568) had recommended that boys should  be able to: 'ride comely, to run fair at the tilt or ring, to play at all weapons, to shoot fair in bow and straigt in gun, to vault lustily; to run, to leap, to wrestle, to swim...to hawk, to hunt, to play at tennis, and all pastimes generally which will be joined with labour used in open space, and in the daylight, containing some ft exercise for war or some pleasant pastime for peace.
 The whole works of Roger Ascham, ed. Rv. Mr. Giles, 1864

In the turmoil of the Civil War, in the 17th century, people were still more inclined to link physical education with provision for an efficient army.  Oliver Cromwell's secretary, John Milton, drew up a detailed plan for the military training of students at the academy proposed in his tract Of Education, 1644:
'This institution of breeding which I here delineate, shall be equally good both for peace and war,'  He recommends that the pupils spend their exercise time learning swordsmanship, wrestling, riding and the arts of war so that, if necessary, they will be ready to act as captains in the army.  At a time when all able-bodied men and boys were supposed to be trained to the use of weapons for the possible defence of the kingdom, schools, where numbers of boys were gathered together, must haver seemed the obvious place for organise military training, and the pracise has continued right up to the present day.

Comenius,  Parents and children, Masters and servants.

Charles Hoole,(1610-1667) the translator of Comenius, was a practising schoolmaster, teaching in Rotherham when the town was attacked during the Civil War.  The town was defended by Col. Fairfax for Parliament and about thirty of the boys at the school 'undertook the management of a draje, which was placed at the entrance of the bridge, and did considerable execution.'  In Kings Norton, now on the edge of Birmingham, the boys attending the local school, run by the Puritan Rev. Thomas Hall (1610-1665) defended the school against the Cavaliers which must have been quite difficult as almost next to the school was a house owned by Charles I's Queen Henrietta.. After the Restoration, Thomas Hall lost his job.

Kings Norton Grammar School

'My counsel is that (children) learn the Greek and Latin tongues especially from Christians and so without the lies, fables, follies, vanities, whoredoms, lust, pride, revenge etc. of the heathens...and most necessary it is that Christians should forget the names of their gods and muses, which were but devils and damned creatures, and all their mythology and fabulous inventions and let them all go to Satan from whence they came.
   William Dell, quoted in Foster Watson The English Grammar Schools to 1660, 1968

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Child Marriages in Tudor and Jacobean times

'She had enticed him with two apples to go with her to Colne and to marry her.'
   (F.J. Furnivall ed. Child Marriages, Divorces and Ratifications etc. in the Dioces of Chester, AD 1561-66.    EETS original series Vol. 108, 1897)

Little child with an apple, c. 1600, Holbourne Museum

                                                                                                  

The way that marriages between children were frequently arranged is a clear indication that they were regarded like property, with few individual rights.  Very little regard seems to have been shown for their personal inclinations, and their marriages, particularly those of royalty, were often the cement to an important alliance, a gesture of goodwill from one politician to another, a kind of presentation of hostages.  Mary Queen of Scots was sent as a child bride to France, to cement an alliance with Scotland.  Richard II received a French bride of eight, who spoke very little English, when he was twenty-seven.  One of the prizes of Henry V's victories in France was the hand of the French princess Katherine.  Catherine of Aragon was famously married by proxy to Prince Arthur, heir to the English throne, to cement an alliance with Spain.  When he died, she was simply transferred to the new heir, the future Henry VIII.  In such cases it was, of course, always the girl who was sent to live in her husband's country.  The alliances might crumble as political interests changed, but the marriages were expected to be permanent.

Crown Prince Arthur aged 13, PD Art

Slightly lower down the social scale, such marriage alliances were often arranged between great nobles,
 to join estates, or to strengthen a political position.  A particularly iniquitous practise was the sale of the wardship, or guardianship, of the heirs of great estates whose fathers had died.  This was gradually developed by the Tudors from the rights which an overlord had over the property of a vassal who was still a minor in feudal times to a perquisite of the Crown.  Such wardships might be sold to the highest bidder, not necessarily taking into consideration the good of the child or the existence of close relatives.  Wardship, in fact, rarely went to the mother.  The buyer of the wardship acquired effective guardianship of the child.  The profit to the guardian generally came through arranging the ward's marriage, and was the reason the wardships of heiresses were more highly prized than those of males (one of the few occasions when girls were preferred) Her property would become her husband's whereas a male ward would eventually get control of his property on his coming of age.  Wards rejecting a marriage were fined a sum equivalent to that which the guardian could have gained through the marriage.  Buying a wardship could be a good way of providing for a younger son, and the practise was by no means confined to the aristocracy.  An account of such a marriage in the diocese of Chester in 1562 says regretfully on its dissolution:
    'She should have had by him a pretty bargain if they could have loved one the other.'
   (Child Marriages, Divorces and Ratifications etc. in the Diocese of Chester, 1561-66
     EETS original series Vol. 108. 1897)

 Sir Thomas and Lady Lucy with seven of their children, Cornelius Johnson, 1622, National Trust

Such wards would normally be brought up in the house of their guardian, not necessarily a disadvantage.  William Cecil, Lord Burghley, Elizabeth I's Secretary of State, made a practise of buying wardships, but provided his wards, and those of the Crown, with an unrivalled education and great political opportunities from their base at Cecil House on the Strand.
However, generally the practise of selling wardships was considered iniquitous by those who suffered under it, and the Court of Wards was abolished after the Civil War in 1646.

