ABSTRACT
The steady growth of literacy rates and the increased number of grammar schools in England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries have been described as part of an ‘educational revolution’ by Lawrence Stone. These changes were prompted by the growth in both government bureaucracy and commerce, and by the demand for greater professionalism amongst the clergy and the legal profession. The revolution was shaped by humanist and Renaissance ideas about learning, which advocated that boys should be fully prepared for their future roles both as administrators and citizens of the state (Stone 1964; O’Day 1982).
