[152] Bishop Barnes in his Injunctions of 1577 commands that all
incumbents of cures in Durham diocese not licenced to preach shall
"duly, paynefully and frely" teach the children of their several
parishes to read and write. Furthermore, teachers shall exhort the
parents of those boys who have proved themselves apt at learning and
of "pregnant capacitie" to cause their sons to continue their studies
and to acquire the good and liberal sciences. On the other hand they
shall induce fathers of sons of little wit or capacity to put them to
husbandry, or some other suitable craft, that they may grow to be
useful members of the commonwealth.[153] In this diocese we find
schoolmasters by profession ("_ludimagistri_") summoned at the
visitations very regularly, and there seem to have been a considerable
number of them in the towns, though not in the country parishes, where
the curates doubtless officiated as instructors of the youth according
to the bishop's monitions.[154] Everywhere in the proceedings of the
ecclesiastical courts schoolmasters are "detected" to the judges from
time to time for having no licence to teach.[155]
As for the pulpit, that great instrument of political guidance at a
period when politics consisted chiefly of religious contentions,[156]
it is well known that Elizabeth and her advisors grasped at once its
paramount importance, and that she had been on the throne but little
over a month when she issued her proclamation inhibiting all preaching
and teaching for the time being.
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