of the town house,
besides which the tolls of the annual fair, varying from 3s. to 5s.,
were also applied to education, and together seven boys and five girls
were being educated at the Free School out of a population of a
thousand souls, and this was only one year before the National Schools
were started in 1839!

The germ of public elementary education in Royston is associated with
the present Infants' School and with the honoured name of Miss Martha
Nash. The present Infants' School was established in 1832. The land
upon which it was built was given by Lord Dacre, and funds for the
building were obtained chiefly from a very successful bazaar under the
patronage of the then Lord and Lady Dacre.

The original trustees of the School were:--Edward King Fordham
(Royston), Wedd William Nash, John Phillips, John Edward Fordham, John
George Fordham, Valentine Beldam, John Beldam, John Butler, Thomas
Butterfield, William Hollick Nash, Joseph Pattison Wedd, William Field
Butler, James Piggot and Thomas Pickering.

The British School was established in 1840, and the building erected on
land the gift of Lord Dacre; the National School was commenced in the
same year and the school building also erected on land given by Lord
Dacre. The following is a list of the first trustees of the British
School:--Wedd William Nash, John Phillips, John George Fordham, John
Butler, Joseph Pattison Wedd, John Medway, S. S. England, F. Neller, W.
F. Butler, John Pendered, Henry Butler, William Hollick Nash, T. S.
Maling, James Piggot, James Richardson, William Simmons and Thomas A.
Butterfield.

I am unable to give the corresponding list of the first trustees of the
National Schools, but the following names occur as being present at a
meeting soon after the school was founded, and several of them were no
doubt trustees, viz., Rev. J. Whiting (vicar), John Phillips, William
Nunn, Henry Thurnall, G. Smith, ---- Brown, sen., R. Brown, and D.
Britten.

Whatever weight may be attached to the circumstance itself, or to the
oft-repeated complaints that religious worship and religious beliefs
have not so strong a hold upon the minds of men now as in the past, all
the evidence available points unmistakably to the fact of an enormous
increase in the habit of attending public worship at the {122} present
time compared with a hundred years ago, even when the constable went
his rounds in our streets to look up defaulters about the town, and
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