ABSTRACT
Adult education was not organised in the eighteenth century as neither the State and the Church nor the Universities were concerned with the ‘diffusion of knowledge’ among the masses. Sir Thomas Gresham made the first attempt to establish a centre of adult education in London by endowing a College in 1581. As is well known, the attempt failed. The seven professors did not lecture daily as Gresham’s will provided, and their lectures were suspended in 1666 during the Fire of London and the Government stopped the salaries in 1669. The demand for public lectures was great and in 1706 a special Committee was set up which petitioned the Lord Mayor, Sir Thomas Rawlinson, for the resumption of Gresham lectures. They emphasised that ‘Learning and Ingenuity should be propagated in a more diffusive manner, and so as it might be insinuated into the meanest capacity, who by frequent attendances and application, might insensibly imbibe those principles of good literature’. The petitioners were granted the greater part of their demands and the lectures were resumed, and continued up to 1768, when the building was sold to the Government for the Excise Office. 1
