[1] Prussia and Holland possibly form exceptions in the matter. Frederick the Great (p. 474) was noted for his liberality in religious matters. There different varieties of Protestants, Catholics, and Jews were all tolerated, and there they mingled and intermarried. So well were the Jews received that the type—German-Jew—is to-day familiar to the world.
[2] As early as 1670, in the celebrated Bates case, the English court held that a teacher could not be dispossessed from his school for teaching without the Bishop's license, if he were the nominee of the founder or patron. This led (p. 438) to a great increase in endowed schools.
[3] In the Cox case (1700), another important legal decision, the English court held that there was not and never had been any ecclesiastical control over any schools other than grammar schools, and that teachers in elementary schools did not need to have a license from the Bishop. The year following, in the case of Rex v. Douse, the same principle was affirmed in even clearer language.
[4] It was not until 1779 that an Act (19 Geo. III, c. 44) granted full freedom to Dissenters to teach. In 1791 a supplemental Act (31 Geo. III, c. 32, s. 13-14) granted similar liberty to Roman Catholics.
[5] It was this second Society that did notable work in the Anglican
Colonies of America, and particularly in and about New York City (p. 369).
See Kemp, W. W., Support of Schools in Colonial New York by the S.P.G.
(New York, 1913.)
[6] Begun, in 1704, in London, these were continued yearly there until 1877. They were also preached for more than a century in many other places. To these sermons the children marched in procession, wearing their uniforms, and a collection for the support of the schools was taken. Of the first of these occasions in London, Strype; in his edition of Stow, says: "It was a wondrous surprising, as well as a pleasing sight, that happened June the 8th, 1704, when all the boys and girls maintained at these schools, in their habits, walked two and two, with their Masters and Mistresses, some from Westminster, and some through London; with many of the Parish ministers going before them; and all meeting at Saint Andrews', Holburn, Church, where a seasonable sermon was preached… upon Genesis xviii, 19, I know him that he will command his children, etc., the children (about 2000) being placed in the galleries."
[7] "The religious revival under Wesley owed, perhaps, more than is generally suspected to the Christian teaching in these new and humble elementary schools." (Montmorency, J. E. G. de, The Progress of Education in England, p. 54.)
[8] He gathered together the children (90 at first) employed in the pin factories of Gloucester, and paid four women a shilling each to spend their Sundays in instructing these poor children "in reading and the Church Catechism."
[9] Sunday being a day of rest and the mills and factories closed, the children ran the streets and spent the day in mischief and vice. In the agricultural districts of England farmers were forced to take special precautions on Sundays to protect their places and crops from the depredations of juvenile offenders.
[10] "In a very special way they met the sentiment of the times. They were cheap—many were conducted by purely voluntary teachers—they did not teach too much, and they had the further merit of not interfering with the work of the week." (Birchenough, C., History of Elementary Education in England and Wales, p. 40.)