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268, their position was strengthened—and the desire for a national system of education grew with the development of the Reformation. Queen Elizabeth showed herself keenly interested in the task of creating the means that should bring the opportunities of learning within the grasp of her poorest subject. It is true that she insisted on the religious conformity of schoolmasters to the established church. To so insist was part of her conception of national unity; but this, at that date, was in no way inconsistent with an enlightened educational policy. Shortly after her accession she published special injunctions on the subject of education, while the bishops closely enquired into the character and quality of the teaching in their dioceses. Parliament moreover specially excepted all educational foundations from annexation on religious grounds, and also by the statute of apprentices of 1562 exempted 'a student or scolar in any of the Universitees, or in any Scoole' from the strict provisions of that act. Moreover, commissioners for charitable uses were appointed—a commission that still occasionally sat in the nineteenth century—who enquired into the abuses of educational foundations. A statute of 1588, which is still in force, attacked with increased vigor the dire corruption of these foundations. The act aimed alike at the universities and the schools. All educational foundations were, moreover, relieved from the burden of subsidies and other taxation. Nor was this all. The queen in 1571 incorporated by statute the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge in order to secure 'the mayntenannce of good and Godly literature, and the vertuouse Education of Youth within either of the same Universities.' It is interesting to note that this quotation from the pre-amble to the act uses, so far as can be ascertained, the word 'education' for the first time in its modern sense. We may say then that the great queen removed, in so far as in her lay, all artificial draw-backs to education; she opened up all educational endowments to the fittest scholars, and she gave a new and as yet unexhausted impetus to the university system, while she inspired both church and state with a new interest in educational matters.

After the death of Elizabeth, we find that the subject of education was doomed, in view of new political problems and in spite of the personal interest that James I. and probably Charles I. took in letters, to some neglect. Yet Parliament even in the stern days of 'the Great Rebellion' had time to think of education, for we find that Cromwell passed in 1649 a measure for education in Wales as well as a general act that diverted to national education tithe-rent charges of the value of £20,000 a year, and directed that if the annual sum fell below that amount it should be supplemented out of the national exchequer. We thus find in England as early as 1649 provision for parliamentary grants in aid