2 66 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



dition 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 Eenaissance, 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 Eobert 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 Ijenefices 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, dravsdng 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 com- 

 petition 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. 



