280 ACKWORTH SCHOOL CHAP. 



excellent letter the need of education in the church, and 

 the high duty of providing it. In 1769 an attempt was 

 made by the Pembertons, Logans and other leading 

 Friends in Philadelphia to set up a small and select 

 boarding-school near that city, which should give their 

 sons the advanced teaching that they had hitherto sent 

 them to Europe to obtain. But it came to nothing : 

 perhaps the times were too disturbed. That the path 

 of the educator was often hard may be judged from the 

 words of Governor Berkeley of Virginia, who wrote about 

 1670 : " I thank God there are no free schools, and I hope 

 we shall not have them these hundred years ; for learning 

 has brought disobedience and heresy and sects into the 

 world." * 



The need of better education came year after year 

 before the annual meeting in London. In 1758 the 

 counties were asked to render an account of all schools 

 in their several districts. Answers were received and 

 digested, and a scheme prepared, under which subscrip- 

 tions were to be raised and a boarding-school started. 

 Fothergill presented the report to the Yearly Meeting 

 of 1760 ; it was approved and sent down to the Quarterly 

 Meetings. But there was scarcely any response 2 and 

 little encouragement to Fothergill's hope, privately 

 expressed, " that step by step a foundation may be laid, 

 giving the youth of our society as good an education as 

 many think fit to give their dogs and horses " ; for the 

 children have, he said, much less expense bestowed upon 

 them. Yet he was not deterred. 



As years passed by and the counties did nothing, it 

 became clear that the Yearly Meeting itself, the head 

 and centre of the society, must act. A proposal for a 

 Boarding School " for the education of children whose 

 parents are not in affluence " was laid before the Yearly 



1 MS. Letter, J. F. to J. Pemberton, 25.9.1758, Etting MSS. ; Benezet, 

 in Mem. S. Fothergill, p. 362, and see at head of this Chapter ; The Friend, 

 Phila. Ixxxviii. 485 ; Berkeley, in F. P. Graves, A Students' History of Educa- 

 tion, 1915, p. 192. 



z The York Q.M. School Fund was instituted ; also a small school at 

 Gildersome, near Leeds. 



