Part III. Elementary Education. (1) Powers and duties. School boards

and school attendance committees are abolished and their powers and duties are transferred to the L.E.A., who are also to be responsible for and have the control of all secular instruction in public elementary schools not provided by them (S 5).

(2) Management of schools. (a) For public elementary schools provided by the L.E.A. (now officially styled "council schools"): (1) in counties, there is to be a body of six managers, viz. four appointed by the county council and two by the borough or urban district council, or parish council or parish meeting as the case may be, called in the act the minor local authority; (2) in non-county areas, the L.E.A. (being the borough or urban district council) may, if they think fit, appoint a body of managers consisting of such number as they may determine (S 6 [1]).

(b) For schools not provided by the L.E.A. (voluntary schools) the act directs that there shall be a body of six managers, of whom four are to be "foundation managers," and two are to be appointed as follows: in counties, one by the L.E.A. and one by the minor local authority, and in autonomous boroughs or urban districts both by the borough or urban district council (S 6 [2]). Directions for the appointment of foundation managers are given by S 11, which in effect declares that, unless the trust deed of the school provides for the appointment of the required number, the foundation managers must be appointed under an order of the Board of Education, in making which the board are to have regard to the ownership of the school building and to the principles on which the education given in the school had been conducted in the past. It was found necessary for the board to make over 11,000 of these orders, a heavy task which was rendered the more formidable by the controversial character of the questions arising upon trust deeds as to the mode of appointment and the qualifications of managers.

(3) Maintenance of schools (S 7). (a) Powers. The L.E.A. are required to maintain and keep efficient all public elementary schools which were necessary (i.e. which, as defined by S 9, have an average attendance of not less than thirty), under certain specified conditions, of which the most material are as follows. The managers must carry out the directions of the L.E.A. as to the secular instruction to be given in the school, including any directions with respect to the number and educational qualifications of the teachers, and for the dismissal of any teacher on educational grounds (S 7 [1] [a]). The consent of the L.E.A. is required to the appointment of teachers, but that consent may not be withheld except on educational grounds; and the consent of the authority is also required to the dismissal of a teacher unless the dismissal is on grounds connected with the giving of religious instruction (S7 [1] [c]).

(b) Liabilities. The managers are required to provide the school premises to the L.E.A. for use as a public elementary school free of charge, except that a rent is payable for the teacher's residence where one exists; and the managers are further required out of funds provided by them to keep the school premises in good repair and to make such alterations and improvements in the buildings as might reasonably be required by the L.E.A. On the other hand, the L.E.A. are required to make good such damage as they consider to be due to fair wear and tear of rooms used by them (S 7 [1] [d]). Thus, by virtue of the teacher's house rent and the wear-and-tear allowance the voluntary managers secured a valuable set-off against the cost of ordinary repairs.

Any question arising under this section (S 7) between the L.E.A. and the managers of a voluntary school is to be determined by the Board of Education (S 7 [3]).

It is further provided with respect to teachers in voluntary schools that assistant teachers and pupil teachers may be appointed "if it is thought fit" without reference to religious creed and denomination, and in any case in which there are more candidates for the post of pupil teacher than there are places to be filled, the appointment is to be made by the L.E.A. (S 7. [5]).

A provision, S 7 (6), known from the name of its author (d. 1908), Colonel Kenyon Slaney, M.P., as the Kenyon-Slaney clause, attracted considerable attention and formed the subject of much ecclesiastical controversy during the passage of the bill through parliament. The Kenyon-Slaney clause requires the religious instruction in voluntary schools to be in accordance with the provisions (if any) of the trust deed, but also to be under the control of the managers as a whole, whereas the common form of trust deed of the National Society reserves the control of religious instruction to the clergyman, whilst the clause was equally in conflict with the well-known sacerdotal principles of the Roman Catholic Church. Thus the clause represented a revival, as did the questions with respect to foundation managers, of the early controversy over the management clauses of the Committee of Council on Education. Its special interest lies, not so much in its intrinsic importance, as in the precedent it affords, specially notable as emanating from a Conservative source, for the overruling of trust deeds upon grounds of public policy. By way of saving another familiar provision of the trust deeds, a proviso to the Kenyon-Slaney clause reserves the existing trust-deed rights of appeal to the bishop or other denominational authority as to the character of the religious instruction.

_Provision of New Schools._--New schools may be provided either by the L.E.A. or any other persons, subject to the issue of three months' public notice, and to a right of appeal on the part of the managers of any existing school, the L.E.A. (in the case of proposed voluntary schools) or any ten ratepayers of the district, to the Board of Education on the ground that the proposed school is not required, or that a school provided by the L.E.A., or not so provided, as the case might be, is better suited to meet the wants of the district than the proposed school. Any enlargement of a public elementary school which in the opinion of the Board of Education is such as to amount to the provision of a new school is to be so treated for the purposes of the section, and any transfer of a school to or from the L.E.A. must be treated as the provision of a new school. In deciding appeals as to new schools and in determining a case of dispute whether a school was necessary or not, the board are directed to have regard to the interest of secular instruction, the wishes of parents as to the education of children, and the economy of the rates, but existing schools are not to be considered unnecessary if the average attendance is not less than thirty (SS 8-9). The last-mentioned canons have played a prominent part in subsequent discussions. Experience of these sections has shown that though it is extremely difficult to set up new voluntary schools in face of opposition from the L.E.A., such opposition is rarely offered or pressed where any really strong local demand is shown to exist.

_Aid Grant._--Section 10 provides a new aid grant payable to the L.E.A. in respect of the number of scholars in average attendance in schools maintained by them. This new grant, calculated by an elaborate method which need not here be set out, took the place of the grants under the Voluntary Schools Act 1897, and S 97 of the act of 1870 as amended by the Elementary Education Act 1897.

_Education Committees._--The constitution of education committees is dealt with by S 17. All councils having powers under the act, except those having concurrent powers as to higher education only, must establish education committees in accordance with schemes made by the councils and approved by the Board of Education (S 17 [1]). A scheme may provide for more than one education committee under a single council, but before approving such a scheme the board must satisfy themselves that due regard is paid to the importance of the general co-ordination of all forms of education (S 17 [6]). All matters relating to the exercise by a council of their powers under the act, except the power of raising a rate or borrowing money, stand referred to the education committee; the council may also delegate to the education committee any of their powers other than financial powers as above (S 17 [2]). Every scheme must provide (a) for the appointment of a majority of the committee by the council, the persons so appointed to be persons who are members of the council unless in the case of a county the council otherwise determine; (b) for the appointment by the council, on the nomination or recommendation, where it appears desirable, of other bodies (including associations of voluntary schools) of persons of experience in education, and of persons acquainted with the needs of the various kinds of schools in the area of the council; (c) for the inclusion of women. Provision was also made (d) for the representation in the first instance of members of existing school boards (S 17 [3]).

_Expenses._--All parliamentary grants are made payable to the L.E.A. instead of as previously to the managers (S 18 [2]). The county council must charge a proportion of all capital expenditure and liabilities, including rent, on account of the provision or improvement of any public elementary school on the parish or parishes which in the opinion of the council are served by the school, such proportion to be not less than one-half or more than three-fourths as the council think fit (S 18 [1] [c] [d]). The county council may also if they think fit charge on the parishes benefited any expenses incurred with respect to education other than elementary (S 18 [1] [a]).

_Endowments._--The act introduced a new principle into the administration of endowments by directing that their income so far as necessarily applicable in any case for those purposes of a public elementary school for which the local authority are liable must be paid to that authority for the relief of the parochial rate (S 13). As the result of technicalities of legal interpretation the section has been found to have in practice a narrower scope than had been generally anticipated.

The act of 1902 was extended to London by a separate act in 1903, containing certain special provisions of only minor importance.

"Passive resistance" to 1902 act. Default Act 1904.

The hostility of Nonconformists to the extension of rate-aid to denominational schools led to the organization upon a considerable scale of what became known as the "Passive Resistance" movement, a number of Nonconformist rate-payers refusing to pay the education rate on the ground that their consciences forbade their supporting the religious teaching in denominational schools; and their willingness to become subject to distraint and consequent inconveniences rather than pay the rates became the foundation of a widespread political campaign. In Wales, where in the rural districts the schools were commonly Anglican whilst the population was Nonconformist, particular difficulties arose in administering the act in consequence of the hostile attitude of the county authorities. Friction likewise manifested itself in one or two English areas, which reflected militant Nonconformist views. Accordingly the government passed the Local Education (Local Authority Default) Act 1904, empowering the Board of Education, in the case of default by the local authority, to make payments direct to the managers of the school and to deduct the amount from the sums payable to the defaulting authority on account of parliamentary grants.

Bill of 1906.

When the liberal party came into power again in 1906, Mr Birrell as president of the Board of Education in Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman's administration introduced a bill to amend the Education Acts 1902-1903, with the object of securing full public control of all rate-aided schools and the appointment of teachers without reference to religious belief. The bill was of a highly complex character; its principal features were,--compulsory transfer of existing voluntary schools to the local authority, facilities for the giving of denominational instruction in transferred schools out of school hours by persons other than the regular teachers, and the recognition in populous districts, upon the demand of parents, of special publicly maintained schools in which denominational teaching could be included in the curriculum; the latter schools might (according to the bill as finally amended) in the last resort, i.e. if the local authority refused to maintain them, be recognized as state-aided schools. The bill encountered strong opposition from Anglicans and Catholics (though the Catholic Irish members finally voted for it as amended); it passed the House of Commons by a large majority, but after unavailing attempts at compromise upon the amendments introduced in the House of Lords, the two Houses failed to agree and the measure was lost.

Bills of 1908.

Mr Birrell was soon transferred to another office, and nothing more was done to amend the act of 1902 till early in the session of 1908, his successor Mr McKenna introduced a bill based on what was known as "contracting out." In single-school parishes the existing schools were to be compulsorily transferred, subject to the grant of denominational facilities out of school hours; elsewhere a sufficiency of places in schools with Cowper-Temple teaching, which the bill proposed to make compulsory in all provided schools, must be supplied by the local authority, while existing voluntary schools might become state-aided schools upon terms of receiving a grant of 47s. per head. The bill was accompanied by a financial scheme for a new system of allocating the parliamentary grant. In view of the improbability of its passing into law the bill was not pressed beyond the stage of second reading. Meanwhile, when Mr Asquith reorganized the cabinet, Mr Runciman succeeded Mr McKenna at the education office, and in the autumn he introduced a fresh measure framed as the result of negotiations between the government and the archbishop of Canterbury (Dr Randall Davidson) and designed to be passed rapidly through parliament by consent of all parties. Mr Runciman's bill, like his predecessor's, was based upon the principle of compulsory transfer in single-school parishes and contracting out elsewhere, but it gave a right of entry for denominational teaching on two days a week during school hours in all council schools whether transferred voluntary schools or otherwise, with liberty to employ for this purpose assistant teachers, but not (save temporarily at first in transferred schools) head teachers. Provision was also made for the payment of a small rent which would be applicable for or towards the cost of the denominational instruction. Unfortunately, the compromise failed at the last moment for want of agreement as to the financial terms of "contracting out," the government offering 50s. per head and the Church demanding 7s. more. It is obvious that "contracting out" is open to serious objection upon educational and economic grounds, and that if resorted to upon any very considerable scale it would involve a disruption of the public elementary system, and a duplication of schools which would constitute a wasteful drain upon the national exchequer. Upon such a system, therefore, some check is necessary, and, once decided that the check should take the form of financial pressure, rather than request of parents as in Mr Birrell's bill, or some form of administrative control, the question of pecuniary terms became one of principle and not merely of financial detail. Moreover, the difficulty of adjusting differences was intensified by the opposition of the extremists on either side, which daily gathered force, and the bill was withdrawn by the government when in committee of the House of Commons. The conciliatory efforts of Mr Runciman and Dr Randall Davidson revealed the existence of a considerable body of influential opinion among all schools of thought in favour of a national compromise, and the proposals embodied in the bill marked on the part both of Churchmen and Nonconformists important concessions to each other's views, engendering reasonable hopes of an ultimate settlement being reached at no distant date.

Feeding of school children.

Two subsidiary points as regards educational machinery have to be noted. The Education (Provision of Meals) Act 1906 enabled local education authorities to aid voluntary agencies in the provision of meals for children attending public elementary schools, and in certain cases with the consent of the Board of Education to defray the cost of the food themselves. In 1907-1908 forty, and in 1908-1909 seventy-five authorities in England and Wales were authorized by the board to expend moneys from the rates on food under this act. In addition, a number of authorities expended funds on equipment and service.

Medical inspection.

In 1907 an uncontroversial act entitled the Education (Administrative Provisions) Act, besides dealing with various matters of technical and administrative detail, laid upon local education authorities the new duty of providing for the medical inspection of all children attending public elementary schools. In connexion with this act the Board of Education established a medical department to advise and assist them in supervising local education authorities in carrying out their statutory duties in this regard. The whole departure is significant of the new sense of the importance of physical culture and hygiene which has been one of the remarkable features in recent educational developments.

General progress in elementary education.

Sir Joshua Fitch, in his article on education in the 10th edition of this work, describes how experience had led the Education Department to abandon the system of payment by results, to establish "in place of testing the proficiency of individual scholars,... one summary estimate of the work of the school; in place of an annual examination, occasional inspection without notice; in place of a variable grant dependent on a report in detail on the several subjects of instruction and on particular educational merits and defects, one block grant payable to all schools alike." He at the same time expressed some misgiving as to the effect of "so large a relaxation of the conditions by which it had hitherto been sought to secure accuracy and thoroughness in teaching." The act of 1902, by placing secular education in public elementary schools under the control of strongly organized local education authorities may be said to have largely removed such dangers as were to be apprehended from the relaxation in question. Thus it was possible for the Board of Education in the code of 1904 to abolish the last traces of the system of payment by results, by setting forth (in the language of their report for 1903-1904) "a properly co-ordinated curriculum suitable to the needs of the children, with an indication of the relation which the various subjects of instruction should bear to each other, in place of the relatively haphazard list of possible branches of knowledge which were formerly presented to the choice of individual schools or authorities." In the new code also the board for the first time endeavoured to state for the guidance of teachers and parents the proper aim of the public elementary school, laying stress upon that element of the training of character which the system of payment by results had so unfortunately obscured. The new spirit was strikingly manifested in the volume of _Suggestions for the Considerations of Teachers_, issued by the Board of Education in 1905. This volume represented a notable attempt to connect administration with educational theory, without in any way seeking to crush individual initiative, or to impose a bureaucratic uniformity of method upon those engaged in the actual work of the schools. Apprehension of the true aim of elementary education as essentially and primarily a preparation for practical life has led to a corresponding development of instruction of a practical character, observation lessons and nature study being treated as a necessary element in the curriculum, while handicraft and gardening, and domestic subjects (for girls), are encouraged by special grants. Particular attention has been bestowed both by the central and local authorities upon the problem of rural instruction, and much has been done in many areas to bring the schools into closer relations with the needs of agricultural and rural life generally. In this way the old and perhaps not altogether ill-founded distrust of popular education as tending to unfit the working classes for industrial pursuits is being broken down and a public opinion more favourable to educational progress in the widest sense is being created.

