The seventeenth century Stuart monarchs saw the Education Act 1695 prohibiting Irish Catholics from seeking a popish education abroad, or running popish schools in Ireland, till its repeal in 1782. Instead they set up highly informal secret operations that met in private homes, called "hedge schools." Historians generally agree that they provided a kind of schooling, occasionally at a high level, for up to 400,000 students, in 9000 schools, by the mid-1820s. J. R. R. Adams says the hedge schools testified "to the strong desire of ordinary Irish people to see their children receive some sort of education." Antonia McManus argues that there "can be little doubt that Irish parents set a high value on a hedge school education and made enormous sacrifices to secure it for their children...hedge schoolteacher was one of their own". The 1782 repeal of the 1695 penal laws had made the Hedge schools legal, although still not in receipt of funding from the Parliament of Ireland.