A similar tale might be told of Bedford School. It was established in 1566 by Sir William Harpur and Dame Alice, his wife, ‘for the education, institution, and instruction of children and youth in grammar and good manners, to endure for ever.’ Did child mean ‘boy’ in the minds of the founders? It seems uncertain; for, as the endowment increased in value and some of it became available for purposes other than the free grammar school, the interests of girls were also considered. At various periods of the eighteenth century fresh uses were found for the surplus money, and it is characteristic of the age that the feminine equivalent for a sound education was a dowry. £800 a year was set aside for marriage-portions for forty poor maids of the town of Bedford, to be distributed by lot, provided that a successful candidate was married within two calendar months of drawing the lot, and not to ‘a vagrant or other person of bad fame or reputation.’ Naturally there was not much difficulty about claiming the lot. Young men came from far and near to woo the ‘maids of Bedford.’ Any residue was given to poor maid-servants who had resided five years at Bedford and were married within a year. The next addition was a hospital for boys and girls, an allotment of £700 to apprentice fifteen boys and five girls, and almshouses for ten old men and ten old women. Early in this century preparatory and commercial schools were added; and girls were considered to the extent of a foundation where the head-mistress received £80 per annum as against the headmaster’s £1000. Which figures very eloquently sum up the relative estimation in which girls’ and boys’ education was held before 1848.