By Ken Clayton
The church had a very close relationship with, and a tight control of English education from its inception in the sixth or seventh centuries until the 1640s. The decline in influence was slow to start with: first came the
By Ken Clayton
The church had a very close relationship with, and a tight control of English education from its inception in the sixth or seventh centuries until the 1640s. The decline in influence was slow to start with: first came the dissolution of the monasteries, then the Chantries Act and then the abolition of religious guilds. Each of these actions resulted in significant religious institutions being abolished and, where they supported schools, the schools either disappeared or had to find new sources of funding. Even so, by the seventeenth century, the church still had a significant degree of control. The Canons of 1604, section LXXVII, made it clear that:
‘No man shall Teach either in publick School, or private House, but such as shall be allowed by the Bishop of the Diocess, or Ordinary of the Place, under his hand and Seal, being found meet as well for his Learning and Dexterity in Teaching, as for sober and honest Conversation, and also for right understanding of God’s true Religion'On the face of it, this implies that all teachers, including those at Petty Schools should have a licence. However, the evidence suggests that this rule was, in practice, applied only to grammar school teachers.
Paragraph LXXVIII went on to dictate that if there was a curate in a parish who was able and willing to teach, nobody else was to be granted a licence until the curate had been given a job. The text also stated, very clearly, that a curate might want to teach 'for the better increase of his Living'. This paragraph differs from the earlier one, however, in that it specifically mentions teaching of grammar and therefore, it appears to refer specifically to grammar schools (Constitutions and Canons Ecclesiastical).So