new religious foundations, whilst schools, on the other hand, began to multiply in their stead; a fact which sufficiently marks the state of public opinion with regard to the monasteries as places of education—­for education began now to be the desire of the day.  Schools, therefore, in the present acceptation of the term, in Cranmer’s boyhood there were scarcely any; and it was the crying want of them in London that induced Dean Colet to establish that of St. Paul’s, which, under the fostering care of Lily, the first master, not only became so distinguished in itself, but set the example, and prepared the way, by its rules and its grammar, for so many others which followed in its wake.  Edward VI.; with the natural feeling of a boy fond of knowledge, and himself a proficient for his years, was aware of the evil, and projected the remedy.  Colet might be his model—­but he was embarrassed in his means by courtiers, who were for ever uttering the cry of the horse-leech’s daughters; and, besides, his days were soon numbered.  Cranmer, who perhaps remembered the obstacles in his own way, and who certainly foresaw the great calamity of an ignorant clergy, pressed for the establishment of a school in connexion with every cathedral—­a school, as it were, of the prophets—­where boys intended for holy orders might be brought up suitably to the profession they were about to adopt, and where the bishops might ever find persons duly qualified to serve God in the church.  But Cranmer was overruled, and a measure, which might have helped to catch up the church before it fell into that abyss of ignorance which seems to have immediately succeeded the Reformation, (the natural consequence of a season of convulsion and violence,) was unhappily lost.  It was not till the reign of Elizabeth that the evil was at all adequately met, nor fully indeed then, as the deficiency of well-endowed schools at this day testifies.  Still much was at that time done.  The dignitaries and more wealthy ecclesiastics of the reformed Church bestirred themselves and founded some schools.  Many tradesmen, who had accumulated fortunes in London, (then the almost exclusive province of commercial enterprise,) retired in their later years to the country-town which had given them birth, and gratefully provided for the better education of their neighbours, by furnishing it with a grammar-school.  And even the honest yeoman, a person who then appears to have appreciated learning, and often to have brought up his boy to the church, united in the same praiseworthy object.  In such cases application was usually made to the Queen for a charter, which was granted with or without pecuniary assistance on her own part; and whoever will examine the dates of our foundation schools, will find a great proportion of them erected in that glorious reign.