One effect of the threat to a child's marriage prospects posed by the Court of Wards was the arrangement of very early marriages, particularly among the aristocracy.  This was one way in which anxious parents could tie up their children's estates and futures in they way they felt was best.  It is also an instance of the absolute control which parents were considered to have over children.  Children were expected to follow the parents' wishes.
For instance, Peter Agee explained, when suing for dissolution to his child marriage, that he married Alice when he was thirteen and she nine 'because it was his mother's mind, he dursrt not displease her.'  John Bridge had to marry Elizabeth, he aged eleven, she thirteen, because, 'his father had been undone' owing to a bond he had signed.
    (Child Marriages, op. cit.  For an account of the Court of Wards and sale of wardships see Pinchbeck and Hewitt, Children in English Society, London, 1969, Vol. 1, chapter 3)

Some parents thoroughly abused their children's rights.  Robert Mann, dissolving his marriage to Margaret, contracted when he was nine and she ten, said 'he could never fancy her, nor her father because he kept the mother of the said Robert to paramour (mistress) afore he married her and consumed the said Robert's goods.'
(Child marriages..op cit)

Lady Arabella Stuart (1575-1615) National Trust

Resistance such as Margaret Paston's was rare., She held out against her entire family and was eventually allowed to marry the man of her own choice, although he was considered to be her social inferior.
    (Paston Letters,  various eds)
In fact, most arranged marriages seem to have been quite successful, certainly no worse than those where the partners are allowed to choose for themselves.  The practise still continues today in many cultures.

Girl with a rattle.  Jan Claesz (Dutch, d. 1636)

There was a regular legal framework for child marriages which itself shows that the practise was considered quite usual.  Espousal could take place at seven, although there are cases of it having taken place at two or three.  The records of Child Marriages in the Diocese of Chester, 1561-6 (op cit) show that John Somerford married Jane when they were aged two and three.  They were carried in the arms of friends who spoke the words of marriage for them.  The witness adds: 'It was the youngest marriage that ever he was at'.  But still younger marriages were made.  In his Anatomie of Abuses in Ailgra (East Anglia) Philip Stubbes records that 'in Ailgra there is one great liberty permetted therein; for little infants in swaddling clouts are often married by their ambitious Parents and friends...'
    (Child marriages, op. cit.  preface, p.xxxiv)

Ludger Tom Ring the Younger, portrait of a small child in a fur lined cap and coral beads. National Trust 1583

Nevertheless the practise was frowned on/  Henry Swinburne, Judge of the Prerogative Court of York, defined the law in 1686 as 'Infants...are...children who have not as yet...the age of seven years...Spousals contracted during infancy are utterly void...as infants cannot contract spousals.'
   ( Treatise of Spousals or Matrimonial Contracts, 1686,  Child marriages, op. cit.
There were, however, a large number of exceptions to this general rule, based on the behaviour of the children, which could prevent the parties to the marriage from dissolving it, as they were entitled to do, at the 'ripe age' of twelve for girls, fourteen for boys, by suit in the Bishop's Court  Spousals were considered valid if the infants ratified the contract by word or deed at the age of seven, or cohabited together when one was nearly seven, or both were mature for their ages, or had indicated their liking for each other by kissing, giving of tokens or intercourse.

Provided intercourse had not taken place, there seems, in practise, to have been little difficulty in dissolving such marriages if they were unsuccessful.  About an equal number of boys and girls appear to have petitioned for dissolution, using the Chester diocesan records as a guide, the most common complaint being that 'she/he never fancied him/her.
   (Child marriages..op cit)

There are records of the system being abused.  Grace Boyes v. Robert Talbot, 1562, complained that 'the said Grace Boyes was taken away from her Grandfather;s house by a wile to come lie at Master Talbot's house...and when she was there, without the consent of her friends, was married to the said Robert in the night season.'  Sometimes the system was abused by the children themselves.  James Bullard complained that Anne Bullard 'had enticed him with two apples to go with her to Colne and to marry her.'  James repented the next morning.  The marriage was dissolved and the curate who married them punished.
    (Child marriages op. cit)

That child marriages were generally only intended as a formality is shown by accounts such as that of the marriage of Ellen Davenport and John Andrew, aged eight and ten.  They were put to bed together, as such 'married' children often were, but two of her sisters were put between them on their 'wedding night'.

Rafe Whittall, whose marriage to Joan was dissolved in 1562, was evidently sent to live with her, for he complained that
'he was ordered worse than any servant in her father's house...'
   (Child marriages op. cit)
However, at least among the middle classes, it seems to have been common for the two children to continue to be brought up separately until about the age of twelve to fourteen, when the marriage could be consummated without too much risk to the girl through early pregnancy.

That marriages were arranged like this is an indication of the power parents and guardians established over their children, and their expectations from them.  Perhaps the fact that parents have gradually come to expect less and less of their children in the way of obedience is an indication of the gradual growth, over the centuries, of child power.  At that time, however, the expectation was of total obedience fro the cradle right into adult life.  Adults made every attempt to get their children firmly under control as early as possible, and keep them there, a policy which must surely appeal to some modern parents battling with the problems of permissiveness.

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