According to the official returns for 1907-1908, the total number of scholars on the registers (England only) was as follows:--council schools, 2,991,741; voluntary schools, 2,566,030; total, 5,557,771, and the total attendance upon which grant was paid was 4,928,659. The percentage of actual average attendance to average number on the registers was 88.50%. The parliamentary grant (England and Wales) for elementary schools, other than higher elementary, amounted to L11,023,433.

Higher elementary schools.

The development of higher elementary education in England is now proceeding very much upon the lines that have been noted in France. The old higher-grade board-schools (declared illegal under the Elementary Education Acts by the judgment in the case of _Rex_ v. _Cockerton_ in 1901, and legalized temporarily by an act passed for the purpose in the same year) were mostly converted into municipal secondary schools under the act of 1902. In the succeeding years provision was made in the code for higher elementary schools of a specialized and technical type intended only for industrial districts. In 1906, as the result of the recommendations of the Consultative Committee, a new type of higher elementary school was admitted for children over twelve, corresponding generally to the French _ecole primaire superieure_, described as having "for its object the development of the education given in the ordinary public elementary school, and the provision of special instruction bearing on the future occupations of the scholars, whether boys or girls." It may be possible to supplement this system in the rural areas to some extent by "higher tops" to the ordinary elementary schools in cases where it is not practicable to establish a fully organised higher elementary school; but for such "higher tops" no central grant is available. The total number of scholars upon the registers of higher elementary schools (England) in 1907-1908 was: New Type, 3178 (against 2715 in the previous year); Old Type, 4492 (against 5866 in the previous year).

Expenditure on elementary education.

The total expenditure (exclusive of capital outlay) of the local authorities (1906-1907) in England only upon elementary education, including "industrial" and "special" schools, was L19,776,733, of which (a) L10,408,242 was met by the ordinary parliamentary grant, and (b) L8,930,468 was the balance required to be met by rates, the difference being represented by receipts from various sources. The average cost per child of elementary schools in England and Wales (excluding London) may be taken at L3 (including London L3, 4s. 10d.), and the average central grant (excluding grants for special purposes) at 41s., leaving 19s. to be raised locally.

Preliminary training of elementary teachers.

The training of teachers for the two great branches of public education, elementary and secondary respectively, is an important part of the general administrative problem. Since the middle of the 19th century there has been a great development of public opinion with regard to their professional qualifications. Sir Joshua Fitch (_Ency. Brit._ 10th ed.) pointed out that the full appreciation of the importance of training began at the lower end of the social scale. Shuttleworth and Tufnell in 1846 urged the necessity of special training for the primary teacher, and hoped to establish State Training Colleges to supply this want; but the one college at Battersea which was founded as an experiment was soon transferred to the National Society (the "National Society for educating the poor in the principles of the Established Church": founded in 1811). Before this, Bell and Lancaster had made arrangements in their model schools for the reception of a few young people to learn the system by practice. In Glasgow, David Stow, who founded in 1826 the Normal Seminary which afterwards became the Free Church College, was one of the first to insist on the need of systematic professional preparation. The religious bodies in England, notably the Established Church, availed themselves promptly of the failure of the central government, and a number of diocesan colleges for men, and separately for women, were gradually established. In 1854 the British and Foreign School Society (founded 1808) placed their institutes at the Borough Road and Stockwell on a collegiate footing, and subsequently founded other colleges at Swansea, Bangor, Darlington and Saffron Walden; the Roman Catholic Church provided two for women and one for men; and the Wesleyans two, one for each sex. The new provincial colleges of university rank were invited by the Education Department to attach normal classes to their ordinary course and to make provision for special training and suitable practice in schools for those students who desired to become teachers. Thus the government came to recognize two kinds of training schools--the residential colleges of the old type and the day colleges attached to institutions of university rank; both were subsidized by grants from the Treasury, and regularly inspected. As the need of special training for teachers became further recognized by the consideration of the same question as regards teachers in higher and intermediate schools (Cambridge instituting in 1879 examinations for a teacher's diploma, and other universities providing courses for secondary as well as primary teachers, and establishing professorships of education), the attitude of the government, i.e. the Board of Education, towards the problem gradually became more and more a subject of controversy and of public interest, as indicated by the clause in the Act of 1899 providing for a public registration of qualified teachers and for the gradual elimination from the profession of those who were unqualified. And meanwhile the increased solidarity of the National Union of Teachers (founded in 1870), the trade union, so to speak, of the teachers, brought an important body of professional opinion to bear on the discussion of their own interests.

The question of the preliminary education of elementary teachers had after some years of discussion reached a critical stage in 1909. The history of pupil teachership as a method of concurrent instruction and employment shows that it was in its inception something in the nature of a makeshift; the ideal placed before local education authorities in the recent regulations and reports of the Board of Education is the alternative system whereby with the aid of national bursaries (instituted in 1907) "the general education of future teachers may be continued in secondary schools until the age of seventeen or eighteen, and all attempts to obtain a practical experience of elementary school work may be deferred until the training college is entered, or at least until an examination making a natural break in that general education and qualifying for an admission to a training college has been passed." Under the revised pupil-teacher system established by the regulations of 1903 provision is made for the instruction of pupil teachers in centres which as far as possible are attached to secondary schools receiving grants from the Board of Education under the regulations for secondary schools, about two-thirds of the secondary schools on the grant list undertaking this work. Accordingly, the result of recent changes is to modify the old system in two ways: first by providing the alternative of a full course of secondary education, secondly by associating pupil teachership itself as far as possible with part-time attendance at a secondary school. The total number of pupil teachers recognized during the year 1907-1908 was 20,571, and of these 9770 were in centres forming integral parts of secondary schools. The number of bursars who passed the leaving examination was 1486.

Training colleges.

One of the principal difficulties which confronted the state and the local authorities in their task of organizing an improved system of public education under the act of 1902 lay in the deficiency of training colleges in view of the increased number of teachers. Local authorities naturally hesitated to burden themselves with the cost of providing such institutions in view of the fact that there is nothing to prevent teachers trained at great expense by one authority taking service under a less public-spirited authority who had contributed nothing to such training; hence a widespread feeling that the provision of training colleges should be undertaken by the state as a matter of national concern. Under these circumstances a new system of building grants in aid of the establishment of training colleges was instituted in 1905. In 1906 these grants were raised from 25 to 75% of the capital expenditure, but were limited to colleges provided by local authorities. A further difficulty in view of the municipalization of education arose from the fact that the majority of the residential colleges were in the hands of denominational trusts which did not admit a conscience clause. Under the presidency of Mr McKenna in 1907, the Board of Education, in regulations which excited much controversy, "with a view to throwing open as far as possible the advantages of a course of training in colleges supported mainly by public funds to all students who are qualified to profit by it irrespective of religious creed or social status," laid down that the application of a candidate might in no circumstances be rejected on any religious ground, nor on the ground of social antecedents or the like. The same regulations provided that no new training colleges would be recognized except on terms of compliance with certain conditions as to freedom from denominational restrictions or requirements. The obligation as to religious exemptions has since been limited to 50% of the admissions. There were in attendance (_Statistics_, England, 1907-1908) in the various colleges, 6561 women and 2835 men, of whom 1619 women and 335 men were in colleges provided by local education authorities. The grants made by the Board of Education for training colleges were as follows: maintenance grants L383,851; building grants L45,000. These figures include Wales.

Continuative education.

The fear has been widely entertained that a considerable part of the national expenditure upon elementary education is wasted for want of an effective system of continuative instruction to be given out of working hours to adolescents engaged in industrial employment. The whole subject was exhaustively treated by the report in 1909 of the Consultative Committee of the Board of Education. This report seeks to base an efficient continuative system upon the improvement of elementary education by reducing the size of the classes in the elementary schools upon the lines now laid down by the new staffing regulations of 1909; by increasing the amount of instruction in hand-work with a view to rendering the curriculum less bookish and more efficient as a training for industrial and agricultural life; and by legislation to reform the system of half-time attendance and raise the age of compulsory attendance to thirteen and ultimately fourteen. Upon the foundation of an improved and prolonged elementary education there would be reared a superstructure of continuative schools or classes, attendance at which up to seventeen would be compulsory under bye-laws adoptive locally at the option of the local education authorities. In 1906-1907 about 21 per thousand of the population of England and Wales attended evening schools and classes inspected by the Board of Education, and grant amounting to L361,596 was paid in respect of 440,718 regular attendants.

Secondary education.

The most marked progress has undoubtedly been in secondary education, and in no direction has the act of 1902 proved more fruitful. At the end of the 19th century secondary instruction in England was still provided chiefly by endowed grammar-schools, by proprietary schools established by religious bodies or joint-stock companies, and by private enterprise. No public provision was made for secondary education as such; what financial assistance was forthcoming from municipal sources was given indirectly under cover of the grants under the Technical Instruction Acts, while in the administration of central grants for the first years of the working of the Board of Education Act 1899, no absolute differentiation between secondary and technological functions was recognized. The establishment of local authorities with direct duties in respect of secondary education, and the reorganization of the central office with reference to the three branches of education, elementary, secondary and technological, rendered possible for the first time an adequate treatment of the problem of public secondary education as a whole. "The regulations for secondary schools," says the prefatory memorandum to the regulations of the Board of Education, "grew up round the old provisions of the Directory of the Science and Art Department. Detached science classes were gradually built up into schools of science. Schools of science were subsequently widened into schools of what was known as the 'Division A' type, providing a course of instruction in science in connexion with, and as part of, a course of general education. Aid was afterwards extended to schools of the 'Division B' type in which science did not form the preponderating element of the instruction given. In 1904 the board recast the regulations so as to bring all schools aided by grants within the general definition of a school offering a general education up to and beyond the age of sixteen through a complete graded course of instruction, the object of which should be to develop all the faculties, and to form the habit of exercising them."

Two main tendencies distinguish the recent development: on the one hand the tendency to municipalization, or at least to the establishment of public control; on the other hand the tendency (marked especially by the regulations of 1907) to greater elasticity in regard to curricula, and so to the freer encouragement of local initiative and local effort.

In 1907 the government of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman placed greatly increased funds at the disposal of the Board of Education for the purpose of secondary education. The regulations under which the increased grant was administered imposed conditions in respect of freedom from denominational restrictions or requirements, representative local control, and accessibility to all classes of the people, which, like the analogous rules with regard to training colleges, roused considerable controversy. With regard to religious instruction, the requirement was made that no catechism or formulary distinctive of any particular religious denomination might be taught in the school except upon the request in writing of the parent or guardian and at the cost of funds other than grants of public money. Power was at the same time reserved to the board to waive the new conditions in the event of the local education authority passing a resolution that the school was in their view required as part of the secondary school provision for their area, and that the conditions, or one or more of them, might be waived with advantage in view of the educational needs of the area. It will be noticed that one effect of the regulations (as of the training college regulations) was to recognize as a kind of established religion those elements of Christianity which are shared in common by the various Protestant churches, according to the system of Lancaster and the Cowper-Temple compromise. Normally schools are required to provide 25% of free places for scholars from public elementary schools, and, with a view to encouraging the transference of children from the public elementary school at an early age, a grant of L2 was made payable on account of ex-public elementary scholars between ten and twelve years of age. The full scale of grants is L2 for ex-public elementary scholars between ten and twelve, and L5 for scholars between twelve and eighteen. To schools previously recognized and failing to comply with the new conditions, grant may be paid on the lower scale of L2 and L2, 10s. respectively.

Secondary school grants are assessed upon average attendance, and efficiency is guaranteed by inspection and not by individual examination. All recognized schools must provide at least the substantial equivalent of the four-years' course formerly required, and recognition is withheld or withdrawn if an adequate number of the scholars do not remain at least four years in the school, or do not remain up to sixteen; in rural areas, however, and small towns, a school life of three years and a leaving age of fifteen may be accepted. "The board are now in a position, through their inspectorate, to keep a watch and exercise a guidance which were previously impossible over the planning and working of school curricula. Detailed reports following upon full inspections, and the more constant if less obvious influence exercised through informal visits, conferences, reports and suggestions, may now be relied upon to guard against the risks of one-sided education, of ill-balanced schemes of instruction, and of premature or excessive specialization" (Report of Board of Education, 1906-1907, page 68). The curriculum must provide instruction duly graded and duly continuous, in the English language and literature, in geography and history, in mathematics, science and drawing, and in at least one language other than English. Where two languages other than English are taken, Latin must ordinarily be one. Provision must be made for organized games, physical exercises and manual instruction, and in girls' schools science and mathematics other than arithmetic may be replaced by an approved scheme of practical housewifery for girls over fifteen. The total number of secondary schools recognized for grant (_Statistics_, 1907-1908) was 736, of which only 220 were directly provided by local authorities. The number of pupils in attendance was 68,104 boys and 56,359 girls, total 124,463. The government grants for 1907-1908 amounted to L320,873 besides grants from local authorities.

_Wales._

Notwithstanding the important differences which exist between the social and especially the religious conditions of England and Wales respectively, Wales continued to be treated as one with England for purposes of educational administration down to quite recent years. Towards the end of the 19th century the striking revival of Welsh nationality, in itself largely an educational and a literary movement, led to a spontaneous demand among the Welsh people for the organization of a national system of higher education. In accordance with the recommendations of a special royal commission the Welsh Intermediate Education Act passed in 1889 provided for the creation in every county in Wales (including Monmouthshire) of joint education committees consisting of three nominees of the county council and two nominees of the lord president of the council. To these committees were entrusted the duties of framing (under the Charity Commissioners) schemes for the establishment of intermediate and technical schools and for the application of endowments, and for administering a 1/2d. county rate, which was supplemented by a treasury grant not exceeding the amount raised by the rate. Certain supervisory functions were entrusted to a Central Education Board, to which are committed the duties of inspection and examination. The joint education committees have now (except for the purpose of framing schemes for endowments) been superseded by the local education authorities under the act of 1902. The public assistance afforded to secondary education in Wales under the Intermediate Act is supplemented by the grants of the Board of Education, and the Board's revised Secondary School Regulations were applied to Wales in 1908. There were (1907-1908) 92 county secondary schools in Wales administered under schemes made under the Welsh Intermediate Act, attended by 6235 boys and 6727 girls, total 12,962; and 12 other secondary schools, of which 8 were provided by local authorities. The total attendance at all secondary schools was 13,615, viz. 6819 boys and 6796 girls. The Board of Education grant amounted to L31,090. The expenditure of the local authorities for the year 1906-1907 was L85,242.

