Page:The child's pictorial history of England; (IA childspictorialh00corn).pdf/52

 worked both with oars and sails; they were twice as long as those of the Danes, and stood higher out of the water.

27. While some workmen were making ships, others were employed in rebuilding of the towns and villages that had been burned down by the Danes; and the king ordained that there should be schools in different parts of the kingdom, where noblemen's sons might be educated, for he had found the benefit of learning himself, and thought it a sad thing that all the great men should be so ignorant as they were.

28. You may, perhaps, wonder why so good a man as Alfred should only think of having the great people taught to read; but reading would have been of no use to the common people, as the art of printing was unknown, and there were no books but those written by the monks or nuns, which were so expensive that none but very rich people could afford to have even two or three of them.

29. The principal school founded by king Alfred was at Oxford, which was then a small, poor place, with a monastery, and a few mean wooden houses for the scholars to live in, very different from the present grand university, and the masters, who were all churchmen, and called learned clerks, resided in the monastery.

30. Alfred, with the help of some good and