Page:A short history of social life in England.djvu/173

Rh the education of our forefathers was still very crude and scanty, and the period of their childhood very unhappy. There was little parental display of affection. The poor apprenticed their children at the age of seven, away from home if possible, and the wealthy sent their boys and girls to be brought up in the houses of strangers from a very tender age. "On enquiring their reason for this severity, they answered that they did it, in order that their children might learn better manners. But I, for my part," says a contemporary, "believe that they do it, because they like to enjoy all their comforts themselves, and that they are better served by strangers than they would be by their own children." Not that a sixteenth-century father felt any scruples about beating his own child. Sir Peter Carew was leashed like a dog and coupled to a hound by his father for playing truant at school. The birch played a large part in the bringing up of children. "It serveth for many good uses," says Dr. Turner, "and for none better than for betyng of stubborne boys that ether lye or wyll not learn." It was the general opinion of the age that the best schoolmaster was the greatest beater, and many a story is told of Nicholas Udal, the famous