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Rh latter part of the Middle Ages, possessed an abundance of educational facilities. We find here even an interesting example of compulsory higher education. At the instance of the clergy, in 1470, an act of parliament was passed providing that all barons and freeholders should, under penalty of twenty pounds, send their sons at the age of nine or ten years to the schools, to remain there until they had acquired a competent knowledge of Latin. They were then to attend the schools of art and law.

As regards secondary schools in England, it used to be commonly asserted that Edward VI., the first monarch of the Reformed Faith, was the great founder and reformer. Upwards of thirty free grammar schools founded at this time have permanently associated the reign of Edward VI. with popular education. The Schools Inquiring Commission in 1886 went further, and set down fifty-one schools to the credit of Edward. Modern historical research has broken, stick by stick, the whole bundle of old misrepresentations. "The fact is that the whole theory about the dearth of grammar schools and other schools still more elementary is a mere delusion. The immense prestige that Edward VI. has acquired as a patron of education is simply due to the fact that he refounded out of confiscated Church property some small percentage of schools which he and his rapacious father had destroyed. The probability is that England was far