|
COPYRIGHT 2005 Associated University Presses
By James I's reign, as the nobility, gentry, and well-to-do middle classes increasingly felt the need to educate their daughters in certain accomplishments of polite society, one begins to find references to schools established for this purpose, particularly in the neighborhood of London. One of the earliest references is to the Ladies' Hall at Deptford in 1617. These schools seem to have been often run by married women. The curriculum could include reading, writing, music, dancing, needlework, and, especially after Charles I's marriage to Princess Henrietta Maria, French. Other opportunities for female education among the upper classes existed as well. It was still customary for those of higher rank to educate their daughters at home or to place them in the households of other noble or well-connected families. If tutors were employed to teach the sons of the family, daughters might also benefit from their instruction. Before the dissolution of the monasteries, nuns had provided some education, and about the beginning of the seventeeth century a number of schools were founded by English nuns and monks in the Spanish Netherlands and France to educate the children of Catholic families that could afford to send their sons and daughters abroad. During the Civil War, some girls' schools in England faced difficult times.
While going through an uncataloged collection of manuscripts relating to the Ferrers family of Tamworth Castle in Warwickshire (Appendix 1), I chanced on a letter that piqued my curiosity. The writer strongly recommends a boarding and day school in Windsor run by a friend of hers for the daughters of ladies and gentlewomen. The letter has no year date, but from its general appearance was probably written in the first half of the seventeenth century. The general design of its watermark is more like that found in paper of the second rather than the first quarter of that century. Since there is not too much factual information on schools for girls at this time I thought the letter might be of interest to social historians and to Leeds Barroll, who has long worked in the field of education and studied the role of women in this period.
The letter reads as follows: [Address leaf] To my most Honnared and Worthie good Ladi...
Read the full article for free courtesy of your local library.
|
Bookmark this article
Print this article
Link to this article
Email this article
Digg It!
Add to del.icio.us
RSS
