=The Rise of Charity Schools in England.=--And yet conditions in England at this time might well have incited people to revolution. Wages were low, employment was irregular, and the laboring classes, who numbered fully one-sixth of the population, were clad in rags, lived in hovels, and often went hungry. Opportunities for elementary education were rare. The few schools that remained after the Reformation had largely lost their endowments or had been perverted into secondary institutions, and had suffered from incompetent and negligent masters and from the religious upheaval of the times. It was as a partial remedy for this situation, that, toward the close of the seventeenth century, there sprang up a succession of ‘charity schools,’ in which children of the poor were not only taught, but boarded and sometimes provided with clothes, and the boys were prepared for apprenticeship and the girls for domestic service. Probably about one thousand schools upon this general philanthropic basis had been established in England and Wales by the middle of the eighteenth century. Most of these had received substantial endowment, but numbers of them were maintained by private subscriptions. [Sidenote: Foundation,] [Sidenote: management,] [Sidenote: books,] [Sidenote: teachers,] [Sidenote: and course.] =The Schools of the S. P. C. K.=--A factor that was even more important in opening charity schools was the ‘Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge’ (often abbreviated to S. P. C. K.). This society was founded in 1698 by Reverend Thomas Bray, D. D., and four other clergymen and philanthropists. As a rule, its schools were established, supported, and managed by local people, but the Society guaranteed their maintenance, and assisted them from its own treasury whenever a stringency in funds arose. The S. P. C. K. also inspected schools, and advised and encouraged the local managers, and furnished bibles, prayer books, and catechisms at the cheapest rates possible. It made stringent regulations of eligibility for its schoolmasters, requiring, in addition to the usual religious, moral, pedagogical, and age tests, that they be members of the Church of England and approved by the minister of the parish. Each master was expected to teach the children their catechism, and purge them of bad morals and manners, besides training them in reading, writing, and elementary arithmetic. The pupils were, moreover, clothed, boarded, and at times even lodged. [Sidenote: Development,] [Sidenote: opposition and advocacy,] [Sidenote: decadence,] [Sidenote: and influence.]