Educational Opportunity in Tudor and Stuart England

Abstract

A GUARDED OPTIMISM seems to govern most appraisals of Tudor and Stuart education. Some writers have been so impressed by achievements of period, especially of years 1560 to 1640, they see not only an ferment involving an increase in number of schools but also an expansion of opportunities which brought schooling within reach of hitherto deprived lower members of society. The expansion of printing as well as expansion of education leads R. D. Altick to suggest, that in Tudor and Stuart eras ability to read was more democratically distributed among English people than it would again be until at least end of eighteenth century. (1) W. A. L. Vincent asserts in The Grammar Schools; their continuing tradition 1660-1714 that, the first sixty years of seventeenth century was period when grammar schools of England and Wales flourished, and when education of sort preparatory to university was available to all who wished to avail themselves of it. (2) Even more enthusiastic in this vein is W. K. Jordan, who claims, in The Charities of Rural England, by 1660 a widespread and well-endowed system of education has been created within reach of any poor and able boy who thirsted for knowledge and who aspired to escape grip of poverty. (3) Other writers are more cautious. It is widely agreed there was quickening of interest in education and an unprecedented expansion of facilities in sixteenth and seventeenth century England. The age of Elizabeth and early Stuarts in particular, characterized by Lawrence Stone as one of educational revolution, saw more newly endowed schools, more freelance teachers, and more students proceeding to higher education than in centuries before or after. (4) But who took part in this expansion, who benefitted from it, and for whom it was intended are still vexed and open questions. While scale of revolution is beginning to be known, its social dimensions remain unclear. Joan Simon, in Education and Society in Tudor England, points to