Wormeley’s library.
Some time was found for reading. The inventories of personal estates almost always include books, in some instances few and of little worth, in others numerous and valuable. The library of Ralph Wormeley, of Rosegill, contained about four hundred titles. Wormeley, who had been educated at Oriel College, Oxford, was president of the council, secretary of state, and a trustee of William and Mary College; he died in 1701. Among his books were Burnet’s “History of the Reformation,” a folio history of Spain, an ecclesiastical history in Latin, Camden’s “Britannia,” Lord Bacon’s “History of Henry VII.,” and his “Natural History,” histories of Scotland, Ireland, France, the Netherlands, and the West Indies, biographies of Richard III., Charles I., and George Castriot, Plutarch’s Lives, Burnet’s “Theory of the Earth,” Willis’s “Practice of Physick,” Heylin’s “Cosmography,” “a chirurgical old book,” “the Chyrurgans mate,” Galen’s “Art of Physick,” treatises on gout, pancreatic juice, pharmacy, scurvy, and many other medical works, Coke’s Reports and his “Institutes,” collections of Virginia and New England laws, a history of tithes, “The Office of Justice of the Peace,” a Latin treatise on maritime law, and many other law books, Usher’s “Body of Divinity,” Hooker’s “Ecclesiastical Polity,” Poole’s “Annotations to the Bible,” “A Reply to the Jesuits,” Fuller’s “Holy State” and his “Worthies,” a concordance to the Bible, Jeremy Taylor’s “Holy Living and Dying,” “The Whole Duty of Man,” a biography of St. Augustine, Baxter’s “Confession of Faith,” and many books of divinity, a liberal assortment of dictionaries and grammars of English, French, Spanish, Latin, and Greek, the essays of Montaigne and other French books, Cæsar, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Thucydides, Josephus, Quintus Curtius, Seneca, Terence, “Æsop’s Fables,” “Don Quixote,” “Hudibras,” Quarles’s poems, George Herbert’s poems, Howell’s “Familiar Letters,” Waller’s poems, the plays of Sir William Davenant, “ffifty Comodys & tragedies in folio,” “The Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft,” “An Embersee from ye East India Compa to ye Grand Tartar,” “The Negro’s and Indian’s Advocate,” “A Looking Glass for the Times,” and so on.[228] Though not the library of a scholar, it indicates that its owner was a thoughtful man and fairly well informed.
Libraries of Byrd and Lee.
A more remarkable library was that of William Byrd, of Westover. It contained 3,625 volumes, classified nearly as follows: History, 700; Classics, etc., 650; French, 550; Law, 350; Divinity, 300; Medicine, 200; Scientific, 225; Entertaining, etc., 650.[229] This must have been one of the largest collections of books made in the colonial period. That of the second Richard Lee, who died in 1715, contained about 300 titles, among which we notice many more Greek and Latin writers than in Wormeley’s, especially such names as Epictetus, Aristotle de Anima, Diogenes Laertius, Lucian, Heliodorus, Claudian, Arrian, and Orosius, besides such mediæval authors as Albertus Magnus and Laurentius Valla.[230]
Schools and printing.
Such libraries were of course exceptional. In most planters’ houses you would probably have found a few English classics, with perhaps “Don Quixote” and “Gil Blas,” and an assortment of books on divinity, manuals for magistrates, and helps in farming. Virginia was not eminent as a literary or bookish community. There was no newspaper until the establishment of the “Virginia Gazette” in 1736. As for schools, the Lords Commissioners of Plantations sent over a series of interrogatories to Sir William Berkeley in 1671, and asked him, among other things, what provision was made for public instruction. His reply was characteristic: “I thank God there are no free schools nor printing, and I hope we shall not have these hundred years; for learning has brought disobedience and heresy and sects into the world, and printing has divulged them, and libels against the best government. God keep us from both!”[231] Lord Culpeper seems to have been much of Berkeley’s way of thinking, for we read that, “February 21, 1682, John Buckner [was] called before the Lord Culpeper and his council for printing the laws of 1680 without his excellency’s license, and he and the printer [were] ordered to enter into bond in £100 not to print anything thereafter until his majesty’s pleasure should be known.”[232] The pleasure of Charles II. was, that nobody should use a printing-press in Virginia, and so he instructed the next governor, Lord Howard, in 1684.
Private free schools.
Academies and tutors.
The establishment of a system of schools such as flourished in New England was prevented by the absence of town life and the long distances between plantations. When Berkeley said there were no free schools in Virginia, he may have had in mind the contrast with New England. No such schools were founded in Virginia by the assembly, but there were instances of free schools founded by individuals; as, for example, the Symms school in 1636, Captain Moon’s school in 1655, Richard Russell’s in 1667, Mr. King’s in 1669, the Eaton school some time before 1689, and Edward Moseley’s in 1721.[233] Indeed, there was after 1646[234] a considerable amount of compulsory primary education in Virginia, much more than has been generally supposed, since the records of it have been buried in the parish vestry-books. In the eighteenth century we find evidences that pains were taken to educate coloured people.[235] It was not unusual for the plantation to have among its numerous outbuildings a school conducted by some rustic dignitary of the neighbourhood. In the “old field schools” little more was taught than “the three Rs,” but these humble institutions are not to be despised; for it was in one of them, kept by “Hobby, the sexton,” that George Washington learned to read, write, and cipher. His father and his elder brother Lawrence had been educated at Appleby School, in England; George himself, after an interval with a Mr. Williams, near Wakefield, finished his school-days at an excellent academy in Fredericksburg, of which Rev. James Marye was master. The sons of George Mason studied two years at an academy in Stafford County kept by a Scotch parson named Buchan, “a pious man and profound classical scholar.” Afterwards John Mason was sent to study mathematics with an expert named Hunter, “a Scotchman also and quite a recluse, who kept a small school in a retired place in Calvert County, Maryland.” Much teaching was also done by private tutors. In the Mason household these were three Scotchmen in succession, of whom “the two last were especially engaged [in Scotland] to come to America (as was the practice in those times with families who had means) by my father to live in his house and educate the children.... The tutoress of my sisters was a Mrs. Newman. She remained in the family for some time.”[236]
Convicts as tutors.