The number of scholars on the registers of ordinary public elementary schools in Wales was (_Statistics_, 1907-1908), in council schools 330,413, and in voluntary schools 100,290, total 430,703. The percentage of average attendance was 86.98. The ordinary parliamentary grant (1906-1907) was L794,161, and the net expenditure of local authorities L561,234.

In 1907 a Welsh department of the Board of Education was established with a permanent secretary and a chief inspector, each responsible directly to the president. A movement was in progress in Wales in 1908-1909 for the creation of a national council of education under an independent minister, but this change could in any case only be effected by legislation; and meanwhile the special religious and social conditions in Wales caused administrative difficulties in working an act (that of 1902) primarily designed to meet those prevailing in England. (G. B. M. C.)

_United States._

Beginnings.

_History._--The first white settlers who came to North America were typical representatives of those European peoples who had made more progress in civilization than any other in the world. Those settlers, in particular those from England and from Holland, brought with them the most advanced ideas of the time on the subject of education. The conditions of life in the New World emphasized the need of schools and colleges, and among the earliest public acts of the settlers were provisions to establish them. The steps taken between 1619 and 1622 to provide schools for the colony of Virginia were frustrated by the Indian war which broke out in the latter year, and were never successfully renewed during the colonial period. In New York, where the influence of the Dutch was at first predominant, elementary schools were maintained at the public expense, and were intended for the education of all classes of the population. This policy reflected the very advanced views as to public elementary education which were then held in the Netherlands. The assumption of control in the colony of New York by the English was a distinct check to the development of public elementary education, and little or no further progress was made until after the Revolution. The most systematic educational policy was pursued in the colony of Massachusetts. As early as 1635, five years after it was founded, the town of Boston took action to the end that "our brother Philemon Pormort shall be entreated to become schoolmaster for the teaching and nurturing children with us." The General Court of the colony in 1636 made the first appropriation for what was to become Harvard College, taking its name in honour of the minister, John Harvard, who died in 1638, leaving his library and one-half of his property, having a value of L800, to the new institution. The amount of this appropriation of 1636 (L400) was remarkable in that it was probably equal to the whole colony tax for a year. In 1642 followed a legislative act which, while saying nothing of schools, gave to the selectmen in every town power to oversee both the education and the employment of children. It is made the duty of the selectmen to see that the children can read and understand the principles of religion and the capital laws of the country, and that they are put to some useful work.

Five years later, in 1647, was enacted the law which is not only the real foundation of the Massachusetts school system, but the type of later legislation throughout the United States. This epoch-making act, the first of its kind in the world, represented the public opinion of a colony of about 20,000 persons, living in thirty towns. It required every town of fifty house-holders to establish a school, the master of which should be paid either by the parents of the children taught or by public tax, as the majority of the town committee might decide; and it further required every town of one hundred families or house-holders to set up a grammar school in which pupils might be prepared for the "University," as the new institution at Cambridge was designated. Moreover, a penalty was attached to neglect of this legislative requirement, in the form of a fine to be devoted to the maintenance of the nearest school. Horace Mann said of the act of 1647: "It is impossible for us adequately to conceive the boldness of the measure, which aimed at universal education through the establishment of free schools. As a fact it had no precedent in the world's history; and, as a theory, it could have been refuted and silenced by a more formidable array of argument and experience than was ever marshalled against any other institution of human origin. But time has ratified its soundness. Two centuries of successful operation now proclaim it to be as wise as it was courageous, and as beneficent as it was disinterested." The significance of these acts of 1642 and 1647 is that they foreshadow the whole American system of education, including elementary schools, secondary schools and colleges, and that they indicate the principles upon which that system rests. These principles as summarized by George H. Martin in his _Evolution of the Massachusetts Public School System_ are the following:--(1) The universal education of youth is essential to the well-being of the state. (2) The obligation to furnish this education rests primarily upon the parent. (3) The state has a right to enforce this obligation. (4) The state may fix a standard which shall determine the kind of education and the minimum amount. (5) Public money raised by general tax may be used to provide such education as the state requires. The tax may be general, though the school attendance is not. (6) Education higher than the rudiments may be supplied by the state. Opportunity must be provided at the public expense for youths who wish to be fitted for college. These principles have now found expression in the public acts of every state, and upon them education in the United States is founded.

Development.

Despite the praiseworthy attempts made in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania to develop schools and school systems, very little was accomplished in those colonies which was permanent. The sentiment in the more southern colonies was, as a rule, unfriendly to free schools, and nothing of importance was attempted in that section of the country until the time of Thomas Jefferson. Through religious zeal or philanthropy colleges were founded as far south as Virginia, and no fewer than ten of these institutions were in operation in 1776. Their present names and the dates of their foundation are: Harvard University, Massachusetts (1636); College of William and Mary, Virginia (1693); Yale University, Connecticut (1701); Princeton University, New Jersey (1746); Washington and Lee University, Virginia (1749); University of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania (1749); Columbia University, New York (1754); Brown University, Rhode Island (1764); Rutgers College, New Jersey (1766); and Dartmouth College, New Hampshire (1769). In the colleges the ecclesiastical spirit was at first almost uniformly dominant. The greater number of their students were preparing for the ministry in some one of the branches of the Protestant Church. These facts caused the grammar schools to take on more and more the character of college-preparatory schools; and when this was brought about they supplied the educational needs of but one portion of the community. As time passed, the interdependence of governmental and ecclesiastical interests began to weaken in the colonies, and there arose among those who represented the new secularizing tendency a distrust of the colleges and their influence. This gave rise to a new and influential type of school, the academy, which took its name from the secondary schools established in England by the dissenting religious bodies during the latter part of the seventeenth century at the suggestion of Milton. These academies were intended to give an education which was thought to be more practical than that offered by the colleges, and they drew their students from the so-called middle classes of society. The older academies were usually endowed institutions, organized under the control of religious organizations or of self-perpetuating boards of trustees. Their programme of studies was less restricted than that of the grammar schools, and they gave new emphasis to the study of the English language and its literature, of mathematics and of the new sciences of nature. For two generations the academies were a most beneficent factor in American education, and they supplied a large number of the better-prepared teachers for work in other schools. These schools were in a sense public in that they were chartered, but they were not directly under public control in their management. Early in the 19th century there arose a well-defined demand for public secondary schools--high schools, as they are popularly known. They were the direct outgrowth of the elementary school system. Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore and New York were the first of the large cities to establish schools of this type, and they spread rapidly. These public secondary schools met with opposition, however, springing partly from the friends of the academies, and partly from those who held that governmental agency should be restricted to the field of elementary education. The legal questions raised were settled by a decision of the supreme court of Michigan, which contained these words: "Neither in our state policy, in our constitution, nor in our laws do we find the primary school districts restricted in the branches of knowledge which their officers may cause to be taught, or the grade of instruction that may be given, if their voters consent, in regular form, to bear the expense and raise the taxes for the purpose." This decision gave marked impetus to the development of public secondary or high schools, and they have increased rapidly in number. The academies have relatively declined, and in the Western states are almost unknown.

Meanwhile the elementary school system had grown rapidly. The school district, the smallest civil division, was created in Connecticut in 1701, in Rhode Island about 1750, and in Massachusetts in 1789. From the point of view of efficient, well-supported schools, it has been felt since the time of Horace Mann that the substitution of the small school district for the town as the unit of school administration was a mistake. Yet the school district has exercised a profound influence for good upon the American people. In New York state, for example, there were in 1900 over eleven thousand school districts, and in Illinois over twelve thousand. The districts are small in extent and often sparsely settled. Their government is as democratic as possible. The resident legal voters, often including women, hold a meeting at least once a year. They elect trustees to represent them in the employment of the teacher and the management of the school. They determine whether a new schoolhouse shall be built, whether repairs shall be made, and what sum of money shall be raised for school purposes. In the rural districts this system has often been itself a school in patriotism and in the conduct of public affairs. Recently the tendency is to merge the school districts into the township, in order that larger and better schools may be maintained, and that educational advantages may be distributed more evenly among the people. Most of the southern states have the county system of school administration. This is because the county, rather than the township, has been the political unit in the south from the beginning. Special laws have been made for the school system in cities, and the form of these laws differs very much. In nearly every city there is a separate board of education, sometimes chosen by the voters, sometimes appointed by the mayor or other official, which board has full control of the schools. The city board of education has as its executive officer a superintendent of schools, who has become a most important factor in American educational administration. He exerts great influence in the selection of teachers, in the choice of text-books, in the arrangement of the programme of studies, and in the determination of questions of policy. Sometimes he is charged by law with the initiative in some or all of these matters. He is usually a trained administrator as well as an experienced teacher. The first superintendent was appointed in 1837 at Buffalo. Providence followed in 1839, New Orleans in 1841, Cleveland in 1844, Baltimore in 1849, Cincinnati in 1850, Boston in 1851, New York, San Francisco and Jersey City in 1852, Newark and Brooklyn in 1853, Chicago and St Louis in 1854, and Philadelphia in 1883. In general, it may be said that the progress of public education in the United States is marked by (1) compulsory schools, (2) compulsory licensing of teachers, (3) compulsory school attendance, and (4) compulsory school supervision, and by the increasingly efficient administration of these provisions. The compulsion comes in each case from the state government, which alone, in the American system, has the power to prescribe it and to enforce it. Each state is therefore an independent educational unit, and there is no single, uniform American system of education in any legal sense. In fact, however, the great mass of the American people are in entire agreement as to the principles which should control public education; and the points in which the policies of the several states are in agreement are greater, both in number and in importance, than those in which they differ. An American educational system exists, therefore, in spirit and in substance, even though not in form.

National policy.

Neither in the Declaration of Independence nor in the Constitution of the United States is there any mention of education. The founders of the nation were by no means indifferent to education, but they shared the common view of their time, which was that the real responsibility for the maintenance of schools and the expense of maintaining them should fall upon the several local communities. The relation of government to education was not then a subject of ordinary consideration or discussion. Later, when this question did arise and the power of taxation was involved, the several states assumed control of education, as it was necessary that they should do. Nevertheless, from the very beginning the national government has aided and supported education, while not controlling it. This policy dates from the 13th of July 1787, when there was passed the famous "Ordinance for the Government of the Territory of the United States North-West of the River Ohio," meaning the territory north and west of the Ohio river now represented by the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and the eastern side of Minnesota, embracing more than 265,000 sq. m. of territory. This ordinance contains this declaration: "Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall for ever be encouraged." The Ordinance of 1787 also reaffirmed the provisions of the so-called Land Ordinance of 1785, by which section No. 16 in every township (a township consists of 36 numbered sections of 1 sq. m. each), or one thirty-sixth of the entire north-west territory, was set aside for the maintenance of public schools within the township. The funds derived from the sale and lease of these original "school lands" form the major portion of the public school endowment of the states formed out of the north-west territory. The precedent thus established became the policy of the nation. Each state admitted prior to 1848 reserved section No. 16 in every township of public land for common schools. Each state admitted since 1848 (Utah being an exception, and having four sections) has reserved sections No. 16 and No. 36 in every township of public lands for this purpose. In addition, the national government has granted two townships in every state and territory containing public lands for seminaries or universities. A third land grant is that made in 1862 for colleges of agriculture and the mechanical arts. The sum total of these three land grants amounted in 1900 to 78,659,439 acres, to which there must be added various special grants made from time to time to the states and devoted to education. The portion of the public domain so set apart in 1900 amounted in all to 86,138,473 acres, or 134,591 English sq. m. This is an area greater than those of the six New England states, New York, New Jersey, Maryland and Delaware added together. It is a portion of the earth's surface as great as the kingdom of Prussia, about seven-tenths as great as France, and considerably greater than the combined areas of Great Britain (including the Channel Islands) and the kingdom of Holland. Besides the enormous grants of land in aid of education, the national government has maintained since 1802 a military academy at West Point, New York, for the training of officers for the army, and since 1845 a naval academy at Annapolis, Maryland, for the training of officers for the navy. It has also taken charge of the education of the children of uncivilized Indians, and of all children in Alaska. It has voted, by act of 1887, a perpetual endowment of $15,000 a year for each agricultural experiment station connected with a state agricultural college, and, by act of 1890, an additional endowment of $25,000 a year for each of the agricultural colleges themselves. The aggregate value of land and money given by the national government for education in the several states and territories is about $300,000,000.

Bureau of education.

In 1867 the Congress established a bureau of education, presided over by a commissioner who is under the jurisdiction of the secretary of the interior, the purpose of which is declared to be to collect "such statistics and facts as shall show the condition and progress of education in the several states and territories, and of diffusing such information respecting the organization and management of school systems and methods of teaching as shall aid the people of the United States in the establishment and maintenance of efficient school systems, and otherwise promote the cause of education throughout the country." The bureau has therefore no direct power over the educational policy of the several states. It has, however, exercised a potent influence for good in its advisory capacity. Up to 1900 this bureau had published 360 separate volumes and pamphlets, including 31 annual reports, covering from 800 to 2300 pages each; and the number has since been much increased. The annual reports alone of the Commissioner of Education are mines of information. These standard works of reference are distributed gratuitously in large numbers to libraries, school officials and other persons interested, and to foreign governments. The several commissioners of education have been: Henry Barnard, 1867-1870; John Eaton, 1870-1886; Nathaniel H.R. Dawson, 1886-1889; William T. Harris,[3] 1889-1906; Elmer Ellsworth Brown, 1906- .

State governments and education.

In the United States the sovereign powers are not all lodged in one place. Such of those powers as are not granted by the Constitution to the national government are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people. The power to levy taxes for the support of public education has been almost universally held to be one of the powers so reserved. The inhabitants of the several local communities, however indisposed they may have been to relinquish absolute control of their own schools, have been compelled to yield to the authority of the state government whenever it has been asserted, for except under such authority no civil division--county, city, township, or school district--possesses the power to levy taxes for school purposes. Moreover, since the exercise of state authority has uniformly improved the quality of the schools, it has usually been welcomed, not resisted. In general, it may be said that the state has used its authority to prescribe a minimum of efficiency which schools and teachers must reach, and it enforces this minimum through inspection and the withholding of its proper share of the state school fund from any locality where schools or teachers are permitted to fall below the required standard. In extreme cases the state authorities have interfered directly to prevent the evil results of local inefficiency or contumacy. In addition, the states, almost without exception, maintain at their own expense schools for the training of teachers, known as normal schools. Many of the states also offer inducements to the cities, towns and districts to exceed the prescribed minimum of efficiency. Through the steady exercise of state supervision the school buildings have improved, the standard for entrance upon the work of teaching has been raised, the programme of studies has been made more effective and more uniform, and the length of the school term has increased. The Constitution of every state now contains some provision as to public education. Each state has an executive officer charged with the enforcement of the state school laws. Sometimes, as in New York, this official has plenary powers; sometimes, as in Massachusetts and Ohio, he is little more than an adviser. In twenty-nine states this official is known as the superintendent of public instruction; in Massachusetts and Connecticut he is called secretary of the state board of education; other titles used are commissioner of public schools, superintendent of common schools, and superintendent of public schools. The schools are administered, on behalf of the taxpayers, by an elected board of school trustees in rural school districts, and by an elected (though sometimes appointed) board of education or school committee in cities and towns. In 836 cities and towns there is a local superintendent of schools, who directs and supervises the educational work and acts as the executive officer of the board of education. The schools in the rural districts are under the direct supervision of a county superintendent of schools or similar official, who is often chosen by the people, but who sometimes is named by the state authorities. The county and city superintendents are often charged with the duty of holding examinations for entrance upon the work of teaching, and of issuing licences to those persons who pass the examinations. This system works best where it is carefully regulated by state law. Thirty states, one territory, and the District of Columbia have enacted compulsory education laws, but the enforcement of them is usually very lax. In fifteen states and territories there are no compulsory education laws, although there are in existence there fully organized school systems free to all children. The usual age during which school attendance is required is from 8 to 14. Provision is made in Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Minnesota and Michigan, for sending habitual truants to some special institution. Laws forbidding the employment of children under a specified minimum age in any mercantile or manufacturing establishment are in force in twelve states, and are usually administered in connexion with the compulsory education laws.

