=Gild Schools.=--In this way there grew up a species of industrial education, with three definite stages in its organization and with inspection at every point. Before long, too, the gilds developed a more formal means of education. The existing ecclesiastical schools did not altogether meet the needs of the gilds, and they undertook the establishment of additional institutions for this purpose. Where the gilds had retained one or more priests to perform the necessary religious offices for their members, before long they also utilized these functionaries to keep a school for the benefit of their own and sometimes other children in the town. Later, endowments were furnished especially for a priest to teach school, or an amount sufficient for the purpose was paid out of the common funds of the gild. Some of these gild schools, like ‘Merchant Taylors’’ of London, or the Grammar School at Stratford-on-Avon, where Shakespeare was educated (Fig. 16), still survive as secondary institutions. Many instances, too, are recorded where the members of a certain gild were appointed trustees of a school established by an individual, and were granted the right of appointing and dismissing the master, admitting the pupils, managing the property, and formulating statutes. In some such fashion Colet later vested the management of the famous St. Paul’s school (see p. 118) in the gild of mercers. [Illustration: Fig. 15.--Apprenticeship training in a gild. (The master bootmaker and his wife, two journeymen, and an apprentice.)] [Illustration: Fig. 16.--Gild school and church at Stratford-on-Avon. (In this ‘grammar’ school Shakespeare learned ‘little Latin and less Greek.’)] [Sidenote: Gild schools absorbed by the burgher schools.] [Sidenote: Practical course.]