The original trustees of the School were:--Edward King Fordham (Royston), Wedd William Nash, John Phillips, John Edward Fordham, John George Fordham, Valentine Beldam, John Beldam, John Butler, Thomas Butterfield, William Hollick Nash, Joseph Pattison Wedd, William Field Butler, James Piggot and Thomas Pickering. The British School was established in 1840, and the building erected on land the gift of Lord Dacre; the National School was commenced in the same year and the school building also erected on land given by Lord Dacre. The following is a list of the first trustees of the British School:--Wedd William Nash, John Phillips, John George Fordham, John Butler, Joseph Pattison Wedd, John Medway, S. S. England, F. Neller, W. F. Butler, John Pendered, Henry Butler, William Hollick Nash, T. S. Maling, James Piggot, James Richardson, William Simmons and Thomas A. Butterfield. I am unable to give the corresponding list of the first trustees of the National Schools, but the following names occur as being present at a meeting soon after the school was founded, and several of them were no doubt trustees, viz., Rev. J. Whiting (vicar), John Phillips, William Nunn, Henry Thurnall, G. Smith, ---- Brown, sen., R. Brown, and D. Britten. Whatever weight may be attached to the circumstance itself, or to the oft-repeated complaints that religious worship and religious beliefs have not so strong a hold upon the minds of men now as in the past, all the evidence available points unmistakably to the fact of an enormous increase in the habit of attending public worship at the {122} present time compared with a hundred years ago, even when the constable went his rounds in our streets to look up defaulters about the town, and "particularly at the Cross." There was a marvellous difference in the state of the Established Church at the end of the last Century and to-day. It is a very rare thing now to see a parish without a resident clergyman, but then, clergymen often held two or more parishes without residing in either. In 1791, for instance, the Vicar of the two parishes of Great and Little Abington lived in a house of his own at Thriplow. The truth is, says an old writer under date, 1789, "that most of the Churches within ten miles of Cambridge were served by Fellowes of Colleges." In some cases the Curates hastened back to dine in hall. In this way the Curates would come out to the parish to a service, to a wedding, a funeral, or a day's shooting, and often served two or three parishes in this free and easy fashion, and it became necessary to limit the service in each parish to alternate Sundays.