But Cranmer was overruled, and a
measure, which might have helped to catch up the church before it fell
into that abyss of ignorance which seems to have immediately succeeded
the Reformation, (the natural consequence of a season of convulsion and
violence,) was unhappily lost. It was not till the reign of Elizabeth
that the evil was at all adequately met, nor fully indeed then, as the
deficiency of well-endowed schools at this day testifies. Still much was
at that time done. The dignitaries and more wealthy ecclesiastics of the
reformed Church bestirred themselves and founded some schools. Many
tradesmen, who had accumulated fortunes in London, (then the almost
exclusive province of commercial enterprise,) retired in their later
years to the country-town which had given them birth, and gratefully
provided for the better education of their neighbours, by furnishing it
with a grammar-school. And even the honest yeoman, a person who then
appears to have appreciated learning, and often to have brought up his
boy to the church, united in the same praiseworthy object. In such cases
application was usually made to the Queen for a charter, which was
granted with or without pecuniary assistance on her own part; and
whoever will examine the dates of our foundation schools, will find a
great proportion of them erected in that glorious reign.
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