Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 63.djvu/271

Rh When we regard the great movement known as the Reformation apart from the local incidents that appear to have precipitated it, we seem to see, in the present connection at any rate, the working of long ripening issues. The crown in the fifteenth century had been glad enough to play off Rome against a rebellious and heretical commonalty and a dangerous baronage. The opening of the sixteenth century presented a new scene of action, from which the feudal barons had disappeared. The commonalty and the king had now one thing in common: the old-standing hatred of papal interference and foreign taxation; while the moving force of the new learning was urging both king and people, unconsciously enough perhaps, towards the same end. The Renaissance, the lessons of history, and the hope of gain, all combined to make men see in a free and purified church that vision of national liberty and national isolation which had always been the ideal of English statesmen from Alfred onwards. So the Reformation came, affirming, only in more downright fashion, the policy laid down by Edward III. in the famous statute of Provisors of Benefices. The independence of the church of England indeed had been asserted over and over again from British times to Magna Charta, from Magna Charta down to the Reformation-Parliament, which, in the seven years from 1529 to 1536, finally did away with de facto papal supremacy. The notable fact of the Reformation legislation for us is that it finally broke the bond that Rome in the teeth of history and the law had bound round England. The separation from Rome played a notable part in the history of English education. The first result was an unhappy one. I have pointed out that in the century immediately preceding the Reformation the educational system in England was in many ways effective. In fact there was a primary class of schools that fed the grammar schools, while the grammar schools fed the universities. There are still extant a considerable number of both primary and secondary schools that were created during that period; but the number is but a small proportion of the noble medieval system. Henry VIII. and the ministers of his son Edward VI. in their haste to abolish all traces of Rome, to divert all papal taxation and to absorb the property of papal foundations, destroyed innumerable educational foundations. The chantry legislation alone would have compassed the practical destruction of the medieval system. It is, however, probable, nay, almost certain, that the Tudors had no desire in any way to injure national education. The advancement of learning was a thing dear to the hearts of Henry VIII., Edward VI., Mary I. and Elizabeth, but learning itself fell before the progress of a definite and destructive political policy. It was intended to recreate the destroyed foundations, but the funds nominally allocated for this purpose were diverted to other and less laudable uses.

The course of destruction, however, left the universities untouched—