The fear of witchcraft grew with Puritanism. Poor decrepit old defenseless women, often deformed and feeble-minded, were thought to be witches. Their warts and tumors were thought to be teats for the devil to suck or the devil's mark. Cursing or ill-tempers (probably from old age pains) or having cats were further indications of witchery.
When the king learned in 1618 that the Puritans had prevented certain recreations after the Sunday service, he proclaimed that the people should not be restrained from lawful recreations and exercise such as dancing, archery for men, leaping, vaulting, May- games, Whitsunales, Morris-dances, and May-pole sports. Also women could carry rushes to decorate the church as they had done in the past. (Still unlawful on Sunday was bear and bull baitings and bowlings.) His stated purpose was to prevent people such as Catholics from being deterred from conversion, to promote physical fitness for war, and to keep people from drinking and making discontented speeches in their ale houses.
Besides the Puritans, there were other Independent sects, such as the Congregationalists, whose churches gathered together by the inspiration of Jesus. This sect was started by English merchants residing in Holland who set up congregations of Englishmen under their patronage there; they kept minister and elders well under their control. The Baptists emerged out of the Independents. They believed that only adults, who were capable of full belief, and not children, could be baptized. They also believed that it was the right of any man to seek God's truth for himself in the scriptures and that obedience to the state should not extend beyond personal conscience.
One fourth of all children born did not live to the age of ten, most dying in their first year. Babies had close caps over their head, a rattle, and slept in a sturdy wood cradle that rocked on the floor, usually near the hearth. Babies of wealthier families had nurses. The babies of ladies were suckled by wet nurses. Parents raised children with affection and tried to prepare them to become independent self-sustaining adults. There was less severity than in Tudor times, although the maxim "spare the rod and spoil the child" was generally believed, especially by Puritans, and applied to even very young children. In disciplining a child, an admonition was first used, and the rod as a last resort, with an explanation of the reasons for its use. There were nursery rhymes and stories such as "Little Bo-Peep", "Jack and the Beanstalk", "Tom Thumb", "Chicken Little", and Robin Hood and King Arthur tales, and probably also "Puss in Boots", "Red Ridinghood", "Cinderella", "Beauty and the Beast", "Bluebeard" and Aesop's Fables. "Little Jack Horner" who sat in a corner was a satire on the Puritan aversion to Christmas pudding and sense of conscious virtue. Toys included dolls, balls, drums, and hobby horses. Children played "hide and seek", "here we go around the Mulberry bush", and other group games. School children were taught by "horn books". This was a piece of paper with the alphabet and perhaps a religious verse, such as the Paternoster prayer, that was mounted on wood and covered with thin horn to prevent tearing. Little girls cross-stitched the alphabet and numerals on samplers. Block alphabets were just coming in. Most market towns had a grammar school which would qualify a student for university. They were attended by sons of noblemen, country squires [poor gentlemen], merchants, and substantial yeomen, and in some free schools, the poor. School hours were from 6:00 a.m. to noon or later. Multiplication was taught. If affordable, families had their children involved in education after they were small until they left home at about fifteen for apprenticeship or service. Otherwise, children worked with their families from the age of seven, e.g. carding and spinning wool, until leaving home at about fifteen.
There were boarding schools such as Winchester, Eton, Westminster, St. Paul's, and Merchant Taylors'. There, senior boys selected for conduct and ability supervised younger boys. They thereby got experience for a future in public life. The system was also a check on bullying of the weak by the strong. The curriculum included Lilly's "Grammar", Aesop, Terence's Roman comic plays, Virgil's "Aeneid", the national epic of Rome, Cicero's "Letters" reflecting Roman life, Sallust's histories showing people and their motives, Caesar's "Commentaries" on the Gallic and civil wars, Horace's "Epistles" about life and poetry, poet Ovid's "Metamorphoses" on adventures and love affairs of deities and heros, or "Fasti" on Roman religious festivals and customs, Donatus' grammar book, and other ancient Latin authors. Football, with hog bladders, and tennis were played. These schools were self-supporting and did their own farming.
Private schools for girls were founded in and around London. They were attended by daughters of the well-to-do merchant class, nobility, and gentry. They were taught singing, playing of instruments, dancing, French, fine sewing, embroidery, and sometimes arithmetic. Fewer served in the house of some noble lady as before. Most commonly, the sons and daughters of gentlemen and nobles were taught by private tutors. A tutor in the house educated the girls to the same extent as the boys. There were not many girls' boarding schools. Frequently, the mother educated her daughters. A considerable number of girls of other backgrounds such as the yeomanry and the town citizenry somehow learned to read and write.