The universal establishment in America of public secondary schools (high schools), and the existence of state universities in all of the states south and west of Pennsylvania, have brought into existence a system of state education which reaches from the kindergarten and the elementary school to the graduate instruction offered at state colleges and universities. This system includes (1) about 1500 free public kindergartens scattered over fifteen states; (2) free public elementary schools within reach of almost every home in the land; (3) free public secondary schools (high schools) in every considerable city or town and in not a few rural communities; (4) free land grant colleges, supported in large part by the proceeds of the nation's endowment of public lands, paying particular attention to agriculture and the mechanical arts, in all the states; (5) state universities, free or substantially so, in all the states south and west of Pennsylvania; (6) free public normal schools, for the professional training of teachers, in nearly every state; (7) free schools for the education of defectives in nearly all the states; and (8) the national academies at West Point and Annapolis for the professional training of military and naval officers respectively.

Kindergartens.

Miss Susan E. Blow, herself the leading exponent of kindergarten principles in the United States, has pointed out that the history of the kindergarten movement reveals four distinct stages in its development: the pioneer stage, having Boston as its centre; the philanthropic stage, which began in the village of Florence, Mass., and reached its climax at San Francisco, California; the national or strictly educational stage, which began at St Louis; and the so-called maternal stage, which from Chicago as a centre is spreading over the entire country. During the first stage public attention was directed to a few of the most important aspects of Froebel's teaching. During the second stage the kindergarten was valued largely as a reformatory and redemptive influence. During the third stage the fundamental principles underlying kindergarten training were scientifically studied and expounded, and the kindergarten became part of the public school system of the country. The fourth stage, which, like the third, is fortunately still in existence, aims at making the kindergarten a link between the school and the home, and so to use it to strengthen the foundations and elevate the ideals of family life. By 1898 there were 4363 kindergartens in the United States (1365 of which were public), employing 9937 teachers (2532 in the public kindergartens) and enrolling 189,604 children (95,867 in the public kindergartens). Of the 164 public normal schools, 36 made provision for training kindergarten teachers. The scientific and literary activity of some of the private kindergarten training classes is very great, and they exert a beneficial and stimulating effect on teaching in the elementary schools. It is generally admitted that from the point of view of the children, of the teachers, of the schools, and of the community at large, the kindergarten has been and is an inspiration of incalculable value.

Elementary schools.

The elementary school course is from six to nine years in length, the ordinary period being eight years. The pupils enter at about six years of age. In the cities the elementary schools are usually in session for five hours daily, except Saturday and Sunday, beginning at 9 A.M. There is an intermission, usually of an hour, at midday, and short recesses during the sessions. In the small rural schools the pupils are usually ungraded, and are taught singly or in varying groups. In the cities and towns there is a careful gradation of pupils, and promotions from grade to grade are made at intervals of a year or of a half-year. The best schools have the most elastic system of gradation and the most frequent promotions. In a number of states there are laws authorizing the conveyance of children to school at the public expense, when the schoolhouse is unduly distant from the homes of a portion of the school population. Co-education (q.v.) in the elementary school has been the salutary and almost uniform practice in the United States. The programme of studies in the elementary school includes English (reading, writing, spelling, grammar, composition), arithmetic (sometimes elementary algebra also, or plane geometry in the upper grades), geography, history of the United States, and elementary natural science, including human physiology and hygiene. Physical training, vocal music, drawing and manual training are often taught. Sometimes a foreign language (Latin, German or French) and the study of general history are begun. Formal instruction in manners and morals is not often found, but the discipline of the school offers the best possible training in the habits of truthfulness, honesty, obedience, regularity, punctuality and conformity to order. Religious teaching is not permitted, although the exercises of the day are often opened with reading from the Bible, the repetition of the Lord's Prayer and the singing of a hymn. Corporal punishment is not infrequent, but is forbidden by law in New Jersey, and in many states may be used only under restrictions. Text-books are used as the basis of the instruction given, and the pupils "recite" in class to the teacher, who, by use of illustration and comment, makes clear the subject-matter of the prescribed lesson. The purpose of the recitation method is to make the work of each pupil help that of his companion. Skilfully used, it is the most effectual instrument yet devised for elementary school instruction.

Secondary schools.

The secondary school course is normally four years in length. The principal subjects studied are Latin, Greek, French, German, algebra, geometry, physics, chemistry, physical geography, physiology, rhetoric, English literature, civics and history. Although but 11.36% of the students in public high schools and 25.36% of those in private secondary schools are preparing for a college or scientific school, yet the conditions prescribed by the colleges for admission to their courses affect powerfully both the secondary school programme and the methods of teaching. Of late years no educational topic has been more widely discussed than that as to the proper relations of secondary schools and colleges. As a result, special examinations for admission to college are either greatly simplified or entirely abolished, and the secondary studies are much more substantial and better taught than formerly. An increasing proportion of secondary school teachers are college graduates. The most extraordinary characteristic of secondary education in recent years is the rapid increase in the number of students taking Latin as a school subject. Meanwhile the proportion of those studying physics and chemistry has fallen off slightly. The rate of increase in the number of pupils who study Latin is fully twice as great as the rate of increase in the number of secondary school students. Between 1890 and 1896, while the number of students in private secondary schools increased 12%, the number of students in public secondary schools increased 87%. Since 1894 the number of students in private secondary schools has steadily declined.

The colleges.

The American college, although it is the outgrowth of the English colleges of Oxford and of Cambridge, has developed into an institution which has no counterpart in Europe. The college course of study, at first three years in length, was soon extended to four years, and the classes are uniformly known as the freshman, the sophomore, the junior and the senior. The traditional degree which crowns the college course is that of Bachelor of Arts (A.B.). The studies ordinarily insisted on in the case of candidates for this degree are Latin, Greek, mathematics, English, philosophy, political economy, history, at least one modern European language (French or German), and at least one natural science. The degrees of Bachelor of Science (B.S.), Bachelor of Philosophy (Ph.B.), and Bachelor of Letters (B.L.) are often conferred by colleges upon students who have pursued systematic courses of study which do not include Greek or the amount of Latin required for the degree of Bachelor of Arts. The best colleges give instruction which is similar in character to that given in Germany in the three upper classes of the gymnasium and in the introductory courses at the universities, in France in the two upper classes of the lycee and in the first two years of university study, and in England in the upper form of the public schools and during the years of undergraduate residence at Oxford and Cambridge. Since 1870 the colleges have developed enormously. Their resources have multiplied, the number of their students has increased by leaps and bounds, the programme of studies has broadened and deepened, the standards have been raised, and the efficiency of the instruction has greatly increased. Rigidly prescribed courses of study have given way to elective courses, and a knowledge of Greek is no longer required for the degree of A.B. at such influential colleges as Harvard, Columbia, Cornell and Williams. A strong effort is being made to have the leading colleges give but one degree, that of Bachelor of Arts, and to confer that upon those who complete any substantial course of college studies. A marked change has taken place in the attitude of the college authorities toward the students. In 1870 the college president was a paterfamilias. He knew each student and came into direct personal contact with him. The president and the faculty had supervision not only of the studies of the students, but of their moral and religious life as well. The older type of college professor was not always a great scholar, but he was a student of human nature, with keen intuitions and shrewd insight. The new type, which had come into existence at the opening of the 20th century, was more scholarly in some special direction, often regarded teaching as a check upon opportunities for investigation, and disdained troubling himself with a student's personal concerns or intellectual and moral difficulties. The change was not altogether for the better, and a desirable reaction has been observable. Each college, however small or ill-equipped, exercises a helpful local influence. Ninety per cent of all college students attend an institution not more than one hundred miles from their own homes. Few colleges have a national constituency, and even in these cases an overwhelming preponderance of the students come from the immediate neighbourhood. This explains, in a measure, the powerful influence which the college has exercised in the life of the nation. While hardly more than one in a hundred of the white male youth of the country has had a college education, yet the college graduates have furnished one-half of all the presidents of the United States, most of the justices of the Supreme Court, about one-half of the cabinet officers and United States senators, and nearly one-third of the House of Representatives. Before the Revolution eleven colleges were founded. From 1776 to 1800, twelve more were added; from 1800 to 1830, thirty-three; from 1830 to 1865, one hundred and eighty; from 1865 to 1898, two hundred and thirty-six. Their standards, efficiency and equipment are very diverse, many of the so-called colleges being less effective than some of the better organized secondary schools. Except in New York and Pennsylvania, there is no statutory restriction upon the use of the name "college." This is an abuse to which public attention has in recent years been increasingly called.[4]

The universities.

In the United States the title "university" is used indiscriminately of institutions which are in reality universities, of institutions which are colleges, and of institutions which are so ill-equipped as not to take rank with good secondary schools. Only time and a greatly increased capacity to distinguish the various types of higher schools will remedy this error. Putting aside tentative and unsuccessful attempts to develop genuine university instruction much earlier, it may safely be said that the opening of the Johns Hopkins University at Baltimore in 1876 began the present movement to organize carefully advanced study and research, requiring a college education of those who wish to enter upon it. This is university instruction properly so called, and though found elsewhere, it is given chiefly at fourteen institutions: California University, Catholic University of America, Chicago University, Clark University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, Michigan University, Pennsylvania University, Princeton University, Leland Stanford Jr. University, Wisconsin University and Yale University. All of these institutions, except the Catholic University of America, are also colleges. The combination of collegiate and university instruction under one corporation and one executive administration is distinctive of higher education in the United States, and its chief source of strength. The crowning honour of the university student is the degree of Ph.D., although that of A.M.--obtainable in less time and much easier conditions--is also sought. The minimum period of study accepted for the degree of Ph.D. is two years after obtaining the bachelor's degree; but in practice, three, and even four, years of study are found necessary. In addition to carrying on an investigation in the field of his main subject of study, the candidate for the degree of Ph.D. is usually required to pass examinations on one or two subordinate subjects, to possess a reading knowledge of French and German (often of Latin as well), and to submit--usually in printed form--the dissertation which embodies the results of his researches. The methods of instruction in the universities are the lecture, discussion and work in laboratory or seminary--the latter transplanted from the German universities. The degree of Master of Arts is conferred upon students who, after one year of university residence and study, pass certain prescribed examinations. This degree, like those of D.D., S.T.D. and LL.D., is often conferred by colleges and universities as a purely honorary distinction. The degree of Ph.D. is not so conferred any longer by the best universities. Not a few of the universities maintain schools of law and medicine. Harvard and Yale universities maintain schools of theology as well. The learned publications issued by the universities, or under the direction of university professors, are of great importance, and constitute an imposing body of scientific literature. The national and state governments make increasing use of university officials for public service requiring special training or expert knowledge. In 1871-1872 there were only 198 resident graduate (or university) students in the United States. In 1887 this number had risen to 1237, and in 1897 to 4392. These figures are exclusive of professional students, and include only those who are studying in what would be called, in Germany, the philosophical faculty. (See also UNIVERSITIES.)

Most extensive provision is made in America for professional, technical and special education of all kinds, and for the care and training of the dependent and defective classes (see BLINDNESS and DEAF AND DUMB), as well as for the education of the Indian (see INDIANS, NORTH AMERICAN), and--in the Southern states--of the negro (q.v.). (N. M. B.)

_Statistics._--Details as to education in each state of the American Union are given in the articles under state headings. But a more comprehensive view may be obtained here from the general statistics. The introduction to the statistical tables in vol. ii. of the Commissioner of Education's Report for 1907 may usefully be quoted. Mr Edward L. Thorndike, of the Teachers' College, Columbia University, there summarizes the national account as follows:--

"We use in formal school education a material plant valued at from twelve to thirteen hundred million dollars, the labour of 550,000 teachers or other educational officers, and more or less of the time of some eighteen million students.... We pay for the labour of these teachers, many of whom work for only part of the normal city-school year, about $300,000,000. We pay for fuel, light, janitorial services, repairs, depreciation of books, school supplies, insurance and the like, about $90,000,000. For depreciation of the plant not so charged we should properly provide during the year a sinking fund of perhaps $25,000,000. Adding an interest charge of 5% on the investment in the plant, our annual bill for formal school education comes to over $475,000,000. Additions to the plant were made [in 1906-1907] to the extent of from ninety to a hundred million dollars. As a partial estimate of the returns from this investment we may take the number of students whose education has been carried to a specified standard of accomplishment and power. Thus I estimate that, in 1907, 3000 students reached the standard denoted by three years or more of academic, technical or professional study in advance of a reputable college degree; that 25,000 students reached the standard denoted by at least three and not over four years of such study in advance of a four-year high-school course; than an eighth of a million students reached the standard denoted by at least three and not over four years of study in advance of an eight-year elementary-school course; and that three-quarters of a million students reached the standard of completion of an elementary-school course of seven or eight years or its equivalent.... Roughly, nine-tenths of elementary education and the education of teachers, over two-thirds of secondary education, and over a third of college and higher technical education are provided and controlled by the public. Professional education, other than the training of teachers and engineers, is still largely a function of private provision and control.

"The following rough comparison may serve to define further the status of education in the country at large. The plant used for formal education is valued at 1% of our entire national wealth, or twice the value of our telephone systems, or ten times the value of our Pullman and private cars, or one-tenth the value of our railroads. The number of teachers is approximately that of the clergymen, engineers, lawyers and physicians together, five times that of the regular army and navy, and about twice that of the saloon-keepers and bar-tenders and their assistants. The annual expenditure for education, exclusive of additions to the plant, is somewhat over twice the expenditure for the war and navy departments of the national government. It is three and a half times the expenditure of the national government in 1907 for pensions. It is about one and a fourth times the cost (New York wholesale prices) of the sugar and coffee we consume annually."

The above comparison indicates perhaps, not inadequately, the "business" conception of the value of education prevailing in the United States, where its practical advantages are realized as in no other country, not even Germany.

