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Levels of Illiteracy in England, 1530–1730

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

David Cressy
David Cressy
Affiliation:
Pitzer College, Claremont
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Extract

While remaining appropriately humble about the crudity of his data and the limitations of his sources, the social historian who is willing to employ numerical methods and statistical procedures can make reasonably confident estimates of the extent of illiteracy in early modern England. A careful examination of the ability of witnesses before the ecclesiastical courts to sign their depositions, of testators to sign their wills, of applicants for marriage licences to sign the allegations and bonds, and of subscribers to protestations and declarations actually to write their names on the document, reveals a pattern of widespread but unevenly distributed illiteracy. The best of these sources provides evidence not only on the social structure of illiteracy, but also on its changing level between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries. Progress towards the reduction of illiteracy was decidedly erratic.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , March 1977 , pp. 1 - 23
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1977

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References

1 Sources are discussed and some figures given in Schofield, R. S., ‘The measurement of literacy in pre–industrial England’, in Goody, Jack, Literacy in traditional societies (Cambridge, 1968), pp. 311–25Google Scholar; Schofield, R. S., ‘Illiteracy in pre-industrial England: the work of the Cambridge Group’, Educational Reports Umea, II (1973), 1–21Google Scholar; Stone, Lawrence, ‘Literacy and education in England, 1640—1900’, Past and Present, XLII (1969), 98–112Google Scholar; Spufford, Margaret, Contrasting communities, English villagers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Cambridge, 1974), pp. 192–205CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cressy, David, ‘Literacy in pre-industrial England’, Societas, iv (1974), 229–40Google Scholar. Another source is introduced in Vann, Richard T., ‘literacy in seventeenth-century England: some Hearth Tax evidence’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, v (1974), 287–293CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Wills and depositions are compared in Cressy, David, ‘literacy in seventeenth-century England: more evidence’, Journal of Interdisciplinary HistoryGoogle Scholar (forthcoming).

2 Cf. Altick, R. D., The English common reader (Chicago, 1963), pp. 18–19Google Scholar.

3 Schofield, , ‘Measurement of literacy’, p. 319Google Scholar.

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5 Stone, Lawrence, ‘The educational revolution in England, 1560–1640’, Past and Present, xxviii (1964), 43. Almost half of a sample of early seventeenth century criminals sentenced to death pleaded Benefit of Clergy and saved their lives by reciting the ‘neck verse’Google Scholar.

6 Conset, HenryThe practice of the spiritual or ecclasiastical courts, (London, 1685), p. 116Google Scholar.

7 The procedure follows Schofield, R. S., ‘Sampling in historical research’, in Wrigley, E. A. (ed.), Nineteenth century society (Cambridge, 1973), pp. 146–84Google Scholar.

8 Everitt, Alan, ‘Farm labourers’, in Thirk, Joan (ed.), The agrarian history of England and Wales, 1500–1640 (Cambridge, 1967), p. 398Google Scholar, estimates more than a third of the population were labourers in a fertile corn growing area.

9 Protestation Returns, House of Lords Record Office, summarized in Schofield, ‘Illiteracy in pre-industrial England’, p. 11; Essex figures are derived from returns to the Protestation of 1642, the Vow and Covenant of 1643 and the Solemn League and Covenant of 1644, Cressy, David, ‘Education and literacy in London and East Anglia, 1580–1700’, Cambridge University Ph.D. thesis, 1972, pp. 283–94Google Scholar. Declarations from three Suffolk and one Norfolk parishes preserved in local collections show 46 per cent illiteracy in Suffolk and 72 per cent in Norfolk, Cressy, , thesis, p. 294Google Scholar, and Breckles, Norfolk, parish register with incumbent. None of the Protestation Returns in the H.L.R.O. can be used to calculate more acceptable figures for Norfolk or Suffolk.

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11 Roger Bradley, one of the governors of Bishop Auckland grammar school between 1605 and 1632, persistently made a mark in the minute book when the other eleven governors wrote signatures, Durham County Record Office, E/SW/GII; an accountant, John Williamson of London, made a mark rather than a signature when preparing to emigrate to Virginia in 1683, Nicolson, Cregoe D. P., ‘Some early emigrants to America’, The Genealogist Magazine, XII (1955–8). 122Google Scholar.

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17 Spufford, , Contrasting communities, pp. 206–18Google Scholar, discusses the importance of reading in the village community.

18 Women in London, however, made substantial progress in the second half of the seventeenth century, reducing their measured illiteracy from 90 per cent to a mere 52 per cent by the 1690s. Cressy, , ‘literacy in pre-industrial England’, p. 233Google Scholar. Perhaps the complexity of London life required better literacy. Men in London were also far more literate than their rural counterparts.

