The Beautiful Tree: Indigenous Indian Education in the Eighteenth Century c4.6

c4.6

From about the mid-16th century, however, a contrary trend set in. It even led to the enactment of a law ‘that the English Bible should not be read in churches. The right of private reading was granted to nobles, gentry and merchants that were householders. It was expressly denied to artificers’ prentices, to journeymen and serving men “of the degree of yeomen or under”, to husbandmen and labourers’ so as ‘to allay certain symptoms of disorder occasioned by a free use of the Scriptures.'⁵ According to this new trend, it was ‘meet for the ploughman’s son to go to the plough, and the artificer’s son to apply the trade of his parent’s vocation: and the gentlemen’s children are meet to have the knowledge of Government and rule in the commonwealth. For we have as much need of ploughmen as any other State: and all sorts of men may not go to school.’⁶