ies or of the monks
might be made available, there should be a college in which at least
logic, rhetoric, and the languages--_i.e._, Latin and Greek--should be
taught by competent masters, for whom and for the poorer scholars
attending them suitable stipends and bursaries should be provided out of
the aforesaid revenues. The fruit of such an organisation, it is
affirmed, would soon appear. "For first, the youthhead and tender
children shall be nourished and brought up in vertue _in presence of
their friends_, by whose good attendance many inconveniences may be
avoyded in which the youth commonly fall either by overmuch libertie
which they have in strange and unknowne places while they cannot rule
themselves, or else for lack of good attendance and of such necessaries
as their tender age requires. Secondly, the exercise of children in
every kirke shall be great instruction to the aged and unlearned," who
had never been taught to read, and in whose presence in the Sunday
afternoon service they were examined. Lastly, "the great Schooles called
the Universities shall be replenished with these that shall be apt to
learning; for this must be carefully provided that no father, of what
estate or condition that ever he be, use his children at his own
fantasie especially in their youthhead; but _all must be compelled_ to
bring up their children in learning and vertue." Thus boldly did our
reformers lay down the principle of compulsory education, which men in
our own day have only hesitatingly adopted, but with greater consistency
or daring than our contemporaries have yet evinced, for they proposed to
apply the principle to the children of the rich and potent, as well as
to those of the poor and vicious. Those higher classes, they say, "may
not be permitted to suffer their children to spend their youth in vaine
idleness as heretofore they have done, but they must be exhorted, and by
the censure of the kirk compelled, to dedicate their sonnes by training
them up in good exercises to the profite of the kirk and commonwealth."
This they expect the rich to do at their own expense, while they desire
the children of the poor to be supported at the charge of the kirk. The
sons neither of rich nor poor are to be permitted to reject learning if
they develop any aptitude for it, but are to be "charged to continue
their studie that the commonwealth may have some comfort by them." To
secure this object, discreet and learned men are to visit th