[255] See below, pp. [338–340].
[256] Harrison in Elizabethan England (Withington), p. 114, quoting one of “the Spaniards in Queen Mary’s days." “These English have their houses made of sticks and dirt, but they fare commonly so well as the king.”
[257] Fortescue, On the Governance of England, chaps. iii. and xiii. The Scots, he thinks, are only one degree less faint-hearted than the French. “Thai ben often tymes hanged for larceny, and stelynge off good in the absence off the owner theroff. But ther hartes serve them not to take a manys gode, while he is present, and woll defende it.”
[258] Coke, Debate of Heralds. See also the quotation, Froude’s Henry VIII., vol. i. chap, i., from a State Paper of 1515: “What comyn folke in all this world may compare with the comyns of England, in riches, freedom, liberty, welfare, and all prosperity? What comyn folke is so mighty, so stronge in the felde, as the comyns of England?”
[259] The Commonweal of this Realm of England (Lamond), p. 94.
[260] Victoria County History, Berkshire, ii., 208. In 1558 a yeoman leaves his son a portion of land worth £10 a year “for his keepinge and learninge in Oxford for five years nexte.” On the same page there is a case of a man described as a “yeoman” who is tenant by copy of Court Roll.
[261] Latimer’s Sermons. The first sermon preached before King Edward, March 8, 1549 (Everyman Series, p. 86): “We have good statutes made for the commonwealth, as touching commoners and enclosures; many meetings and sessions; but in the end of the matter there cometh nothing forth. Well, well, this is one thing I will say unto you; from whence it cometh I know, even from the devil. I know his intent in it. For if ye bring it to pass that the yeomanry be not able to put their sons to school (as indeed universities do wondrously decay already); I say ye pluck salvation from the people and utterly destroy the realm. For by yeomen’s sons the faith of Christ is and hath been maintained chiefly.” See also A Supplication of the Poor Commons (E. E. T. S.): “This thing causeth that suche possessioners as heretofore were able and used to maintain their own children ... to lernynge and suche other qualities as are necessary to be had in this Your Highness Royalme, are now of necessitie compelled to set theyr own children to labour, and al is lytle enough to pay the lorde’s rent, and to take the house anew at the end of the yere.” The children of yeomen had no doubt been educated mainly for the Church, and some attained high position (Surtees Society, vol. lxxix. pp. 263–264, for the son of a yeoman becoming a Bishop, and vol. li. No. 53, the son of a yeoman becoming subdeacon of York, vol. lxxix. pp. 176–177, for a yeoman’s son sent to school for fifteen years). But in the fifteenth century this was not always so, v. Leach, Educational Charters, p. 41, for a school founded in Yorkshire, a county which “produced many youths endowed with light and sharpness of ability, who do not all want to attain the dignity and elevation of the priesthood, that these may be better fitted for the mechanical arts and other concerns of this world.” A case of hostility to the education of the poorer classes based on the idea that education should be reserved for “gentlemen" is given ibid. p. 470, where the notorious Lord Rich and other gentlemen argue “as for husbandsmen’s children, they were more meet ... for the plough and to be artificers than to occupy the place of the learned sort. So that they wished none else to be put to school, but only gentlemen's children.” Cranmer retorted, “Poor men’s children ... are commonly more apt to apply their study than is the gentleman's son delicately educated ... the poor man’s son by painstaking will be learned, when the gentleman’s son will not take the pains to get it, ... wherefore if the gentleman’s son be apt to learning let him be admitted; if not apt, let the poor man's child being apt enter in his room.”
[262] Repton School Register, 1564–1910. One of the husbandmen kept his boy at school for ten years. The average school life of the sons of seven yeomen was between six and seven years; one stays for twelve years, going to school at five and staying till seventeen. If one may judge by the attitude of most modern parents ("I went to the mill when I was ten, and why shouldn’t Tommie?"), these men must have been pretty comfortably off.