those boys who have proved themselves apt at learning and of “pregnant capacitie” to cause their sons to continue their studies and to acquire the good and liberal sciences.  On the other hand they shall induce fathers of sons of little wit or capacity to put them to husbandry, or some other suitable craft, that they may grow to be useful members of the commonwealth.[153] In this diocese we find schoolmasters by profession ("ludimagistri”) summoned at the visitations very regularly, and there seem to have been a considerable number of them in the towns, though not in the country parishes, where the curates doubtless officiated as instructors of the youth according to the bishop’s monitions.[154] Everywhere in the proceedings of the ecclesiastical courts schoolmasters are “detected” to the judges from time to time for having no licence to teach.[155]

As for the pulpit, that great instrument of political guidance at a period when politics consisted chiefly of religious contentions,[156] it is well known that Elizabeth and her advisors grasped at once its paramount importance, and that she had been on the throne but little over a month when she issued her proclamation inhibiting all preaching and teaching for the time being.  This command was followed by her Injunctions of the next year, forbidding any to preach unless licenced by herself, her two archbishops, the diocesan, or her visitors.[157] As is well known also, no command was more universally enforced.  It is constantly mentioned in the metropolitan or diocesan injunctions or articles of the period,[158] and the proceedings before the ordinaries bear witness to its enforcement.[159]

Parish opinion was further sought to be moulded by the reading in church of various tracts, homilies, monitions, forms of special prayers, etc., etc., which the wardens were ordered to procure from time to time, and which are very often met with in their accounts.  These official mediums of information or edification conveyed to the good people of the parishes some knowledge of the events and politics of the realm and of the world beyond it.  Thus they heard of the overthrow of the rebels in the North of England (1569), the ravages of the great earthquake of 1579; the progress of the plague; or, again, of the struggle of the French Protestants led by Henry of Navarre, the defeat of the Turks at Lepanto, and so forth.[160]

As food for the more advanced minds of the congregations, ordinaries saw to it that volumes dealing with the interpretation of the Scriptures, the polity of Church and State, and the defence of that polity were provided for every parish church.  Such works were Erasmus’ Paraphrases, Bullinger’s Decades, Bishop Jewel’s works, and other writings of an apologetic nature.  To a certain extent news was also spread, and grievances were aired, in unofficial broadsides or ballads.  These treated of such subjects as the untimely end of traitors great or small; the adventures of her Majesty’s soldiers and sailors; the rapacity of landlords and the evils of the enclosure movement.[161]