When the reforming spirit which brooded over the two centuries touched the subject of education, its advocates became enthusiastic! Here is what an old writer said in 1806 about a proposal to establish evening schools for the instruction of farm servants:—
"We should hear the humble countryman talk of the heroes of old, catch the patriotic inspiration from the action of his great forefathers, while wisdom would extend her protecting hand and claim the nation for her own"!
However much we may be inclined to smile at this grandiloquent prophecy of the fruits of an evening school, in the light of present difficulties of instilling four standards into the bulk of the childhood of the nation, it is impossible to move a step among the footprints of the common people of sixty years ago without finding how enormously the progress of education has transformed the face of society, though not quite on the classic lines of the old writer just quoted.
Of education for children in the villages there was none at the beginning of the century. Over and over again the answers to the Bishop of Ely's questions in 1791, show that there was no school in the parish, and, as Sunday Schools were not generally established till many years afterwards, it may safely be said that during the first few years of the present century, not one person in ten of the labouring population could read, much less write.
The Sunday School movement, the real beginning of the education of the people, both secular and religious, commenced at a very early date in several parts of Hertfordshire, but in the beginning these schools were very different from what is now understood by that term. So far as Royston is concerned I believe the Nonconformists generally claim that they were the first to start a Sunday School in the town—that the first Sunday School was established in connection with the Old Meeting, now John Street Chapel. If by a Sunday School is meant what it now means—the voluntary service of lay workers in teaching the children, this may be true, but taking the word in its more general sense of teaching children on Sundays, the first step of which I can find any record would be that taken by the Church people. In July, 1808, there occurs this entry in the Royston vestry minute book—
"At this Vestry it is considered that the Churchwardens Do put the Galary in proper Order for the Reception of the Children belonging to a Sunday School."
From the wording of this minute it is evident that the Sunday School in question had just been established, and this is confirmed by what follows in the same book—
"Boys to be admitted at the age of 6 years and continue to 12, girls to be admitted at the age of 6 years and continue to 14."
"The Masters to receive the scholars at 9 o'clock in the morning and to go with them to Church at 11. The scholars are to return to school at 2 and go to Church at 3 and return from Church to school, and continue there till between five and six o'clock"!
"The master, H. Watson, jun., to be paid six guineas a year for his trouble."