The clerical purpose of most of these schools naturally tended to exclude girls or make them of secondary importance. What place was actually assigned to them in the 353 schools founded between the accession of Henry VIII. and the death of James I. is a problem that must be left to antiquarians. Certain it is that in the ensuing period the education of both sexes was more on an equality, since the standard was one of inferiority. An age of political disturbance was followed by an epoch of frivolity. Learning fell into contempt. The foundations of the eighteenth century were not grammar but charity schools, and though girls were not forgotten, it was with the hope of training servants for themselves that rich persons supported these schools. Not to give a liberal training, but to teach the poor to ‘keep their proper station,’ was the aim of eighteenth century founders. Thus it came about that the Schools’ Inquiry Commissioners found a goodly number of girls in endowed schools of an elementary character, which would hardly bear comparison with the poorest of our modern board schools. While the King Edward Schools at Birmingham were giving 290 boys a classical and 300 a sound English education, none of these benefits fell to girls. In the elementary schools of the same foundation were 655 boys and 630 girls. At Christ’s Hospital, distinctly founded for both sexes, there were but 18 girls as against 1192 boys. Perhaps even the eighteen would have been better off elsewhere. They occupied a part of the junior boys’ school at Hertford; they had one ward under the charge of a nurse, their playground was a little over a quarter of an acre, they took their walks abroad under care of the nurse, they had no calisthenics or other physical training; their diet was bread and milk for breakfast, bread, meat, potatoes, and porter for dinner, bread and butter, milk and water for supper. There was no admission examination, no leaving standard of attainment; they learned a little Scripture, English (so-called), and History and Geography from abridgments. On leaving, at about fifteen, most of them were apprenticed to business. It did not prove easy to place them. No wonder!