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20 This laborious process was simplified by use of the DEC io computer at the Seaver Computer Center, Claremont, California. I wish to thank Houston P. Lowry of Pitzer College for preparing the data and programs.

21 See Spufford, , Contrasting communities, pp. 182, 196Google Scholar, for the unsatisfactory nature of wills. My comparison of wills and depositions in the diocese of Norwich in the 1630s finds yeomen 61 per cent illiterate instead of 32 per cent, husbandmen 91 per cent illiterate instead of 86 per cent, and tradesmen 60 per cent illiterate instead of 49 per cent, calculations from Norwich Record Office, Wills.

22 To test whether an age effect was at work a check was made by grouping the tradesmen and craftsmen into their appropriate birth decades and comparing their ability to sign as they grew older. No significant difference was observed until they were aged over sixty.

23 Thomas Becon and Samuel Hartlib, for example, wanted an expansion of education, while Francis Bacon and Edward Chamberlayne wanted schooling to be restricted. None of them had any direct impact on the availability of education. Becon, Thomas, The catechism, Ayre, John (ed.) (Cambridge, 1844), pp. 377–82Google Scholar; Hartlib, Samuel, Considerations tending to the happy accomplishment of England's reformation (London, 1647), PP. 21–2Google Scholar; Bacon, Francis, letter to James I in Spedding, J. (ed.), The letters and life of Francis Bacon (London, 1868), iv, 252–3Google Scholar; Chamberlayne, Edward, The second part of the present state of England (London, 1682), pp. 320–2Google Scholar.

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25 A check was made in the relevant sections of the Victoria County History and in Carlisle, N., A concise description of the endowed grammar schools in England and Wales (2 vols., London, 1818)Google Scholar.

26 London, 1969, esp. pp. 279–97, and table p. 373.

27 Cressy, , thesis, pp. 218–37Google Scholar; Stone, Lawrence, ‘The size and composition of the Oxford student body 1580–1910’, in Stone, Lawrence (ed.), The university in society (Princeton, N.J., 1974), 1, 91Google Scholar.

28 Elton, G. R., Reform and renewal, Thomas Cromwell and the common weal (Cambridge, 1973), pp. 29–39Google Scholar; Starkey, Thomas, ‘ A dialogue between Cardinal Pole and Thomas Lupset’, in Heritage, Sidney J., England in the reign of Henry VIII (London, 1927), pp. 205–6Google Scholar.

29 Leach, A. F., English schools at the Reformation (2 vols., London, 1896)Google Scholar; Simon, Joan, Education and society in Tudor England (Cambridge, 1967), pp. 179–96, 215–44Google Scholar.

30 The characterization originates with Stone, ‘Educational revolution’, loc. cit.

31 Figures are derived from the Vicar General's books, Greater London Record Office DL/ 333–4, and a licensing record, Norwich Record Office, SUN/2, discussed in Cressy, , thesis, pp. 149–54Google Scholar.

32 Stone, , ‘Oxford student body’, pp. 17, 28–9Google Scholar.

33 The total of matriculations in the 1590s is extrapolated from the number of graduations in that decade and the numerical relationship between matriculations and graduations in the previous and following decades. The Cambridge matriculation register was poorly maintained in the 1590s, another symptom of decline.

34 The figures are derived from episcopal visitation records in the Norwich Record Office, VIS/1–6, VSC/i–2, REG/16.

35 Idem.

36 Col. State Papers Domestic, 1655–6(London, 1882), pp. 387–8Google Scholar. Parliamentary Ordinances were more concerned to remove ‘ill affected’ personnel than to secure widespread schooling, Firth, C. H. and Rait, R. S., Acts and ordinances of the interregnum, 1640–1600 (2 vols., London, 1911), 1, 431,11, 958–90Google Scholar.

37 For good intentions and slight achievements during the Revolution see Webster, Charles, Samuel Hartlib and the advancement of learning (Cambridge, 1970)Google Scholar and Vincent, W. A. L., The state and school education 1640–1666 (London, 1950)Google Scholar, passim.

38 C.S.P.D., 1655–6, p. 388.

39 Chamberlayne, , The second part of the present state of England, pp. 320–2Google Scholar. Cf. Stone, Lawrence, ‘The alienated intellectuals of early Stuart England’, Past and Present, xxrv (1963), 101–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 Norwich Record Office, SUB/1–4.

41 Jones, M. G., The charity school movement (London, 1964), p. 73Google Scholar. See also Simon, Joan, ‘Was there a charity school movement?’, in Simon, Brian (ed.), Education in Leicestershire (Leicester, 1968), pp. 55–100Google Scholar.

42 Schofield, R. S., ‘Dimensions of illiteracy, 1750–1850’, Explorations in Economic History, x (1973), p. 450Google Scholar.