parish for her."[144] Jeremy Robson is cited “for detaining our Clerk’s wages from the land which he occupieth in our parish after 6 s. 8 d. for a plough land of 140 acres."[145] Two lessees of the parish are presented “for withholding the farm of two acres and a half of church land one year and a half unpaid."[146] John Smithe presented for felling and selling a great oak which stood upon church land, “whereas now we stand in lack of the same to repair our Church."[147] A parishioner is cited before the ordinary because he withholds church goods and refuses both to enter into bond for them and to make an accounting.[148] So men are presented for not paying the parish fees due for the burial of members of their family, or for the ringing of knells;[149] for suffering a church tenement or a part of the church fence, which they are bound to repair, to fall into decay,[150] and so forth.  In short, any one at all, whether in the capacity of parish officer; rate payer; trustee; administrator or executor; lessee of the parish cattle or its lands or tenements—­any one, in fact, standing in the relation of debtor to the parish in a matter falling within the jurisdiction of the spiritual courts, could be, and was, compelled by these to pay or to account to the parishioners.

Not only did the Church regulate many acts of a parishioner’s life, and preside over his moral conduct, making him pay in great measure the costs of this disciplinary administration, but it also was entrusted with his education, through which it sought to control his ideas and convictions, and to direct and form public opinion.  The education and training of a nation depend, of course, in greatest measure on its primary schools and its press.  As for its universities, these are but the apex on the educational pyramid, for a very select few only.  Now the primary schools were represented in the times whereof we write by the parish schoolmaster, the familiar “ludimagister” of the canons and act-books, and by the incumbent himself.  For the people at large the press was represented almost entirely by the licenced preacher, and, in the larger towns, the licenced lecturer.

The Canons of 1571 ordain that no one shall teach the humanities nor instruct boys, whether in school or in private families,[151] unless the diocesan licence him under his seal.  Nor are schoolmasters to use other grammars or catechisms than those officially prescribed.  Every year schoolmasters are to commend to the bishop of the diocese the best read among their pupils, and those that by their achievements give promise that they may usefully serve the State or the Church, so that their parents may be induced to educate them further to that end.[152] Bishop Barnes in his Injunctions of 1577 commands that all incumbents of cures in Durham diocese not licenced to preach shall “duly, paynefully and frely” teach the children of their several parishes to read and write.  Furthermore, teachers shall exhort the parents of