=Summary.=--Most of Edward VI _grammar-schools_ were founded out of small portions of property which had belonged to religious houses. Generally they were only for a small number of scholars. In the eighteenth century many of these schools were in a very poor condition. Most of them now are alive and flourishing. In the seventeenth century a good many attempts were made to teach the children of the poor on a small scale. Some took charge of the children altogether; others, the _charity schools,_ were day-schools. These lasted without much change till the middle of the nineteenth century. The blue-coat boys' dress and the dress of these charity children was the dress of the time when they were founded. CHAPTER XLVI APPRENTICES 1. From many of these old-fashioned schools boys and girls were apprenticed. Connected with old parishes there are still funds for so placing out boys and girls. 2. All through the Middle Ages the only way by which a man could become a craftsman was by being first of all an =apprentice=, and the rules by which a lad was bound to a master were very strict. Things did not alter much in this respect in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. An apprentice was always bound for seven years in the presence of magistrates. The master had to find his apprentice in food, clothing, lodging, and to instruct him in his art, or "mystery" as it was called. The apprentice lived in his master's house, and was bound to serve him. 3. His master could chastise him if he was idle or "saucy", and even have him sent to the house of correction for further punishment. Both masters and apprentices could complain of each other to the magistrates at the Quarter Sessions, and the hearing of the complaints often took up a lot of time. According to many of the complaints, of which records still exist, some of the apprentices must have had rather a hard time--"seven years, hard". Some complained of having to eat mouldy cheese and rotten meat; others, of their ragged clothes; others, that their masters beat them with pokers, hammers, pint-pots, to say nothing of whips and sticks; prevented them from going to church; and others, that their masters turned them out-of-doors, or ran away and left them. The masters, on their side, often complain that their apprentices are idle, that they rob them, that they stop out at night and keep company with bad characters, and so on. So it seems they did not always get on well together. 4. But then there were the others--those who made the best of it. Where the master did his duty, and the apprentice took pains to learn, they got on pretty well together. It was not an easy life for the apprentice, but it made him a craftsman.