parishes, and our ministers are well paid, and by my consent would be better, if they would pray oftener and preach less. But, as of all other commodities, so of this, the worst are sent us, and we had few that we could boast of, since the persecution in Cromwell's tyranny drove divers worthy men hither. But, I thank God, there are no free schools, nor printing, and I hope we shall not have these hundred years; for learning has brought disobedience, and heresy, and sects, into the world, and printing has divulged them and libels against the best government."

Notwithstanding this splenitive declaration of the aged governor, in 1675 Henry Peasley bequeathed six hundred acres in Abingdon parish, Gloucester county, "together with ten cows and one breeding mare, for the maintenance of a free school forever, to be kept with a schoolmaster for the education of the children of the parishes of Abingdon and Ware."

About the period of the accession of William and Mary, a new element in the emigration to Virginia appeared. They were men of angular manners and brawny frames, but also of educated minds and warm hearts. They had been nurtured in a land which for more than a hundred years had enacted in solemn assembly that there should be a school in every parish, for the instruction of youth in grammar, the Latin language, and the principles of religion; and at a later period that the school should be so far supported by the public funds as to render education accessible to even the poorest in the community. Macaulay, in his History of England, referring to the school law of Scotland, says the effect of its passage was immediately felt: "Before one generation passed away it began to be evident that the common people of Scotland were superior in intelligence to the common people of any other country in Europe. To whatever land the Scotchman might wander, to whatever calling he might betake himself, in America or India, in trade or in war, by the advantage which he derived from his early training, he was raised above his competitors."

When these men, bearing the names of Gordon, Monro, Inglis, Irvine, Blair, Porteus, the ancestor of a bishop of the church of England, came to Virginia, there was a stirring of life in communities long torpid. They felt that they had no home unless they had a school-house near, and began anew to agitate the subject of establishing the free school and college. The leader of the movement was the Rev. James Blair, a graduate of the University of Edinburgh in 1673, and gifted with the "fervidam vim Scotorum." His projects met with opposition, but he

was canny and did not shrink from a good fight; and, after controversy with Sir Edmund Andros, of Connecticut fame, and with the assembly of Virginia, and his brethren of the church, toward the close of the century succeeded in establishing the College of William and Mary, of which, in a sketch of education during the eighteenth century, it is proposed to give a full history. The preamble to the statutes of William and Mary College, published at an early period both in Latin and English, fully states the influences that led to the organization of the institution, with a portion of which we conclude this historical sketch: "Nowhere was there any greater danger on account of ignorance and want of instruction than in the English colonies of America, in which the first planters had much to do in a country overrun with weeds and briers, and for many years infested with the incursions of the barbarous Indians, to earn a mean livelihood with hard labor. There were no schools to be found in those days, nor any opportunity for good education.

"Some few, and a very few indeed, of the richer sort, sent their children to England to be educated, and there, after many dangers from the seas and enemies, and unusual distempers occasioned by the change of country and climate, they were often taken off by small-pox and other diseases. It was no wonder if this occasioned a great defect of understanding and all sort of literature, and that it was followed with a new generation of men far short of their forefathers, which, if they had the good fortune, though at a very indifferent rate, to read and write, had no further commerce with the muses or learned sciences, but spent their life ignobly with the hoe and spade, and other employments of an uncultivated and unpolished country. There remained still, notwithstanding, a small remnant of men of better spirit, who had the benefit of better education themselves in their mother country, or at least had heard of it from others. These men's private conferences among themselves produced at last a scheme of a free school and college," which was exhibited to the president and council in 1690, a little before the arrival of Lieutenant Governor Nicholson, and the next year to the assembly, when Blair was sent to England to collect funds for the college.

!

JAMES BLAIR, D.D.

JAMES BLAIR, D.D., named in the charter the first President of William and Mary College, and entitled, by his judicious and persistent efforts in securing the same, together with the means by which the institution was put in operation, to be called its founder, was born in Scotland in 1656, and educated at Edinburgh University, where he graduated in 1676. After officiating as clergyman in an Episcopal church in Scotland for several years, he was selected by Dr. Compton, Bishop of London, in 1685, for missionary work in Virginia; and here he gave such satisfaction for his efficient and judicious course as to be commissioned as his Commissary in that colony in 1689. In his new and difficult field he soon felt the need of intelligent laymen, as well as of pious clergymen born and educated in the country, and at once set about the establishment of a seminary for this purpose. In this work he was aided by Lieutenant-Governor Nicholson, who arrived from New York in 1690 [Lord Effingham being absent from ill health], who headed a subscription, which reached £2,500. The Assembly which met in 1691 commended the enterprise in an address to their majesties William and Mary, and depnted the Commissary, Mr. Blair, to present the same. The charter was granted February 14, 1792, with a gift of £2,000, besides an endowment of 20,000 acres of land, the patronage of the office of Surveyor General, and the revenue arising from a duty of one penny a pound on all tobacco exported from Virginia and Maryland to other plantations. The Bishop of London was named the first Chancellor, and Rev. James Blair the first President, and the college was allowed to return a member to the Assembly. Mr. Blair also obtained several individual subscriptions, the largest from the Hon. Robert Boyle, for the endowment of a Professorship devoted to the conversion of the Indians, called the Brafferton Foundation,* from an estate in England in which the subscription was invested. When the first edifice erected in 1693, was destroyed by fire in 1705, President Blair at once set about raising the means to rebuild, which was done within a year, Queen Anne contributing liberally for this object. He was also successful in an application to the Assembly for an endowment for poor scholars; the £1,000 thus granted was invested in the Nottoway estate, the income of which was applied to certain scholarships down to 1777.

