The history of education in England is a subject of profound interest and of singular importance; for it is intimately associated with all the great crises of the national life, and exhibits, as no other subject can, the effects of the interplay of religion, learning and politics upon the sociological development of a great people.
The subject is, moreover, one that belongs to all the daughter-nations of England, whether, like Canada, they are still, to use a simile from Roman law, within the English manus, or whether, like the United States, they have become sui juris. For it is necessary to go back far in time if we would trace with honesty the obscure streams of thought, learning and tendency that are responsible for the great systems of education in force in the various parts of the English-speaking world today.