4. Schools for little children and orphanages.
Besides all this, children who were too young to be apprenticed were in many places taught to spin and sometimes to read and write. We have seen that in Norwich in every parish "a select woman" was appointed for this purpose in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and in 1630 a similar order was made to the effect "that a knittinge schooledame shalbe provided in every parishe where there is not one already, to sett children and other poore on worke[521]." Even in the hamlets like those of Whitwell and Sellside, in the county of Westmoreland, three poor boys were maintained at the school by the parish who were to be taught trades as soon as they were old enough[522]. In Hertfordshire we are told that many had been placed as apprentices "and such as are not of fitt yeares to bee put forth wee haue caused to bee sett to spinning and such smale worke as is most meete for them according to the tendernesse of their age that idlenesse may not fasten in them[523]."
These schools were not improbably very numerous. In documents containing the instructions of justices to overseers knitting schools were advocated. Thus in directions issued in 1622 by some of the justices of Norfolk for the hundreds of Eynesford and South Erpingham, the justices resolve "that poore children be put to schoole to knittinge and spinninge dames and the churchwardens and ouerseers for the poore to paie the schoole dames their wages where the parents are not able[524]."
All this points to a system of popular education of the kind then approved.
In the largest towns orphanages also were established about this time. Christ's Hospital in London, as we have seen, was originally established for the little children of the London streets. During this period there were from seven to nine hundred children maintained at the cost of this institution, some in London and some at nurse in the country[525]. At Bristol there were two establishments of the same kind. Queen Elizabeth's Hospital was founded by a citizen named John Carr after the model of Christ's Hospital in London. The boys were subject to the same regulations and still wear the same blue and yellow dress[526]. The Red Maid's School was endowed by the will of John Whitson in 1621. It was to consist of a matron and forty girls. The children were to learn to read and sew and do such other work as the matron and the Mayor's wife should approve. They were to be apprenticed for eight years, to wear clothes of red cloth, and attend on the wives of the Mayor and aldermen on state occasions[527]. In Plymouth, Exeter, and Norwich also there were similar institutions, but they seem to have only existed in the large towns. Both in the country and towns orphaned and deserted children were generally "boarded out" until they were old enough to be apprenticed, and payments were made for them from the rates amounting to about a shilling a week.
Children were thus very well provided for, and their training was considered a matter of national concern. Parents, whether they were very poor or not, were compelled to send their children to work or school and either to apprentice them or to find situations for them. We are apt to consider popular education an exclusively modern movement, but in this, as in many other matters, the aims of the seventeenth century anticipate those of the nineteenth. They had ideas which were very different from those of to-day as to the kind of training which was necessary, but they attached an equal importance to the necessity of training. The Town Council of Norwich and the justices of Hertfordshire and Norfolk took energetic action in the matter.
γ. The able-bodied poor.
5. Relief given to prisoners.
We will now see how the administration of the time affected the able-bodied poor. The help given to the unemployed is by far the most important part of this relief, but some aid was also given to prisoners.