From the same report the following statistics may be cited for 1906-1907.

_Common Schools (including Elementary and Secondary Public Schools only)._

Total number of pupils of all ages 16,820,386[5] Average number of days schools open 151.2 Average number of days attended by each pupil 106.2 Number of male teachers 105,773 Number of female teachers 369,465 Number of school houses 259,115 Average monthly wage of male teachers $56.10 Average monthly wage of female teachers $43.67 Value of all school property $843,309,410 Income from permanent funds and rents $16,579,551 Income from State taxes $46,281,501 Income from local taxes $230,424,554 Income from other sources $50,317,132 Expenditure on sites, buildings, furniture, libraries and apparatus $65,817,870 Expenditure on salaries $196,980,919 Expenditure on other purposes $67,882,012 Expenditure per head of population $3.90 Expenditure per pupil $27.98

The Bureau of Education in 1907 received reports from 606 universities, colleges and technological schools; they had a teaching force of 24,679, and an enrolment of 293,343 students. The number of public and private normal schools reporting was 259, with an enrolment of 70,439 students in the regular training courses for teachers, 12,541 graduates and 3660 instructors. There were 148 manual and industrial training schools (independently of the manual training taught in the public schools and in 66 Indian schools), with 1692 teachers and an enrolment of 68,427 students; and 445 independent commercial and business schools, with 2856 instructors and 137,364 students. (X.)

BIBLIOGRAPHY.--For the study of education as an aspect of religious, social, moral and intellectual development, the material is practically inexhaustible, and much of the most valuable does not treat specifically of the education given in schools and colleges. The most useful guide is E.P. Cubberley's _Syllabus of Lectures on the History of Education_ (1902), which consists of an analytic outline of topics with copious and detailed references to authorities. See also W.S. Monroe's _Bibliography of Education_ (1897). The best general history in English is P. Monroe's _Text-Book in the History of Education_ (1905), which, like Davidson's much briefer _History of Education_, treats the subject broadly and in relation to other aspects of life. Williams's _History of Ancient, Medieval, and Modern Education_ is a useful statement of the main facts of educational progress taken somewhat by itself. In German the standard work is K.A. Schmid's _Geschichte der Erziehung_, a comprehensive and detailed treatment in which each period is dealt with by a specialist. Ziegler's _Geschichte der Padagogik_ is a good short history. In French, Letourneau's _L'Evolution de l'education_ is especially good on ancient and non-European education. Draper's _Intellectual Development of Europe_ is vigorous and interesting, but marred by its depreciation of the work of the Church. Guizot's _History of Civilization_ is still of value, as are parts of Hallam's _Literary History_. Lecky's _History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe_, and Buckle's _History of Civilization_ in England, contain much that is of value. The best encyclopaedias are W. Rein's _Encyklopadisches Handbuch der Padagogik_, and F. Buisson's _Dictionnaire de pedagogie, premiere partie_. Sir Henry Craik's _The State and Education_ (1883) is an excellent text-book on national education.

Of books dealing with special periods and topics, S. Laurie's _Historical Sketch of Pre-Christian Education_, Freeman's _Schools of Hellas_, Girard's _L'Education athenienne au V^e et au IV^e siecle avant_ J.-C., Davidson's _Education of the Greek People_, Mahaffy's _Old Greek Education_ and _Greek Life and Thought_, Nettleship's article on "Education in Plato's Republic" in _Hellenica_, Capes's _University Life in Athens_, Hobhouse's _Theory and Practice of Ancient Education_, Grasberger's _Erziehung und Unterricht im classischen Alterthum_, Wilkin's _Roman Education_, and Clarke's _Education of Children at Rome_, are valuable for classical times.

For the somewhat obscure transition centuries there is much of value in Taylor's _Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages_, Dill's _Roman Society in the Last Century of the Western Empire_, especially the chapter on "Culture in the 4th and 5th centuries," Boissier's _La Fin du paganisme_, and Hatch's _Influence of Greek Thought upon the Christian Church_.

The best general account of medieval education is in Drane's _Christian Schools and Scholars_; and J.B. Mullinger's _Schools of Charles the Great_ treats well of the Carolingian Revival. G.B. Adams's _Civilization during the Middle Ages_ is excellent; and Sandys's _History of Classical Scholarship_ is a valuable book of reference. On the scholastic philosophy Turner's _History of Philosophy_, and Haureau's _Histoire de la philosophie scolastique_, are useful. Medieval schools are described in Furnivall's preface to _The Babees Book_, which deals with "Education in Early England," and in Leach's _Old Yorkshire Schools_ and _History of Winchester College_. The most important books on the universities are Rashdall's _Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages_, Jourdain's _Histoire de l'universite de Paris aux XVII^e et XVIII^e siecles_, Lyte's _History of the University of Oxford to 1530_, and Mullinger's _History of the University of Cambridge to the Accession of Charles I._ Paulsen's _Geschichte des gelehrten Unterrichts auf den deutschen Schulen und Universitaten_ is the best history of education in Germany.

On the Renaissance in Italy, Villari's Introduction to his _Life and Times of Machiavelli_, and Burckhardt's _Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien_ (translated into English), are of the first importance. Other valuable books are the first volume of the _Cambridge Modern History_ and Symonds's great work on _The Renaissance in Italy_, especially the volume on _The Revival of Learning_. Dealing more specifically with education are Woodward's excellent monographs on _Education during the Renaissance_, _Vittorino da Feltre_ and _Erasmus_. Janssen's _Geschichte des deutschen Volkes_ (translated into English) gives a good account of the social and intellectual condition of Germany in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries. Christie's _Life of Etienne Dolet_ is of value for the Renaissance in France. For the movement in England Seebohm's _Oxford Reformers_, Gasquet's _Eve of the Reformation in England_, Einstein's _The Italian Renaissance in England_, and Leach's _English Schools at the Reformation, 1546-1548_, are particularly important.

For later times the material is chiefly in the form of monographs, of which the following, among others, are of value: Adamson's _Pioneers of Modern Education_, Laas's _Die Padagogik des Johannes Sturm_, Beard's _Port Royal_, vol. ii., Kuno Fischer's _Fr. Bacon und seine Nachfolger_, Laurie's _John Amos Comenius_, Morley's _Rousseau_, Pinloche's _La Reforme de l'education en Allemagne au dix-huitieme siecle_, Biedermann's _Deutschlands geistige, sittliche, und gesellige Zustande im XVIII. Jahrhundert_.

For the 19th century and after, the best sources of information are the official Reports, such as those of the Royal Commissions on the English Universities, the Public Schools, and the other English secondary schools; the "Special Reports," issued by the English Board of Education; the encyclopaedic annual Reports of the American Commissioner of Education (dealing not only with the United States, but with progress in other countries); monographs in the French _Musee pedagogique_, and various German Reports.

For education in the United States, see also Boone's _History of Education in U.S.A._ (1889); N.M. Butler (editor), _Education in the U.S.A._ (1900), a series of monographs prepared for the Paris Exposition; E.G. Dexter's _History of Education in the United States_ (1904); and the _Proceedings_ of the National Educational Association.

On the leading writers on education the monographs in the Great Educator Series are useful, and editions and translations of the best known of these writers are available. The greatest systematic collection is the _Monumenta Germaniae paedagogica_. On the development of the means of education, Montmorency's two books on _State Intervention in English Education from the Earliest Times to 1833_, and _The Progress of Education in England_, Balfour's _Educational Systems of Great Britain and Ireland_, Allain's _L'Instruction primaire en France avant la Revolution_, Lantoine's _Histoire de l'enseignement secondaire en France au XVIII^e et au debut du XVIII^e siecle_, and Konrad Fischer's _Geschichte des deutschen Volkschullehrerstands_, may be mentioned. (J. Wn.)

FOOTNOTES:

[1] For the evolution of the school as such from early times see SCHOOLS.

[2] See especially _Das offentliche Unterrichtswesen Deutschlands_, by Dr Paul Stotzner (Leipzig, 1901).

[3] A valuable bibliography of Mr Harris's contributions to educational literature is given in the Report of the Commissioner of Education for 1907 (Washington, 1908).

[4] See especially the second Annual Report of the President of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (pp. 76-80), quoted in the Report for 1907 of the Commissioner of Education.

[5] In private schools there were also 1,304,547 pupils.

EDWARD, "THE ELDER" (d. 924), king of the Angles and Saxons, was the second son of Alfred the Great, and with his sister Aethelflaed was carefully educated at the court of his father. During his father's lifetime he took an active part in the campaigns against the Danes, especially in that of 894, and as early as 898 he signs a charter as "rex," showing that he was definitely associated with his father in the kingship. He succeeded his father in October 899,[1] but not without opposition. The Aetheling Aethelwold, son of Alfred's elder brother Aethelred, seized Wimborne and Christchurch. Edward advanced against him, and Aethelwold took refuge among the Danes in Northumbria. In 904 Aethelwold landed in Essex, and in the next year he enticed the East Anglian Danes to revolt. They ravaged all southern Mercia and, in spite of Edward's activity, returned home victorious, though Aethelwold fell in the battle of the Holme. In 905 or 906 Edward made a peace with the East Anglian and Northumbrian Danes at "Yttingaford," near Linslade in Buckinghamshire, perhaps the peace known as "the Laws of Edward and Guthrum." In 909 and 910 fresh campaigns took place owing to southerly raids by the Danes, and victories were won at Tettenhall and Wednesfield in Staffordshire.[2] From 907 onwards Edward and his sister Aethelflaed, the Lady of the Mercians, were busy strengthening their hold on Mercia and Wessex. Forts were built at Lincoln (907), "Bremesbyrig" (910), "Scergeat" and Bridgenorth (912), and when in the year 911 Aethelflaed's husband Aethelred died, Edward took over from Mercia the government of London and Oxford, with the lands belonging to them, i.e. probably Oxfordshire and Middlesex. The policy of constructing "burhs" or fortified towns was continued. Hertford was fortified in 911, Witham in 912, while Aethelflaed fortified Cherbury in Shropshire, "Weardbyrig" and Runcorn (all in 915). In 913 the Danes in Eastern Mercia gave considerable trouble, and in 914 a fresh horde of pirates, coming from Brittany, sailed up the Severn. They raided southern Wales, but were hemmed in by the English forces and besieged until they promised to leave the king's territory. Edward watched the southern shores of the Bristol Channel so carefully that the Danes failed to secure a hold there, and were ultimately forced to sail to Ireland. In the same year Edward fortified Buckingham and received the submission of the jarls and chief men of Bedford. In 915 he fortified Bedford itself, Maldon in 916, and Towcester and "Wigingamere" in 917. In the last-mentioned year Edward captured and destroyed the Danish stronghold of Tempsford, and later in the year he took Colchester. An attack by the Danes on Maldon failed, and in 915 Edward went to Passenham and received the submission of the men of the "borough" of Northampton. The Danish strongholds of Huntingdon and Colchester were now restored and repaired, and Edward received the submission of the whole of the East Anglian Danes. Before midsummer of this year Edward had fortified Stamford, and on the death of his sister he received the submission of the Mercians at Tamworth. There also three kings of the North Welsh took Edward as their lord. Nottingham was now fortified; Thelwall in Cheshire (919) and Manchester soon followed; Nottingham was strengthened by a second fort; Bakewell was fortified and garrisoned, and then came the greatest triumph of Edward's reign. He was "chosen as father and lord" by the Scottish king and nation, by Raegenald, the Norwegian king of Northumbria, by Ealdred of Bamborough, and by the English, Danes or Norwegians in Northumbria, and by the Strathclyde Welsh.

With the conclusion of his wars Edward's activity ceased, and we hear no more of him until in 924 he died at Farndon in Cheshire and was buried in the "New Minster" at Winchester. He was thrice married: (1) to Ecgwyn, a lady of rank, by whom he had a son Aethelstan, who succeeded him, and a daughter Eadgyth, who married Sihtric of Northumbria in 924. This marriage was probably an irregular one. (2) To Aelflaed, by whom he had two sons--Aelfweard, who died a fortnight after his father, and Eadwine, who was drowned in 933--and six daughters, Aethelflaed and Aethelhild nuns, and four others (see AeTHELSTAN). (3) To Eadgifu, the mother of Kings Edmund and Edred, and of two daughters.

AUTHORITIES.--_Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_ (ed. Plummer and Earle, Oxford); Florence of Worcester (Mon. Hist. Brit.); William of Malmesbury, _Gesta regum_ (Rolls Series); Simeon of Durham (Rolls Series); Ethelweard (Mon. Hist. Brit.); Birch, _Cartularium Saxonicum_, Nos. 588-635; _D.N.B._, s.v. (A. Mw.)

FOOTNOTES:

[1] See Stevenson's article in _Eng. Hist. Rev._ vol. xiii. pp. 71-77. The whole chronology of this reign is very difficult and certainly is often impossible of attainment.

[2] It is possible that these battles are one and the same; the places are within 2 to 3 m. of each other.

EDWARD, "THE MARTYR" (c. 926-978), king of the English, was the son of Edgar by his wife Aethelflaed. Edward's brief reign was marked by an anti-monastic reaction. Aelfhere, earl of Mercia, once more expelled many of the monks whom Bishop Aethelwold had installed. There seems also to have been some change in administrative policy, perhaps with regard to the Danes, for Earl Oslac, whom Edgar had appointed to Northumbria, was driven from his province. In ecclesiastical matters there were two parties in the kingdom, the monastic, which had its chief hold in Essex and East Anglia, and the anti-monastic, led by Aelfhere of Mercia. Conferences were held at Kirtlington in Oxfordshire and at Calne in Wiltshire in 977 and 978, but nothing definite seems to have been decided. On the 18th of March 978 Edward's reign was suddenly cut short by his assassination at Corfe Castle in Dorsetshire. The crime was probably inspired by his stepmother, Aelfthryth, who was anxious to secure the succession of her son Aelthelred. The body was hastily interred at Wareham and remained there till 980, when Archbishop Dunstan and Aelfhere of Mercia united in transferring it with great ceremony to Shaftesbury. Edward seems to have been personally popular, and the poem on his death in the chronicle calls his murder the worst deed in English history. Very shortly after his death he was popularly esteemed to be both saint and martyr.

See _Saxon Chronicle_; _Vita S. Oswaldi_ (_Hist. of Ch. of York_, Rolls Series); _Memorials of St Dunstan_ (ed. Stubbs, Rolls Series). (A. Mw.)

EDWARD, "THE CONFESSOR" (d. 1066), so called on account of his reputation for sanctity, king of the English, was the son of Aethelred II. and Emma, daughter of Richard, duke of Normandy, and was born at Islip in Oxfordshire. On the recognition of Sweyn as king of England in 1013, Aethelred, with his wife and family, took refuge in Normandy, and Edward continued to reside at the Norman court until he was recalled in 1041 by Hardicanute. He appears to have been formally recognized as heir to the throne, if not actually associated in the kingship, and on the death of Hardicanute in 1042 "all folk received him to be king," though his actual coronation was delayed until Easter 1043. A few months later Edward, in conjunction with the three great earls of the kingdom, made a raid on the queen-mother Aelfgifu, or Emma, seized all her possessions and compelled her to live in retirement.

