Schools in which the young shall be properly instructed in piety and fundamentals of Christian doctrine shall be instituted not only in cities, but also in towns and country places where heretofore none have existed. The Christian magistracy shall be requested that honorable stipends be provided for teachers, and that well-qualified persons may be employed and enabled to devote themselves to that function; and especially that the children of the poor may be gratuitously instructed by them and not be excluded from the benefits of schools. [Illustration: FIG. 99. A DUTCH VILLAGE SCHOOL (After a painting by Adrian Ostade, dated 1662, now in the Louvre, at Paris)] Further provisions were made as to the certificating of schoolmasters, and the pastors were made superintendents of the schools, to visit, examine, encourage, advise, and report (R. 176). Provision for the free education of the poor became common, and elementary education was made accessible to all. The careful provision for education made by the province of Utrecht (1590, 1612) (R. 178) was typical of Dutch activity. The province of Drenthe ordered (1630) a school tax paid for all children over seven, whether attending school or not. The province of Overyssel levied (1666) a school tax for all children from eight to twelve years of age. The province of Groningen constituted the pastors the attendance officers to see that the children got to school. Amsterdam and many other Dutch cities demanded an examination of all teachers before being licensed to teach. By the middle of the seventeenth century a good system of schools seems to have been provided generally [5] by the Dutch and the Belgian Walloons (R. 178). That the teaching of religion was the main function of the Dutch elementary schools, as of all other vernacular schools of the time, is seen from the official lists of the textbooks used (R. 178). John Knox, the leader of the Scottish Reformation (1560), who had spent some time at Geneva and who was deeply impressed by the Calvinistic religious-state found there, introduced the Calvinistic religious and educational ideas into Scotland. His _Book of Discipline for the Scottish Church_ (1560), framed closely on the Genevan model, contained a chapter devoted to education in which he proposed: That everie severall churche have a school-maister appointed, such a one as is able at least to teach Grammar and the Latin tung, yf the Town be of any reputation. Yf it be upaland ... then must either the Reider or the Minister take cayre over the children ... to instruct them in their first rudementie and especially in the catechisme. [Illustration: FIG. 100. JOHN KNOX (1505?-72)]