Boys began at university usually from age 14 to 18, but sometimes as young as 12. The universities provided a broad-based education in the classics, logic and rhetoric, history, theology, and modern languages for gentlemen and gave a homogenous national culture to the ruling class. There was a humanist ideal of a gentleman scholar. The method of study based largely on lectures and disputations. Each fellow had about five students to tutor. In many cases, he took charge of the finances of his students, paying his bills to tradesmen and the college. His reimbursement by the students' fathers put them into friendly contact with the family. The students slept in trundle beds around his bed and had an adjacent room for study. Scholasticism was only starting to give way to modern studies. Aristotle, whose authority was paramount, remained the lynch pin of university studies, especially for logic and dialectic. The study of rhetoric was based on Quintilian, the Latin writer, and the Greek treatise of Hermogenes of Tarsus. Also studyed was Cicero's orations as models of style. Examination for degrees was by disputation over a thesis of the student. The B.A. degree was given after four years of study, and the M.A. after three more. There were advanced degrees in civil law (after seven more years of study), medicine (after seven years), divinity (required more than seven years), and music. Many of the men who continued for advanced degrees became fellows and took part in the teaching. Most fellowships were restricted to clerics. Oxford and Cambridge Universities operated under a tutorial system. Access to grammar schools and universities was closed to girls of whatever class. Oxford University now had the Bodleian Library. In the universities, there were three types of students: poor scholars, who received scholarships and also performed various kinds of service such as kitchen work and did errands for fellows such as carrying water and waiting on tables; commoners, who paid low fees and were often the sons of economical gentlemen or businessmen; and the Fellow Commoners (a privileged and well-to-do minority, usually sons of noblemen or great country gentlemen). The Fellow Commoners paid high fees, had large rooms, sometimes had a personal tutor or servant, and had the right to eat with the Fellows at High Table. Here, gentlemen made friends with their social equals from all over the country. Students wore new- fashioned gowns of any colors and colored stockings. They put on stage plays in Latin and English. The students played at running, jumping, and pitching the bar, and at the forbidden swimming and football. They were not to have irreligious books or dogs. Cards and dice could be played only at Christmas time. Students still drank, swore, and rioted, but they were disallowed from going into town without special permission. Those below a B.A. had to be accompanied by a tutor or an M.A. They were forbidden from taverns, boxing matches, dances, cock fights, and loitering in the street or market. Sometimes a disputation between two colleges turned into a street brawl. Punishment was by flogging. Each university had a chancellor, usually a great nobleman or statesman, who represented the university in dealings with the government and initiated policies. The vice-chancellor was appointed for a year from the group of heads of college. He looked out for the government of halls, enforced the rules of the university, kept its courts, licensed wineshops, and shared control of the town with the mayor.
Tutors were common. They resided at the boy's house or took boys to board with them at their houses in England or on the continent. The tutor sometimes accompanied his student to grammar school or university. Puritans frequently sent their sons to board in the house of some Frenchman or Swiss Protestant to learn the Calvinist doctrines or on tour with a tutor. Certain halls in the universities were predominately Puritan. Catholics were required to have their children taught in a home of a Protestant, a relative if possible.
The Inns of Court were known as "the third university". It served the profession of law, and was a training ground for the sons of nobility and the gentry and for those entering the service of the commonwealth. Some American colonists sent their sons there. The Inns were self-governing and ruled by custom. Students were supposed to live within the Inn, two to a room, but often there were not enough rooms, so some students lived outside the quadrangles. Every student was supposed to partake of Commons or meals for a certain fraction of the year - from eight weeks to three months and there to argue issues in cases brought up by their seniors. In hall the students were not allowed to wear hats, though caps were permitted, nor were they to appear booted or spurred or carrying swords. For the first two years, they would read and talk much of the law, and were called Clerks Commoners. After two years they became Mootmen or Inner Barristers. In five or six years they might be selected to be called to the bar as Utter Barristers, whose number was fixed. There was no formal examination. The Utter Barrister spent at least three more years performing exercises and assisting in directing the studies of the younger men. After this time, he could plead in the general courts at Westminster, but usually carried on law work in the offices of other men and prepared cases for them. Participating in moots (practice courts) was an important part of their education. Lectures on statutes and their histories were given by Readers
Physicians were licensed by universities, by the local bishop, or in London, by the College of Physicians and Surgeons. Most were university graduates, and because of the expense of the education, from well-to-do families. For the B.A., they emphasized Greek. For the M.A., they studied the works of Greek physicians Claudius Galen and Hippocrates, and perhaps some medieval authorities. After the M.A., they listened to lectures by the Regius Professor of Medicine and saw a few dissections. Three years of study gave them a M.B., and four more years beyond this the M.D. degree. A physician's examination of a patient cost 10s. and included asking him about his symptoms and feelings of pain, looking at this eyes, looking at his body for spots indicative of certain diseases, guessing whether he had a fever, feeling his pulse, and examining urine and stools, though there were no laboratory tests. Smallpox was quickly recognized. It was treated by red cloth being wrapped around the person and put up to cover the windows; this promoted healing without scarring. Gout was frequent. Syphilis was common in London and other large centers, especially in Court circles. It was ameliorated by mercury. An imbalance of the four humors: blood, phlegm, choler, bile was redressed by blood-letting, searing, draining, and/or purging. Heart trouble was not easily diagnosed and cancer was not recognized as a life-threatening disease. Childbirth was attended by physicians if the patient was well-to-do or the case was serious. Otherwise women were attended only by midwives. They often died in childbirth, many in their twenties.