In the earlier years of the reign the influence of Earl Godwine was predominant, though not unopposed. His daughter Edith or Eadgyth became Edward's queen in 1045. But the king's personal tastes inclined much more to foreigners than to Englishmen, and he fell more and more into the hands of favourites from beyond the sea. Between Godwine, representing the spirit of nationalism, and these favourites (especially their leader Robert of Jumieges, successively bishop of London and archbishop of Canterbury) there was war to the knife. In 1046 Magnus, king of Norway, who had succeeded Hardicanute in Denmark and claimed to succeed him in England as well, threatened an invasion, but the necessity of defending Denmark against his rival Sweyn Estrithson prevented him from carrying it into effect. In 1049, Godwine's son Sweyn, who had been outlawed for the seduction of the abbess of Leominster, returned and demanded his restoration. This was refused and Sweyn returned into exile, but not before he had with foulest treachery murdered his young kinsman Beorn. He was, however, inlawed next year. The influence of Godwine, already shaken, received a severe blow in 1051 in the appointment of Robert of Jumieges to the archbishopric of Canterbury, and the same year saw the triumph of the foreigners for the moment complete. Edward, indignant at the resistance offered by the men of Dover to the insolence of his brother-in-law Eustace of Boulogne and his French followers, ordered Godwine to punish the town. Godwine refused. The king at the prompting of the archbishop then summoned a meeting of the witan, at which the old charge against Godwine of complicity in the murder of the Aetheling Alfred was to be revived. About the same time came news of a fresh outrage by the foreigners. Godwine gathered his forces and demanded redress, while the earls Leofric of Mercia and Siward of Northumbria hastened to the side of the king. Civil war seemed imminent, but at length a compromise was effected by which the matter was referred to a meeting of the witan to be held at London. At the appointed time Godwine presented himself at Southwark. But his followers were rapidly deserting him, nor would the king give hostages for his security. Alarmed for his safety, he fled to Flanders, while his son Harold went to Ireland. But their exile was brief. The tale of Godwine excited universal sympathy, for it was realized that he represented the cause of national independence. Encouraged by assurances from England, he sailed thither, and joining forces with Harold sailed along the south coast and up the Thames. The king would have resisted but found no support. Yielding to circumstances, he allowed himself to be reconciled, and Godwine and his house were restored to their old position. The queen at the same time was brought back from the monastery of Wherwell, whither she had been despatched after her father's flight. The foreigners had already ignominiously fled the country, and henceforth the influence of Godwine, and, after his death, of Harold, was supreme. In 1063 Harold made a great expedition into Wales, in which he crushed the power of King Gruffyd, who was killed by his own people. But despite his prowess and his power, he was the minister of the king rather than his personal favourite. This latter position belonged to his younger brother Tostig, who on the death of Siward in 1055 was appointed earl of Northumbria. Here his severity and arbitrary temper rendered him intensely unpopular, and in 1065 his subjects broke into revolt. They elected Morkere as their earl, then marching south demanded Tostig's banishment. Edward desired to crush the revolt by force of arms, but he was overborne and forced to submit. The election of Morkere was recognized, and Tostig went into exile. Intensely mortified at this humiliation, the king fell sick, and henceforth his health failed rapidly. He was unable to gratify his intense desire to be present at the consecration of his new abbey of Westminster, the foundation of which had been the chief interest of his closing years, and on the 5th of January 1066 he died.

The virtues of Edward were monkish rather than kingly. In the qualities of a ruler he was conspicuously deficient; always dependent on others, he ever inclined to the unworthier master. But the charm of his character for the monastic biographer, and the natural tendency to glorify the days before the Norman oppression began, combined to cast about his figure a halo which had not attached to it in life. Allowed to keep her property by William the Conqueror, his widow, Edith, passed the remainder of her life at Winchester, dying on the 19th of December 1075.

SOURCES.--A number of lives of Edward are brought together in a volume of the Rolls Series entitled _Lives of Edward the Confessor_, and edited by Dr H.R. Luard (London, 1858). Of these by far the most valuable is the contemporary _Vita Edwardi_, which would appear from internal evidence to have been written by an unknown writer soon after the Norman Conquest--some time between 1066 and 1074. The other chief authorities for the reign are (1) the _Saxon Chronicle_, (C. Plummer, Oxford, 1892-1899); (2) _Florence of Worcester_, ed. B. Thorpe, English Historical Society (London, 1848-1849). Reference may also be made to J.M. Kemble, _Codex diplomaticus aevi Saxonici_ (London, 1839-1848). (C. S. P.*)

EDWARD I. (1239-1307), king of England, born at Westminster on the 17th of June 1239, was the eldest son of Henry III. and Eleanor of Provence. He was baptized Edward after Edward the Confessor, for whom Henry had special veneration, and among his godfathers was Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester, his aunt Eleanor's husband. His political career begins when the conclusion of a treaty with Alphonso X. of Castile, by which he was to marry the Spanish king's half sister Eleanor, necessitated the conferring on him of an adequate establishment. His father granted him the duchy of Gascony, the earldom of Chester, the king's lands in Wales and much else. The provision made was so liberal that Henry's subjects declared he was left no better than a mutilated king. In May 1254 Edward went to Gascony to take possession of his inheritance. He then crossed the Pyrenees, and in October was dubbed knight by Alphonso and married to Eleanor at the Cistercian convent of Las Huelgas, near Burgos. He remained in Gascony till November 1255, but his father was too jealous to allow him a free hand in its administration. After his return, the attempts of his agents to establish English laws in his Welsh possessions brought Edward into hostile relations with the Welsh. Here also his father would give him no help, and his first campaign brought him little result. Edward became extremely unpopular through his association with his Lusignan kinsfolk, his pride and violence, and the disorders of his household. In 1258 his strenuous opposition to the Provisions of Oxford further weakened his position, but, after the banishment of the foreigners, he began to take up a wiser line. In 1259 he led the young nobles who insisted that the triumphant oligarchy should carry out the reforms to which it was pledged. For a moment it looked as if Edward and Leicester might make common cause, but Edward remained an enemy of Montfort, though he strove to infuse his father's party with a more liberal and national spirit. He was the soul of the reconstituted royalist party formed about 1263. In 1264 he took a prominent part in the fighting between the king and the barons. At the battle of Lewes his rash pursuit of the Londoners contributed to his father's defeat. Two days later Edward surrendered to Leicester as a hostage for the good behaviour of his allies. He was forced to give up his earldom of Chester to Leicester, but at Whitsuntide 1265 he escaped from his custodians, and joined the lords of the Welsh march who were still in arms. With their aid he defeated and slew Leicester at Evesham on the 4th of August 1265.

For the rest of Henry III.'s reign Edward controlled his father's policy and appropriated enough of Leicester's ideals to make the royalist restoration no mere reaction. So peaceful became the outlook of affairs that in 1268 Edward took the cross, hoping to join the new crusade of St Louis. Want of money delayed his departure till 1270, by which time St Louis was dead, and a truce concluded with the infidel. Refusing to be a party to such treason to Christendom, Edward went with his personal followers to Acre, where he abode from May 1271 to August 1272. Despite his energy and valour he could do little to prop up the decaying crusading kingdom and he narrowly escaped assassination. At last the declining health of his father induced him to return to the West. He learned in Sicily the death of Henry III. on the 16th of November 1272. On the 20th of November, the day of Henry's funeral, he was recognized as king by the English barons, and from that day his regnal years were subsequently computed. Affairs in England were so peaceful that Edward did not hurry home. After a slow journey through Italy and France he did homage to his cousin Philip III. at Paris, on the 26th of July 1273. He then went to Gascony, where he stayed nearly a year. At last he landed at Dover on the 2nd of August 1274, and was crowned at Westminster on the 18th of the same month.

Edward was thirty-five years old when he became king, and the rude schooling of his youth had developed his character and suggested the main lines of the policy which he was to carry out as monarch. He was a tall, well-proportioned and handsome man, extravagantly devoted to military exercises, tournaments and the rougher and more dangerous forms of hunting. He had learned to restrain the hot temper of his youth, and was proud of his love of justice and strict regard to his plighted word. His domestic life was unstained, he was devoted to his friends, and loyal to his subordinates. Without any great originality either as soldier or statesman, he was competent enough to appropriate the best ideas of the time and make them his own. His defects were a hardness of disposition which sometimes approached cruelty and a narrow and pedantic temper, which caused him to regard the letter rather than the spirit of his promises. His effectiveness and love of strong government stand in strong contrast to his father's weakness. Though he loved power, and never willingly surrendered it, he saw that to be successful he must make his policy popular. Thus he continued the system which Montfort had formed with the object of restraining the monarchy, because he saw in a close alliance with his people the best means of consolidating the power of the crown.

The first years of Edward's reign were mainly occupied by his efforts to establish a really effective administration. In carrying out this task he derived great help from his chancellor, Robert Burnell, bishop of Bath and Wells. Administrative reform soon involved legislation, and from 1275 to 1290 nearly every year was marked by an important law. Few of these contained anything that was very new or original. They rather illustrate that policy which caused Dr Stubbs to describe his reign as a "period of definition." Yet the results of his conservative legislation were almost revolutionary. In particular he left the impress of his policy on the land laws of England, notably by the clause _De Donis_ of the Westminster statute of 1285, and the statute _Quia Emptores_ of 1290. The general effect of his work was to eliminate feudalism from political life. At first he aimed at abolishing all franchises whose holders could not produce written warranty for them. This was the policy of the statute of Gloucester of 1278, but the baronial opposition was so resolute that Edward was forced to permit many immunities to remain. Though the most orthodox of churchmen, his dislike of authority not emanating from himself threatened to involve him in constant conflict with the Church, and notably with John Peckham, the Franciscan friar, who was archbishop of Canterbury from 1279 to 1292. The statute of Mortmain of 1279, which forbade the further grant of lands to ecclesiastical corporations without the royal consent, and the writ _Circumspecte Agatis_ of 1285, which limited the church courts to strictly ecclesiastical business, both provoked strong clerical opposition. However, Peckham gave way to some extent, and Edward prudently acquiesced in many clerical assumptions which he disliked. He was strong enough to refuse to pay the tribute to Rome which John had promised, and his reign saw the end of that papal overlordship over England which had greatly complicated the situation under his father.

Besides administration and legislation, the other great event of the first fifteen years of Edward's reign was the conquest of the principality of Wales. It was part of Edward's policy of reconciliation after the battle of Evesham that in the treaty of Shrewsbury of 1267 he had fully recognized the great position which Llewelyn ab Gruffyd, prince of Wales, had gained as the ally of Simon de Montfort. However, Llewelyn's early successes had blinded the Welsh prince to the limitations of his power, and he profited by Edward's early absences from England to delay in performing his feudal obligations to the new king. Even after Edward's return Llewelyn continued to evade doing homage. At last Edward lost patience, and in 1277 invaded north Wales. He conducted his campaign like a great siege, blocking all the avenues to Snowdon, and forcing Llewelyn to surrender from lack of supplies. He thereupon reduced the Welsh prince to the position of a petty north Welsh chieftain strictly dependent on the English. For the next five years Edward did his best to set up the English system of government in the ceded districts. The Welsh resentment of this soon gave Llewelyn another chance, and compelled Edward to devote the years 1282-1283 to completing his conquest. In 1284 he issued the statute of Wales, which provided for a scheme for the future government of the principality. Edward is often called the conqueror of Wales, but in truth he only effected the conquest of Llewelyn's dominions. The march of Wales was only indirectly affected by his legislation, and remained subject to its feudal marcher lords until the 16th century.

Edward was very careful in his foreign policy. Though preserving nominal peace with his cousin Philip III. of France, his relations with that country were constantly strained. After Philip III.'s death in 1285, Edward crossed the Channel in 1286, to perform homage to his successor, Philip the Fair. He remained abroad till 1289, busied in attempts to improve the administration of Gascony, and making repeated and finally successful efforts to end by his mediation the still continuing struggle between the houses of Anjou and Aragon. His long absence threw the government of England into confusion, and on his return in 1289 he was compelled to dismiss most of his judges and ministers for corruption. In 1290 he expelled all Jews from England.

The affairs of Scotland furnished Edward with his chief preoccupation for the rest of his reign. After the death of Alexander III., in 1286, Scotland was governed in the name of his granddaughter Margaret, the Maid of Norway. The English king had suggested that Edward of Carnarvon, his eldest surviving son, should marry the little queen of Scots, and thus bring about the union of the two countries. Unluckily the death of Margaret in 1290 frustrated the scheme. The Scottish throne was now disputed by many claimants, and the Scots asked Edward to arbitrate between them. Edward accepted the position, but insisted that, before he acted, the Scots should recognize him as their overlord. The claimants set the example of submission, and soon the chief Scots nobles followed. Thereupon Edward undertook the arbitration, and in 1292 adjudged the throne to John Baliol. The new king did homage to Edward, but his subjects soon began to resent the claims of jurisdiction over Scotland, which Edward declared were the natural results of his feudal supremacy. At last the Scots deprived John of nearly all his power, repudiated Edward's claims, and made an alliance with the French. During the years of the Scottish arbitration Edward had slowly been drifting into war with France. The chronic difficulties caused by French attempts to confine Edward's power in Gascony were now accentuated by the quarrels between the sailors and merchants of the two countries. In 1293 Edward was persuaded by his brother, Edmund, earl of Lancaster, to yield up Gascony temporarily to Philip the Fair. But Philip refused to restore the duchy, and Edward, seeing that he had been tricked, declared war against France, at the very moment when the Scottish resistance gave the French a firm ally in Britain. To make matters worse, the Welsh rose in rebellion. It was therefore quite impossible for Edward to recover Gascony.

The most critical years of Edward's reign now began. He saw that he could only meet his difficulties by throwing himself on the support of his own subjects, and convoked, in 1295, a representative parliament of the three estates, which has been called in later times the Model Parliament, because it first illustrated the type which was to be perpetuated in all subsequent parliaments. "What touches all," ran Edward's writ of summons, "should be approved of all, and it is also clear that common dangers should be met by measures agreed upon in common." The parliamentary constitution of England was established as the result of Edward's action.

