The points on which the Commissioners of the Protectoral Government were authorised to inform themselves, and to exercise the discretion vested in them by the ordinance, reveal a very unsatisfactory and corrupt state of things, and the existence of abuses for which neither the Civil War nor the Republican administration can be thought to have been answerable. There is scarcely a vice or irregularity which is not named or implied in the instructions delivered to the Commission; and the encouragement of "Whitson-ales, Wakes, Morris-Dances, Maypoles, Stage-plays, or such like licentious practices," strikes one as relatively a very venial offence against good morals and professional decorum. But the antipathy to sports and dramatic exhibitions was an inheritance from the more rigid Puritans, and the Articles of Inquiry in the archidiaconal visitations of this period never forgot such profane infringements of clerical morality. The persons who were selected to sit on these committees for the several urban and provincial districts included many God-fearers of the prevailing type; but at the same time the choice was evidently made with some judgment and impartiality, and the printed lists exhibit a notable proportion of divines and others not likely to sanction or recommend too violent a course. In fact, so considerate was the temper of the Administration itself, that an express proviso was inserted in the ejecting ordinance, by which some of the stipend of the cure was to be set apart, where the minister and schoolmaster was judged incompetent, for the support of his family. Samuel Harmar, in his _Vox Populi, or Gloucestershire's Desire_, 1642, represents the want of proper maintenance for teachers, although many persons of moderate resources were willing to contribute liberally to the object; to the burden on families by reason of the gratuitous instruction of children, who, if they were but in the way of earning even twopence a day, might help themselves and their parents, whereas they wasted their time in playing about the streets, and acquired the habit of swearing and other immoral practices. The restriction of educational management, for the most part, to the clergy accounts for the dearth of literature shedding real and valuable light on the condition of the young and the state of schools in very early days; and Harmar's pamphlet is principally occupied with vapid theological ineptitudes. His main proposal was excellent; it declared for the establishment of schoolmasters in every parish throughout the country; but even this was merely what Knox and his supporters had long before advocated, and partly accomplished, in Scotland.