ABSTRACT
The foundation of a school could be combined with what was a favourite object of charity from the middle ages onwards, the provision of free education for poor children. In the eighteenth century educational development was not always the work of the clergy, indeed the clergy hindered rather than helped Hannah More’s activities; but in the first thirty years of the nineteenth century an increasing number of the clergy seem to have taken their educational duties seriously. In fact the problems presented by middle-class education were massive, various and complex, and there was no single or agreed solution to them. The National Society was preoccupied with the overwhelming task of trying to provide primary education in as many parishes as required it, and its attention and funds were apt to be diverted to that work. An educational system cannot be extemporized at the beginning of the year for which the income is given.