Secure of his subjects' allegiance, Edward put down the Welsh revolt, and conquered Scotland in 1296. When quiet was restored to Britain, he hoped to throw all his energy into the recovery of Gascony, but new troubles arose at home which once more diverted him from his supreme purpose. Led by Archbishop Winchelsea, Peckham's successor, the clergy refused to pay taxes in obedience to the bull of Pope Boniface VIII., called _Clericis Laicos_. Edward declared that if the clergy would not contribute to support the state, the state could afford them no protection. But the clerical opposition was soon joined by a baronial opposition. Headed by the earls of Hereford and Norfolk, many of the barons declined to join in an expedition to Gascony, and Edward was forced to sail to the French war, leaving them behind. Thereupon the recalcitrant barons forced upon the regency a fresh confirmation of the charters, to which new articles were added, safeguarding the people from arbitrary taxation. Edward at Ghent reluctantly accepted this _Confirmatio Cariarum_, but even his submission did not end the crisis. In the same year (1297), all Scotland rose in revolt under the popular hero William Wallace, and next year (1298), Edward was forced to undertake its reconquest. The battle of Falkirk, won on the 22nd of July, was the greatest of Edward's military triumphs; but, though it destroyed the power of Wallace, it did not put an end to Scottish resistance. Bitter experience taught Edward that he could not fight the French and the Scots at the same time, and in 1299 he made peace with Philip, and, Eleanor having died in November 1290, he married the French king's sister Margaret (c. 1282-1318), and some years later obtained the restitution of Gascony. In the same spirit he strove to destroy the clerical and baronial opposition. He did not succeed in the former task until a complacent pope arose in his own subject, Clement V., who abandoned Winchelsea to his anger, and suffered the archbishop to be driven into exile. The baronial leaders could not be wholly overthrown by force, and Edward was compelled to make them fresh concessions.

It was not until 1303 that Edward was able to undertake seriously the conquest of Scotland. By 1305 the land was subdued, and Wallace beheaded as a traitor. But Edward had hardly organized the government of his new conquest when a fresh revolt broke out under Robert Bruce, grandson of the chief rival of Baliol in 1290. Bruce was soon crowned king of Scots, and at the age of seventy Edward had to face the prospect of conquering Scotland for the third time. He resolved to take the field in person; but the effort was too great, and on the 7th of July 1307 he died at Burgh-on-Sands, near Carlisle. His death destroyed the last faint hope of conquering Scotland, and showed that the chief ambition of his life was a failure. Yet his conquest of Wales, his legislation, his triumph over his barons, his ecclesiastics, and the greatest of French medieval kings indicate the strength and permanence of his work. He was buried at Westminster under a plain slab on which was inscribed _Edwardus primus Scottorum malleus hic est. Pactum serva._

By Eleanor of Castile Edward had four sons, his successor Edward II. and three who died young, and nine daughters, including Joan, or Joanna (1272-1307), the wife of Gilbert de Clare, earl of Gloucester (d. 1295), and then of Ralph de Monthermer; Margaret (1275-1318), the wife of John II., duke of Brabant; and Eleanor (1282-1316), who married John I., count of Holland, and then Humphrey Bohun, earl of Hereford (d. 1322). By Margaret of France the king had two sons: Thomas of Brotherton, earl of Norfolk, and Edmund of Woodstock, earl of Kent.

The principal modern authorities for this reign are: W. Stubbs, _Constitutional History of England_, vol. ii. chaps. xiv. and xv. (1896); T.F. Tout, _Edward I._ (1893), and _Political History of England, 1216-1377_, pp. 136-235 (1905); R.B. Seeley, _Life and Reign of Edward I._ (1872); R. Pauli, _Geschichte von England_, iv. pp. 1-198 (Hamburg, 1864-1875); W. Hunt, article on "Edward I." in _Dictionary of National Biography_; J.E. Morris, _Welsh Wars of Edward I._ (Oxford, 1901); and C.V. Langlois's _Philippe le Hardi_ (Paris, 1887). (T. F. T.)

EDWARD II. (1284-1327), "of Carnarvon," king of England, the fourth son of Edward I. by his first wife Eleanor of Castile, was born at Carnarvon Castle on the 25th of April 1284. The story that the king presented the new-born child to the Welsh as their future native prince is quite unfounded, for Edward was only made prince of Wales in the Lincoln parliament of 1301. When a few months old, he became by his elder brother's death the heir to the throne, and Edward I. took great pains to train him in warfare and statecraft. He took part in several Scots campaigns, but all his father's efforts could not prevent his acquiring the habits of extravagance and frivolity which he retained all through his life. The old king attributed his son's defects to the bad influence of his friend, the Gascon knight Piers Gaveston, and drove the favourite into exile. When Edward I. died, on the 7th of July 1307, the first act of the prince, now Edward II., was to recall Gaveston. His next was to abandon the Scots campaign on which his father had set his heart.

The new king was physically almost as fine a man as Edward I. He was, however, destitute of any serious purpose, and was, as Dr Stubbs says, "the first king after the Conquest who was not a man of business." He cared for nothing but amusing himself, and found his chief delight in athletics and in the practice of mechanical crafts. He was not so much vicious as foolish, and wanting in all serious interests. He had so little confidence in himself that he was always in the hands of some favourite who possessed a stronger will than his own. In the early years of his reign Gaveston held this role, acting as regent when Edward went to France--where, on the 25th of January 1308, he married Isabella, the daughter of Philip the Fair--and receiving the earldom of Cornwall with the hand of the king's niece, Margaret of Gloucester. The barons soon grew indignant at Edward's devotion to his "brother Piers," and twice insisted on his banishment. On each occasion Edward soon recalled his friend, whereupon the barons, headed by the king's cousin Thomas, earl of Lancaster, went to war against king and favourite, and in 1312 treacherously put Gaveston to death. Edward was not strong enough even to avenge his loss. He was forced to stand aside and suffer the realm to be governed by the baronial committee of twenty-one lords ordainers, who, in 1311, had drawn up a series of ordinances, whose effect was to substitute ordainers for the king as the effective government of the country. But in all the ordinances nothing was said about the commons and lower clergy. Parliament meant to the new rulers an assembly of barons just as it had done to the opponents of Henry III. in 1258. The effect of their triumph was to change England from a monarchy to a narrow oligarchy.

During the quarrels between Edward and the ordainers, Robert Bruce was steadily conquering Scotland. His progress was so great that he had occupied all the fortresses save Stirling, which he closely besieged. The danger of losing Stirling shamed Edward and the barons into an attempt to retrieve their lost ground. In June 1314 Edward led a great army into Scotland in the hope of relieving Stirling. On the 24th of June his ill-disciplined and badly led host was completely defeated by Robert Bruce at Bannockburn. Henceforth Bruce was sure of his position as king of Scots, and his pitiless devastation of the northern counties of England was his wild vengeance for the sufferings his land had previously experienced from the English. Edward's disgraceful defeat made him more dependent on his barons than ever. His kinsman, Thomas of Lancaster, had now an opportunity of saving England from the consequences of the king's incompetence. He had shown some capacity as a leader of opposition, but though he had great wealth, and was lord of five earldoms, he had small ability and no constructive power. In his desire to keep the king weak, he was suspected to have made a secret understanding with Robert Bruce. Before long the opposition split up under his incompetent guidance into fiercely contending factions. Under Aymer of Valence, earl of Pembroke, a middle party arose, which hated Lancaster so much that it supported the king to put an end to Lancaster's rule. After 1318 the effect of its influence was to restore Edward to some portion of his authority. However, the king hated Pembroke almost as much as Lancaster. He now found a competent adviser in Hugh le Despenser, a baron of great experience. What was more important to him, he had in Despenser's son, Hugh le Despenser the younger, a personal friend and favourite, who was able in some measure to replace Gaveston. The fierce hatred which the barons manifested to the Despensers showed that they could hate a deserter as bitterly as they had hated the Gascon adventurer. They were indignant at the favours which Edward lavished upon the favourite and his father, and were especially alarmed when the younger Despenser strove to procure for himself the earldom of Gloucester in right of his wife, Edward's niece.

At last, in 1321, the barons met in parliament, and under Lancaster's guidance procured the banishment of the Despensers. The disasters of his friends inspired Edward to unwonted activity. In 1322 he recalled them from exile, and waged war against the barons on their behalf. Triumph crowned his exertions. Lancaster, defeated at Boroughbridge, was executed at Pontefract. For the next five years the Despensers ruled England. Unlike the ordainers, they took pains to get the Commons on their side, and a parliament held at York in 1322 revoked the ordinances because they trenched upon the rights of the crown, and were drawn up by the barons only. From this time no statute was technically valid unless the Commons had agreed to it. This marks the most important step forward in Edward II.'s reign. But the rule of the Despensers soon fell away from this wise beginning. They thought only of heaping up wealth for themselves, and soon stirred up universal indignation. In particular, they excited the ill-will of the queen, Isabella of France. Craftily dissembling her indignation, Isabella kept silence until 1325, when she went to France in company with her eldest son, Edward of Windsor, who was sent to do homage for Aquitaine to her brother, the new French king. When her business was over, Isabella declined to return to her husband as long as the Despensers remained his favourites. She formed a criminal connexion with Roger Mortimer of Wigmore, one of the baronial exiles, and in September 1326 landed in Essex accompanied by Mortimer and her son, declaring that she was come to avenge the murder of Lancaster, and to expel the Despensers. Edward's followers deserted him, and on the 2nd of October he fled from London to the west, where he took refuge in the younger Despenser's estates in Glamorgan. His wife followed him, put to death both the Despensers, and, after a futile effort to escape by sea, Edward was captured on the 16th of November. He was imprisoned at Kenilworth Castle, and a parliament met at Westminster in January 1327, which chose his son to be king as Edward III. It was thought prudent to compel the captive king to resign the crown, and on the 20th of January Edward was forced to renounce his office before a committee of the estates. The government of Isabella and Mortimer was so weakly established that it dared not leave the deposed king alive. On the 3rd of April he was secretly removed from Kenilworth and entrusted to the custody of two dependants of Mortimer. After various wanderings he was imprisoned at Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire. Every indignity was inflicted upon him, and he was systematically ill-treated in the hope that he would die of disease. When his strong constitution seemed likely to prevail over the ill-treatment of his enemies he was cruelly put to death on the 21st of September. It was announced that he had died a natural death, and he was buried in St Peter's Abbey at Gloucester, now the cathedral, where his son afterwards erected a magnificent tomb.

Edward's wife, Isabella (c. 1292-1358), bore him two sons, Edward III. and John of Eltham, earl of Cornwall (1316-1336), and two daughters, Isabella and Joanna (1321-1362), wife of David II., king of Scotland. After the execution of her paramour, Roger Mortimer, in 1330, Isabella retired from public life; she died at Hertford on the 23rd of August 1358.

See R. Pauli, _Geschichte von England_, iv. pp. 199-306; T.F. Tout, _Political History of England_, 1216-1307, pp. 236-304, and article in _Dictionary of National Biography_; W. Stubbs, _Constitutional History_, vol. ii. pp. 319-386, and _Introductions to Chronicles of the Reigns of Edward I. and Edward II._ in Rolls series. (T. F. T.)

EDWARD III. (1312-1377), "of Windsor," king of England, eldest son of Edward II. and Isabella of France, was born at Windsor on the 13th of November 1312. In 1320 he was made earl of Chester, and in 1325 duke of Aquitaine, but he never received the title of prince of Wales. Immediately after his appointment to Aquitaine, he was sent to France to do homage to his uncle Charles IV., and remained abroad until he accompanied his mother and Mortimer in their expedition to England. To raise funds for this he was betrothed to Philippa, daughter of the count of Hainaut. On the 26th of October 1326, after the fall of Bristol, he was proclaimed warden of the kingdom during his father's absence. On the 13th of January 1327 parliament recognized him as king, and he was crowned on the 29th of the same month.

For the next four years Isabella and Mortimer governed in his name, though nominally his guardian was Henry, earl of Lancaster. In the summer he took part in an abortive campaign against the Scots, and was married to Philippa at York on the 24th of January 1328. On the 15th of June 1330 his eldest child, Edward, the Black Prince, was born. Soon after, Edward made a successful effort to throw off his degrading dependence on his mother and her paramour. In October 1330 he entered Nottingham Castle by night, through a subterranean passage, and took Mortimer prisoner. On the 29th of November the execution of the favourite at Tyburn completed the young king's emancipation. Edward discreetly drew a veil over his mother's relations with Mortimer, and treated her with every respect. There is no truth in the stories that henceforth he kept her in honourable confinement, but her political influence was at an end.

Edward III.'s real reign now begins. Young, ardent and active, he strove with all his might to win back for England something of the position which it had acquired under Edward I. He bitterly resented the concession of independence to Scotland by the treaty of Northampton of 1328, and the death of Robert Bruce in 1329 gave him a chance of retrieving his position. The new king of Scots, David, who was his brother-in-law, was a mere boy, and the Scottish barons, exiled for their support of Robert Bruce, took advantage of the weakness of his rule to invade Scotland in 1332. At their head was Edward Baliol, whose victory at Dupplin Moor established him for a brief time as king of Scots. After four months Baliol was driven out by the Scots, whereupon Edward for the first time openly took up his cause. In 1333 the king won in person the battle of Halidon Hill over the Scots, but his victory did not restore Baliol to power. The Scots despised him as a puppet of the English king, and after a few years David was finally established in Scotland. During these years England gradually drifted into hostility with France. The chief cause of this was the impossible situation which resulted from Edward's position as duke of Gascony. Contributing causes were Philip's support of the Scots and Edward's alliance with the Flemish cities, which were then on bad terms with their French overlord, and the revival of Edward's claim, first made in 1328, to the French crown. War broke out in 1337, and in 1338 Edward visited Coblenz, where he made an alliance with the emperor Louis the Bavarian. In 1339 and 1340 Edward endeavoured to invade France from the north with the help of his German and Flemish allies, but the only result of his campaigns was to reduce him to bankruptcy.

In 1340, however, he took personal part in the great naval battle off Sluys, in which he absolutely destroyed the French navy. In the same year he assumed the title of king of France. At first he did this to gratify the Flemings, whose scruples in fighting their overlord, the French king, disappeared when they persuaded themselves that Edward was the rightful king of France. However, his pretensions to the French crown gradually became more important. The persistence with which he and his successors urged them made stable peace impossible for more than a century, and this made the struggle famous in history as the Hundred Years' War. Till the days of George III. every English king also called himself king of France.

Despite his victory at Sluys, Edward was so exhausted by his land campaign that he was forced before the end of 1340 to make a truce and return to England. He unfairly blamed his chief minister, Archbishop Stratford, for his financial distress, and immediately on his return vindictively attacked him. Before the truce expired a disputed succession to the duchy of Brittany gave Edward an excuse for renewing hostilities with France. In 1342 he went to Brittany and fought an indecisive campaign against the French. He was back in England in 1343. In the following years he spent much time and money in rebuilding Windsor Castle, and instituting the order of the Garter, which he did in order to fulfil a vow that he had taken to restore the Round Table of Arthur. His finances, therefore, remained embarrassed despite the comparative pause in the war, although in 1339 he had repudiated his debt to his Italian creditors, a default that brought about widespread misery in Florence.

