The doubts as to the utility of higher education for women in general which trouble some minds at the present day were not altogether unknown in the age of Elizabeth. Ecclesiastics especially, even the more liberal, were most prone to entertain doubts as to the advisability of permitting women to have a free range through the avenues of knowledge. It is probable that the middle classes, to whom the opportunities of education were not so general, felt the value of schools too highly to speculate upon the utility of that which was not readily within their grasp. Richard Mulcaster, who was the master of a school founded by the Merchant Taylors Company in the parish of St. Lawrence, Pultney, says: "We see young maidens be taught to read and write, and can do both with praise; we have them sing and playe: and both passing well, we know that they learne the best and finest of our learned languages, to the admiration of all men. For the daiely spoken tongues and of best reputation in our time who so shall deny that they may not compare even with our kinde even in the best degree ... Nay, do we not see in our country some of that sex so excellently well trained and so rarely qualified either for the tongues themselves or for the matter in the tongues: as they may be opposed by way of comparison, if not preferred as beyond comparison, even to the best Romaine or Greekish paragones, be they never so much praised to the Germaine or French gentle-wymen by late writers so well liked: to the Italian ladies who dare write themselves and deserve fame for so doing?... I dare be bould, therefore, to admit young maidens to learne, seeing my countrie gives me leave and her costume standes for me.... Some Rimon will say, what should wymend with learning? Such a churlish carper will never picke out the best, but be alway ready to blame the worst. If all men used all pointes of learning well, we had some reason to alledge against wymend, but seeing misuse is commonly both the kinds, why blame we their infirmitie whence we free not ourselves." He then contends that a young gentlewoman who can write well and swiftly, sing clearly and sweetly, play well and finely, and employ readily the learned languages with some "logicall helpe to chop and some rhetoricke to brave," is well furnished, and that such a one is not likely to bring up her children a whit the worse, even if she becomes a Loelia, a Hortensia, or a Cornelia. In discussing whether or not girls should be taught by their own sex, he inclines to the belief that this practice were advisable, but that discreet men might teach girls to advantage. To use his own words: "In teachers, their owne sex were fittest in some respects, but ours frame them best, and, with good regard to some circumstances, will bring them up excellently well." In the higher circles, where cynicism frequently assumes the forms of wisdom, it was not universally agreed that women should have the widest opportunities of education.