ABSTRACT
Participation in religious philanthropic enterprises, concern about private and public morality, and interest in denominational and theological disputes had reached a new peak. Even anti-clericalism in England marched against the privileges of the established Church under the banner of Nonconformity. The teaching of the young was the last of the major social services for which the Church had been responsible in the Middle Ages that was still largely in Church hands. Oxford and Cambridge were Anglican preserves, secondary education was given mainly by public' and endowed schools usually directed by clergymen, and in the last fifty years the Church had increased its hold on education by building and running three-quarters of the primary schools in the country. After Parliament passed the Endowed Schools Act of 1869, Forster concentrated his attention on the base of the educational pyramid. It was at the elementary level that the Church had performed its most outstanding service to nineteenth-century England.