In 1722 Dr. Blair published four octavo volumes made up of discourses delivered on different texts selected from Our Saviour's Sermon on the Mount, which were republished in 1732, and had a high reputation for a century after his death.

As Commissary, Dr. Blair was member of the Council, or Upper House of Assembly for fifty years, and rector of the parish of Middle Plantations, or Williamsburg. He died August 1, 1743, in the 88th year of his age, and 64th of his ministry, leaving his library (of over one thousand volumes) to the college.

* Mr Boyle died before his subscription was made, but the trustees to whom he left the bulk of his estate for the advancement of the Christian religion, invested £5,400 in the Brafferton estate, and gave £45 of the income to the support of two missionaries to the India is in Maryland, £45 to Harvard College, and the remainder to William and Mary College, on condition of their supporting one Indian scholar for every £14 received.

CONSTITUTIONAL AND LEGAL PROVISIONS RESPECTING SCHOOLS.

MASSACHUSETTS.

THE State of Massachusetts is composed of the original Colony of Plymouth, founded by a small body of English Puritans or Independents who first took refuge in Holland in 1608, and made their first permanent settlement at Plymouth, December 22, 1620, and the Colony of Massachusetts Bay. The latter was begun in 1628, under a grant of lands from the Plymouth Company, by individuals who were incorporated in 1629 by Charles I., as the Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay and New England. Under this grant and charter, settlement was made at Salem in 1628, and Charlestown and Boston in 1630. The two colonies were united under the Provincial Charter granted by William and Mary, in October, 1691, and the government organized in June, 1692, as the Province of Massachusetts.

The documents of the Company under which the Colony of Plymouth was settled, the articles of agreement formed by the first company of settlers on the deck of the Mayflower, and the Provincial Charter of Massachusetts, contain no notice of schools. or the education of children. The first public movement in this direction was inspired by the necessities of the educated families who gave character and form to the infant settlements. The fathers, educated in the endowed grammar or free schools and universities of England, made early and earnest efforts to provide similar opportunities for their own children, in advance of any colonial or even any town action on the subject.

In 1636, six years after the first settlement of Boston, the General Court of the colony of Massachusetts Bay, which met in Boston on the 8th of September, passed an act appropriating £400 toward the establishment of a college. The sum thus appropriated was more than the whole tax levied on the colony at that time in a single year, and the population scattered through ten or twelve villages did not exceed five thousand persons.

In 1638 John Harvard left by will the sum of £779 in money, and a library of over three hundred books. In 1640, the General Court granted to the college the income of the Charlestown ferry; and in 1642, the Governor, with the magistrates and teachers and

In June (14th), 1642, we find in the Records of Massachusetts Bay the following Order:

This Court, taking into consideration the great neglect of many parents and masters in training up their children in learning, and labor, and other employments which may be profitable to the Commonwealth, do hereupon order and decree that in every town the chosen men appointed for managing the prudential affairs of the same, shall henceforth stand charged with the care of the redress of this evil, so as they shall be sufficiently punished by fines for the neglect thereof, upon presentment of the grand jury or other information or complaint in any Court within this jurisdiction; and for this end, they, or the greater number of them, shall have power to take account from time to time of all parents and masters, and of their children, concerning their calling, and employment of their children, especially of their ability to read and understand the principles of religion and capital laws of this county, and to impose fines upon such as shall refuse to render such account to them when they shall be required, and they shall have power, with consent of any Court or the magistrate, to put forth apprentices the children of such as they shall find not to be able and fit to employ and bring them up.

The following order is found under date of November 11, 1647:

It being one chiefe project of yt ould deluder, Sathan, to keepe men from the knowledge of ye Scriptures, as in form times by keeping y in an unknown tongue, so in these latt times by perswading from ye use of tongues yt so at least ye true sence and meaning of ye originall might be clouded by false glosses of saint seeming deceivers, yt learning may not be buried in ye grave of or fath in ye church and commonwealth, the Lord assisting or endeavors.

It is therefore ord' ed, yt ev'ry township in this jurisdiction, aft ye Lord hath increased ym to ye number of 50 household, shall then forthwth appoint one wth in their towne to teach all such children as shall resort to him to write and reade, whose wages shall be paid eith by ye parents or mast of such children, or by ye inhabitants in gen' all, by way of supply, as ye major pt of those yt ord ye prudentials of ye towne shall appoint; provided, those y' send their children be not oppressed by paying much more yn they can have y taught for in oth townes; and it is furth ordered, yt where any towne shall increase to ye numb of 100 families or househould they shall set up a gramer schoole, ye master thereof being able to instruct youth so farr as they may be fited for ye university; provided, yt if any towne neglect ye performance hereof above one yeare, yt every such towne shall pay 5 to ye next schoole till they shall performe this order.

At the May session, 1654, the following law was passed in addition to the foregoing, and in the digest of 1658 is annexed to it as the 3d section.

Forasmuch as it greatly concerns the welfare of this country that the youth thereof be educated not only in good literature but in sound doctrine:

This Court doth therefore commend it to the serious consideration and special care of our overseers of the college, and the selectmen in the several towns not to admit or suffer any such to be continued in the office or place of teaching, educating, or instructing youth or children in the college or schools 'that have manifested themselves unsound in the faith, or scandalous in their lives, and have not given satisfaction according to the rules of Christ.'

At the October session, 1683, the following was enacted:

'As an addition to the law, title schools, this Court doth order and enact, That every town consisting of more than five hundred families or householders shall set up and maintain two grammar schools and two writing schools, the masters whereof shall be fit and able to instruct youth as said law directs; and whereas the said law makes the penalty for such towns as provide not schools as the law directs, to pay to the next school ten pounds, this Court hereby enacts that the penalty shall be twenty pounds where there are two hundred families or householders.'