Page:History of Barrington, Rhode Island (Bicknell).djvu/191

 CHAPTER XI EARLY EDUCATION IN SWANSEA Plymouth Colony Encouraged Free Schools — Orders of 1658 and 1673 — Aid to Towns — First Free School in Swansea — Rev. John Myles, First Schoolmaster. PLYMOUTH was behind her sister colony of the Bay in providing by law for common schools. The first pub- lic act on record concerning schools was passed by the Gen- eral Court at Plymouth, in 1658, when it was "proposed by the Court unto the several Townshipes of this Jurisdiction as a thinge they ought to take into their serious considera- tion that some cowrse may be taken that in every Towne there may be a schoolmaster sett up to traine up Children to reading and writing." Massachusetts Bay Colony had taken similar action in the celebrated ordinance of 1647, although private or tuition schools had existed in Boston, Dorchester and other towns as early as 1635 or thereabouts. The Boston Latin School dates to 1638. Muddy Brook or Brookline had a school appropriation in 1637, and Dorchester claims a free town school in 1639. Lord Macauley called the attention of Par- liament and all England to this noble document of Universal Compulsory Education of Massachusetts of 1647, declaring it to be worthy of the wisest men of any age. In 1673, Plymouth ordered that " the charge of the free scools, which is three and thirty pounds a year, shall be defrayed out of the proffits ariseing by the fishing att the Cape," In 1674, it was voted that " the profits of the fish- ing at Cape Code granted by the Court for the erecting and maintaining of a scool be still continewed for that end if a competent number of Scollars shall appear to be devoated