[521] _Norwich Court Books._ 18th October, 1630.
[522] _D. S. P._, Chas. I., Vol. 388, No. 7, XXXVIII. 2.
These schools were not improbably very numerous. In documents containing the instructions of justices to overseers knitting schools were advocated. Thus in directions issued in 1622 by some of the justices of Norfolk for the hundreds of Eynesford and South Erpingham, the justices resolve "that poore children be put to schoole to knittinge and spinninge dames and the churchwardens and ouerseers for the poore to paie the schoole dames their wages where the parents are not able[524]."
[524] British Museum Add. MSS. No. 12496, f. 222. In another document containing instructions by justices to overseers the establishment of knitting schools is advocated. See above, p. 181.
All this points to a system of popular education of the kind then approved.
In the largest towns orphanages also were established about this time. Christ's Hospital in London, as we have seen, was originally established for the little children of the London streets. During this period there were from seven to nine hundred children maintained at the cost of this institution, some in London and some at nurse in the country[525]. At Bristol there were two establishments of the same kind. Queen Elizabeth's Hospital was founded by a citizen named John Carr after the model of Christ's Hospital in London. The boys were subject to the same regulations and still wear the same blue and yellow dress[526]. The Red Maid's School was endowed by the will of John Whitson in 1621. It was to consist of a matron and forty girls. The children were to learn to read and sew and do such other work as the matron and the Mayor's wife should approve. They were to be apprenticed for eight years, to wear clothes of red cloth, and attend on the wives of the Mayor and aldermen on state occasions[527]. In Plymouth, Exeter, and Norwich also there were similar institutions, but they seem to have only existed in the large towns. Both in the country and towns orphaned and deserted children were generally "boarded out" until they were old enough to be apprenticed, and payments were made for them from the rates amounting to about a shilling a week.