Of the sixteen schools in the town, of which details of fourteen are given above, none had many pupils; some were virtually dame schools, where the teaching was not often a very elevating process; and too often appealed to the motive of fear, either of a black dog in the cellar or of the assurance that Buonaparte was coming! Education of the well-to-do was much more local than now, owing to the expense and inconvenience of travel, hence the large number of private schools. Of the first Day Schools where any considerable number of children attended before the present series of public schools was established, the evidence goes to show that they were of the dame school order, remembered best in after years, not by the amount of erudition acquired, but by some of the elder boys who went little errands over the way to the "Fox and Duck" (now the house occupied by Mr. H. Clark, Market Hill), and from the facts that the article they returned with having, by special injunction, to be placed behind the door, that the worthy dame soon afterwards repaired to that corner of the room, the more knowing of the scholars were apt to draw certain conclusions as to the somnulent condition of their instructress and the easy terms upon which a truant boy could get off by going that little errand! But the limited means placed at the disposal of those engaged in the education of children then, compared with our millions of Government grant of to-day, do not allow us to judge too harshly of results. {121} Even where there was some endowment it was generally on too small a scale to do much for a general system of education. At Melbourn the first school of this kind assembled in a quaint room at the top of the Church porch! At Barkway, where the Duchess of Richmond's endowment led to a free school, this was of so limited a character that in the Commissioners' report as late as 1838, the endowment was only L10 0s. 4d., to which was added L5 from the town lands, L5 from the rent of the town house, besides which the tolls of the annual fair, varying from 3s. to 5s., were also applied to education, and together seven boys and five girls were being educated at the Free School out of a population of a thousand souls, and this was only one year before the National Schools were started in 1839! The germ of public elementary education in Royston is associated with the present Infants' School and with the honoured name of Miss Martha Nash. The present Infants' School was established in 1832. The land upon which it was built was given by Lord Dacre, and funds for the building were obtained chiefly from a very successful bazaar under the patronage of the then Lord and Lady Dacre.