Previous to the impetus given to child study by the educational theories of Rousseau, little was written intentionally for children that would not at the same time appeal to adults. Yet there are chapters still to be penned, stretching back into English history as far as 1430 and earlier, when words of instruction were framed for youth; when conduct, formality, austere manners, complete submission, were not only becoming to the child, but were forced upon him.[15] There are several manuscripts extant of that year, 1430, one whose authorship is ascribed to John Lydgate and which bears the Latin title, “Puer ad Mensam.” There is also the “Babees Book” of 1475, intended for those boys of royal blood who served as pages in the palace. The American student has to reach an understanding of the purport of most of these treatises from secondary sources; the manuscripts are not easily accessible, and have so far been utilised only in a fragmentary character. For the present purpose, the mention of a few examples will suffice. We note “A Booke in Englyssh metre, of the great marchaunt man called Dyves Pragmaticus, very pretye for chyldren to rede; wherby they may the better, and more readyer rede and wryte Wares and Implementes in this worlde contayned.... When thou sellest aught unto thy neighbour, or byest anything of him, deceave not, nor oppresse him, etc. Imprinted at London in Aldersgate strete by Alexander Lacy, dwellyng beside the Wall. The XXV. of April 11, 1563.”[16] Those boys bound out or apprenticed to members of the Middle Age crafts and guilds perhaps benefited by the moral of this; no doubt they bethought themselves of the friendly warning, whenever they cried their master’s wares outside the stalls; perhaps they were forearmed as well as forewarned by the friendly rules contained in the “Books of Good Manners” (1560) which, though they could not own, were repeated to them by others more fortunate. These same boys, who played the angels in the miracle plays, and the Innocents in the “Rachel” dramas, who were held suspended by a rope high up in the nave of the church, to proclaim the birth of the Lord in the Christmas cycles, were actors also, around 1563, in “A New Enterlude for Chyldren to Play, named Jacke Jugeler, both wytte, and very playsent.”