Another proof of Mulcaster’s general enlightenment may be found in the fact that he was the first of his countrymen to affirm seriously that education was the birthright of every child born into the community. It is not intended to suggest by this that he anticipated the full assumption by the State of the duty of providing and enforcing universal education, but rather that he desired to foster a public sentiment and social conditions which would be favourable to the idea that the rudiments of learning should by one means or another be distributed throughout the whole body of the nation. Efforts in this direction had been made in other countries under the levelling influence of the reforming spirit in religion, but in England, where the change of faith had been less associated with a democratic impulse, nothing had as yet been done to popularise education in the proper sense of the term, and public opinion had still to be prepared for the movement. It is true that the sharp distinctions of rank which the sixteenth century inherited from the Middle Ages were never so absolutely marked in the sphere of learning as in other departments of life. Though the child of lowly birth could never become a gentleman, he could become a scholar. The helping hand extended by the Church to the promising boy of low degree did not, however, imply any relaxation of caste feeling so far as the general supply of educational facilities was concerned. The humble scholar was raised out of his own class, and was always regarded as an exception. Taken in the mass, the gentry and the commonalty were clearly separated, and no kind of training was thought in any way due to the latter except such as might make them directly serviceable to their betters. For the first notable attack on this fundamental article of medieval faith, apart from the indirect and interested claims of the Reformation leaders to the means of influencing the young, credit is generally given to Comenius. But it must be remembered that half a century before his time, and in a country where the _régime_ of social status has always held a firm position, a strong protest against educational exclusiveness was raised by Richard Mulcaster, who maintained that the elements of knowledge and training should be recognised as the privilege of all, irrespective of rank or sex, and without regard to their future economic functions. “As for the education of gentlemen,” he writes, “at what age shall I suggest that they should begin to learn? Their minds are the same as those of the common people, and their bodies are often worse. The same considerations in regard to time must apply to all ranks. What should they learn? I know of nothing else, nor can I suggest anything better, than what I have already suggested for all.” And his unwillingness to recognise any kind of disability in matters of education, except what was proved by the test of experience to be natural, is further shown in his insistence that, as far as may be possible, girls should have the same advantages as boys. Though, as he says, in deference to the general feeling of his time and country he will not go so far as to propose that girls should be admitted to the grammar schools and universities, he not only wishes them to share in all the opportunities of elementary education, but he wholly approves of the ideal of higher culture for women, which was represented in the attainments of Queen Elizabeth herself.