[Illustration: THE STRAND (1547), WITH THE STRAND CROSS, COVENT GARDEN, AND THE PROCESSION OF EDWARD VI. TO HIS CORONATION AT WESTMINSTER] But to what extent education prevailed, whether the sons of craftsmen were taught to read and write before they were apprenticed, I know not. For them the _trivium_ and the _quadrivium_ of the mediæval school, the grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy could not possibly be of use. On the other hand, one cannot understand that the child of a respectable London craftsman should be allowed to grow up to the age of fourteen with no education at all. As for the children of gentle birth, we know very well how they were taught. Their education was planned so as to include very carefully the mastery of those accomplishments which we call good manners. It also included Latin, French, reading, writing, poetry, and music. In the towns the merchants and the better class understood very well the necessity of education for their own needs. The poor scholar, however--the lad who was born of humble parents and received his education for nothing--was a young man well known and recognized as a common type. But he never intended his learning to adorn a trade; rather should it lead him to the university, to the Church, even to a bishopric. It is significant that throughout Riley's _Memorials_ there is no mention of school or of education; there is no hint anywhere how the children of the working-classes were taught. One thing is certain, the desire for learning was gradually growing and deepening in those years; and when the Reformation set the Bible free, there were plenty--thanks perhaps to King Henry's grammar-schools--in the class of craftsmen who could read it. But as yet we are two hundred years from the freeing of the Book.