Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 63.djvu/270

266 that he be, shall be free to set their son or daughter to take learning at any school that pleaseth them within the realm.' This great step was reached just five hundred years ago. The universal right of all, bond or free, to education was placed on a firm and unalterable basis. Until that was done it would have been hopeless for the 'New Learning,' for the Renaissance, to take root in England. Great movements take hold, not of individuals but of nations, and unless this nation had been free and fit to learn it never could have received the new life of the spiritual movement, which, beginning with the work of Wyclif, concluded with the ironies of the political reformation under Henry VIII. The tremendous though futile efforts made by Robert Grossteste, Bishop of Lincoln, Roger Bacon, and their school to introduce the awakening culture of the thirteenth century into England proved that the work was impossible till England had become once more a free nation, speaking its own tongue, and proud of its own personality. The end of the fourteenth and the opening of the fifteenth century show us an England where these conditions, despite the growing power of the Papacy, were fulfilled. The power of the Pope in England was, despite its total illegality, immense. It was tolerated as a balancing force to political Lollardy, on the one hand, and a turbulent baronage on the other. The country paid a heavy price, in illegal taxation and the farming of benefices in the interests of Rome, for the political benefits derived from the tacit suspension of the anti-papal legislation on the statute-book. But the great power of the papacy during the fifteenth century was exercised in regard to education on the whole, to good effect. During that century the whole social order was changing. The feudal system was in its last stage, and under the stress of the Wars of the Roses the entire machinery of tenures was falling to pieces. The church during this period not only kept learning alive, but developed the grammar schools and made them effective feeders for the universities, drawing upon every class of society for the supply of scholars. It is true that the temporary suppression of the Lollard movement involved the closing of many schools, but it is evident that at the very period when these schools were attacked a larger policy was in the air. I have referred to the statute of 1406 which gave the right of education to all. The famous Gloucester Grammar School Case decided further (in 1410) that at common law every man who was able had the right to teach, and this fact undoubtedly bore fruit. Throughout the century competition among schoolmasters was keen in all the great centers of population, and there can be no manner of doubt that during the fifteenth century, before the introduction of printing, educational activity was preparing the way among all classes for the introduction of the 'New Learning' and the final rejection of papal interference in spiritual affairs.