In the prevalence of the town system popular education was rendered possible, and a great epoch in the history of social progress was reached when Massachusetts recognized the support of education as a proper function of government.  Boston had a school with some sort of public encouragement in 1635,[16] and in 1642, before schools were required by law, it was enjoined upon the selectmen to “take account from time to time of parents and masters of the ability of the children to read and understand the principles of religion and the capital lawes of the country."[17] In November, 1647, a general educational law required every town having fifty householders or more to appoint some one to teach children how to read and write, and every town having one hundred householders or more to establish a “grammar (Latin) school” to instruct youth “so far as may be fitted for the university."[18]

In 1636 the Massachusetts assembly agreed to give L400 towards “a schoole or Colledge,"[19] to be built at Newtown (Cambridge).  In 1638 John Harvard died within a year after his arrival, and left his library and “one-half his estate, it being in all about L700, for the erecting of the College.”  In recognition of this kindly act the general court fitly gave his name to the institution,[20] the first founded in the United States.

In 1650 Connecticut copied the Massachusetts law of 1647, and a clause declared that the grammar-schools were to prepare boys for college.  The results, however, in practice did not come up to the excellence of the laws, and while in some towns in both Massachusetts and Connecticut a public rate was levied for education, more generally the parents had to pay the teachers, and they were hard to secure.  When obtained they taught but two or three months during the year.[21] Bad spelling and wretched writing were features of the age from which New England was not exempt.  Real learning was confined, after all, to the ministers and the richer classes in the New England colonies, pretty much as in the mother-country.  In Plymouth and Rhode Island, where the hard conditions of life rendered any legal system of education impracticable, illiteracy was frequent.  The class of ignorant people most often met with in New England were fishermen and the small farmers of the inland townships.

Scarcity of money was felt in New England as in Virginia, and resort was had to the use of wampum as a substitute,[22] and corn, cattle, and other commodities were made legal tenders in payment of debts.[23] In 1652 a mint was established at Boston, and a law was passed providing for the coinage of all bullion, plate, and Spanish coin into “twelve-penny, sixpenny, and threepenny pieces.”  The master of the mint was John Hull, and the shillings coined by him were called “Pine-Tree Shillings,” because they bore on one side the legend “Massachusetts” encircling a tree.[24]