A new phase of the French war begins when in July 1346 Edward landed in Normandy, accompanied by his eldest son, Edward, prince of Wales, a youth of sixteen. In a memorable campaign Edward marched from La Hogue to Caen, and from Caen almost to the gates of Paris. It was a plundering expedition on a large scale, and like most of Edward's campaigns showed some want of strategic purpose. But Edward's decisive victory over the French at Crecy, in Ponthieu, on the 26th of August, where he scattered the army with which Philip VI. attempted to stay his retreat from Paris to the northern frontier, signally demonstrated the tactical superiority of Edward's army over the French. Next year Edward effected the reduction of Calais. This was the most solid and lasting of his conquests, and its execution compelled him to greater efforts than the Crecy campaign. Other victories in Gascony and Brittany further emphasized his power. In 1346, David, king of Scots, was also defeated and taken prisoner at Neville's Cross, near Durham. In the midst of his successes, however, want of money forced Edward to make a new truce in 1347. He was as far from the conquest of France as ever.

Edward returned to England in October 1347. He celebrated his triumph by a series of splendid tournaments, and completed his scheme for the establishment of the order of the Garter. In 1348 he rejected an offer of the imperial throne. In the same year the Black Death first appeared in England, and raged until 1349. Yet the horrors which it wrought hardly checked the magnificent revels of Edward's court, and neither the plague nor the truce stayed the course of the French war, though what fighting there was was indecisive and on a small scale. Edward's martial exploits during the next years were those of a gallant knight rather than those of a responsible general. Conspicuous among them were his famous combat with Eustace de Ribemont, near Calais, in 1349, and the hard-fought naval victory over the Spaniards off Winchelsea, in 1350. Efforts to make peace, initiated by Pope Innocent VI., came to nothing, though the English commons were now weary of the war. The result of this failure was the renewal of war on a large scale. In 1355 Edward led an unsuccessful raid out of Calais, and in January and February 1356 harried the Lothians, in the expedition famous as the Burned Candlemas. His exploits sank into insignificance as compared with those of his son, whose victory at Poitiers, on the 19th of September 1356, resulted in the captivity of King John, and forced the French to accept a new truce. Edward entertained his royal captive very magnificently, and in 1359 concluded with him the treaty of London, by which John surrendered so much that the French repudiated the treaty. Edward thereupon resolved to invade France afresh and compel its acceptance. On the 28th of October he landed at Calais, and advanced to Reims, where he hoped to be crowned king of France. The strenuous resistance of the citizens frustrated this scheme, and Edward marched into Burgundy, whence he made his way back towards Paris. Failing in an attack on the capital, he was glad to conclude, on the 8th of May 1360, preliminaries of peace at Bretigny, near Chartres. This treaty, less onerous to France than that of London, took its final form in the treaty of Calais, ratified by King John on the 9th of October. By it Edward renounced his claim to France in return for the whole of Aquitaine.

The treaty of Calais did not bring rest or prosperity either to England or France. Fresh visitations of the Black Death, in 1362 and 1369, intensified the social and economic disturbances which had begun with the first outbreak in 1348. Desperate, but not very successful, efforts were made to enforce the statute of Labourers, of 1351, by which it was sought to maintain prices and wages as they had been before the pestilence. Another feature of these years was the anti-papal, or rather anti-clerical, legislation embodied in the statutes of Provisors and Praemunire. These measures were first passed in 1351 and 1353, but often repeated. In 1366 Edward formally repudiated the feudal supremacy over England, still claimed by the papacy by reason of John's submission. Another feature of the time was the strenuous effort made by Edward to establish his numerous family without too great expense. In the end the estates of the houses of Lancaster, Kent, Bohun, Burgh and Mortimer swelled the revenues of Edward's children and grandchildren, in whose favour also the new title of duke was introduced.

In 1369 the French king, Charles V., repudiated the treaty of Calais and renewed the war. Edward's French dominions gladly reverted to their old allegiance, and Edward showed little of his former vigour in meeting this new trouble. He resumed the title and arms of king of France, but left most of the fighting and administration of his foreign kingdoms to his sons, Edward and John. While the latter were struggling with little success against the rising tide of French national feeling, Edward's want of money made him a willing participator in the attack on the wealth and privileges of the Church. In 1371 a clerical ministry was driven from office, and replaced by laymen, who proved, however, less effective administrators than their predecessors. Meanwhile Aquitaine was gradually lost; the defeat of Pembroke off La Rochelle deprived England of the command of the sea, and Sir Owen ap Thomas, a grand-nephew of Llewelyn ab Gruffyd, planned, with French help, an abortive invasion of Wales. In 1371 the Black Prince came back to England with broken health, and in 1373 John of Lancaster marched to little purpose through France, from Calais to Bordeaux. In 1372 Edward made his final effort to lead an army, but contrary winds prevented his even landing his troops in France. In 1375 he was glad to make a truce, which lasted until his death. By it the only important possessions remaining in English hands were Calais, Bordeaux, Bayonne and Brest.

Edward was now sinking into his dotage. After the death of Queen Philippa he fell entirely under the influence of a greedy mistress named Alice Perrers, while the Black Prince and John of Gaunt became the leaders of sharply divided parties in the court and council of the king. With the help of Alice Perrers John of Gaunt obtained the chief influence with his father, but his administration was neither honourable nor successful. His chief enemies were the higher ecclesiastics, headed by William of Wykeham, bishop of Winchester, who had been excluded from power in 1371. John further irritated the clergy by making an alliance with John Wycliffe. The opposition to John was led by the Black Prince and Edmund Mortimer, earl of March, the husband of Edward's grand-daughter, Philippa of Clarence. At last popular indignation against the courtiers came to a head in the famous Good Parliament of 1376. Alice Perrers was removed from court, and Duke John's subordinate instruments were impeached. But in the midst of the parliament the death of the Black Prince robbed the commons of their strongest support. John of Gaunt regained power, and in 1377 a new parliament, carefully packed by the courtiers, reversed the acts of the Good Parliament. Not long after Edward III. died, on the 21st of June 1377.

Edward III. was not a great man like Edward I. He was, however, an admirable tactician, a consummate knight, and he possessed extraordinary vigour and energy of temperament. His court, described at length in Froissart's famous chronicle, was the most brilliant in Europe, and he was himself well fitted to be the head of the magnificent chivalry that obtained fame in the French wars. Though his main ambition was military glory, he was not a bad ruler of England. He was liberal, kindly, good-tempered and easy of access, and his yielding to his subjects' wishes in order to obtain supplies for carrying on the French war contributed to the consolidation of the constitution. His weak points were his wanton breaches of good faith, his extravagance, his frivolity and his self-indulgence. Like that of Edward I. his ambition transcended his resources, and before he died even his subjects were aware of his failure.

Edward had twelve children, seven sons and five daughters. Five of his sons played some part in the history of their time, these being Edward the Black Prince, Lionel of Antwerp, duke of Clarence, John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, Edmund of Langley, afterwards duke of York, and Thomas of Woodstock, afterwards duke of Gloucester. John and Edmund are also important as the founders of the rival houses of Lancaster and York. Each of the last four was named from the place of his birth, and for the same reason the Black Prince is sometimes called Edward of Woodstock. The king's two other sons both died in infancy. Of his daughters, three died unmarried; the others were Isabella, who married into the family of Coucy, and Mary, who married into that of Montfort.

AUTHORITIES.--The two chief modern lives of Edward III. are W. Longman's _Life and Times of Edward III._, and J. Mackinnon's _History of Edward III._ Neither work can be regarded as adequate, and in some ways J. Barnes's quaint _History of Edward III._ (1688) is less unsatisfactory. The general history of the time can be read in W. Stubbs's _Constitutional History of England_, vol. ii. chapters xvi. and xvii.; in T.F. Tout's _Political History of England_, 1216-1377, pp. 301-441; in R. Pauli's _Geschichte von England_, iv. pp. 307-504; and in Edward's life by W. Hunt in the _Dictionary of National Biography_. For the Hundred Years' War, see E. Deprez's _Les Preliminaires de la guerre de cent ans, 1328-1342_, and H. Denifle's _La Desolation des eglises, monasteres et hopitaux en France pendant la guerre de cent ans_. For economic and social history see W.J. Ashley's _English Economic History_, and W. Cunningham's _Growth of English Industry and Commerce during the Early and Middle Ages_. For the end of the reign see S. Armitage Smith's _John of Gaunt_, J. Lechler's _Wiclif und die Vorgeschichte der Reformation_, translated as _Wycliffe and his English Precursors_, R.L. Poole's _Wycliffe and Movements for Reform_, and G.M. Trevelyan's _England in the Age of Wycliffe_. (T. F. T.)

EDWARD IV. (1442-1483), king of England, son of Richard, duke of York, by Cicely Neville, was born at Rouen on the 28th of April 1442. As a boy he was styled earl of March, and spent most of his time at Ludlow. After the Yorkist failure at Ludlow field in October 1459, Edward fled with the earls of Salisbury and Warwick, his uncle and cousin, to Calais. Thence in the following July he accompanied them in their successful invasion of England, to be welcomed in London, and to share in the victory over the Lancastrians at Northampton. After the acceptance of Richard of York as heir to the crown, Edward returned to the Welsh marches, where early in the new year he heard of his father's defeat and death at Wakefield. Hastily gathering an army he defeated the earls of Pembroke and Wiltshire at Mortimer's Cross on the 2nd of February 1461, and then marched on London. He was acclaimed by the citizens in an assembly at Clerkenwell, declared king by a Yorkist council, and took possession of the regality on the 4th of March. Soon after the new king and the earl of Warwick went north, and on the 28th of March won a decisive victory at Towton.

Edward owed his throne to his kinsmen the Nevilles, and he was content for the time to be guided by them. For himself he was young and fond of pleasure. Still he made frequent progresses, and took some part in the fighting that went on in the north during 1462 and 1463. But he was absent from the final victory at Hexham on the 14th of May 1464, and was at the very time engaged in contracting a secret marriage with Elizabeth, daughter of Richard Woodville, Lord Rivers, and widow of Sir John Grey of Groby (d. 1461). The marriage was disclosed at Michaelmas, much to the vexation of Warwick, who in pursuit of his foreign policy had projected a match with a French princess. Edward heaped favours on his new relatives; his father-in-law was made treasurer, and great marriages were found for his wife's sisters and brothers. In foreign affairs also Edward thwarted Warwick's plans by favouring an alliance with Burgundy rather than France. There was, however, no open breach till 1469, when Warwick, taking advantage of the unpopularity of the Woodvilles, and supported by the king's next brother George, duke of Clarence, appeared in arms. Edward was surprised and made prisoner at Middleham, and Rivers was beheaded. For six months Edward had to submit to Warwick's tutelage; then on the occasion of a rising in Lincolnshire he gathered an army of his own. Sir Robert Welles, the leader of this rebellion, made a confession implicating Warwick, who fled with Clarence to France. The king thought himself secure, but when Warwick and Clarence made terms with the Lancastrian exiles, Edward in his turn had to seek refuge in Holland (September 1470). His brother-in-law, Charles of Burgundy, at first refused him any assistance, but at last furnished him with money, and on the 14th of March 1471 Edward and his brother Richard landed with a small force at Ravenspur near Hull. Marching south he was welcomed at London on the 11th of April, defeated Warwick at Barnet three days later, and the Lancastrians at Tewkesbury on the 4th of May. From thenceforth Edward's possession of the crown was secure. His position was strengthened by the birth of a son (2nd of November 1470, during his exile), and by the wealth which he acquired through the confiscation of the estates of his opponents. Clarence had made his peace with Edward, but was at enmity with his other brother Richard of Gloucester, who now married Warwick's second daughter and claimed a share in the Neville inheritance. Their rivalry and Clarence's continued intrigues furnished Edward with his chief domestic difficulty; the trouble was ended by the judicial murder of Clarence in 1478.

The only serious enterprise of these latter years was the short French war of 1475, from which Edward was bought out by the treaty of Pecquigny. As foreign policy it was inglorious, and involved a departure from Edward's earlier plan of a Burgundian alliance. However, it shows a certain recognition of England's need to concentrate her energies on her own development. The annual subsidy which Louis XI. agreed to pay further served Edward's purposes by providing him with money for home government, and enabled him to avoid possible trouble through the necessity for too frequent parliaments and heavy taxation. So Edward's personal rule became in its character autocratic; but it was in the art of courting popularity and concealing despotism that he most shows himself as a type of tyranny. He lacked neither ambition nor capacity, but was indolent and only exerted himself spasmodically. He could be ruthless, but was not habitually cruel. His strongest weapons were the fine presence, the affable manners (even with citizens), and the love of pleasure and entertainments which secured his personal popularity. In his last years he was given to self-indulgence and scandalous excesses, which did not, however, alienate the London citizens, with whose wives he was too familiar. Most of the power at court was in the hands of the Woodvilles, in spite of their unpopularity; the more arduous work of administration in the north was left to Richard of Gloucester. If as a prince of the Renaissance Edward was the first to rule tyrannically in England, he also deserves credit as a patron of the new culture and friend of Caxton; he further resembles his Italian contemporaries in the commercial purposes to which he applied his wealth in partnership with London merchants.

Edward died at Westminster on the 9th of April 1483, and was buried at Windsor. By Elizabeth Woodville, who died on the 8th of June 1492, he had two sons, Edward V. and Richard of York, who were murdered in the Tower; and five daughters, of whom the eldest, Elizabeth, married Henry VII. Of his numerous mistresses the most notorious was Jane Shore. Before his marriage he had been contracted to Lady Eleanor Butler, and this was alleged by Richard III. to have made his children by Elizabeth Woodville illegitimate.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.--Of original authorities for Edward's reign the chief are the _Continuation of the Cropland Chronicle_ in Fulman's _Scriptores_; the various London Chronicles, especially for the early years _Gregory's Chronicle_; Warkworth's _Chronicle_, and the _Arrivall of King Edward IV._ (a partisan account of events in 1470-1471), published by the Camden Society; the _Paston Letters_ with Dr Gairdner's valuable Introduction; and for foreign affairs the _Memoires_ of Philippe de Comines; the collection called _Chronicles of the White Rose_ is useful. For modern authors, consult Sir James Ramsay's _Lancaster and York_ (1892), and the _Political History of England_, vol. iv. (1906), by Prof. C. Oman. (C. L. K.)

EDWARD V. (1470-1483), king of England, was the elder son of Edward IV. by his wife Elizabeth Woodville, and was born, during his father's temporary exile, in the sanctuary of Westminster Abbey on the 2nd of November 1470. In June 1471 he was created prince of Wales. When Edward IV. died in April 1483 a struggle for power took place between the young king's paternal uncle, Richard, duke of Gloucester, who had been appointed as his guardian by Edward IV., and his maternal uncle, Richard Woodville, Earl Rivers. Gloucester obtained possession of the king's person, and, having arrested Rivers and some of his supporters, assumed the crown himself after a very slight and feigned reluctance, on the ground that the marriage of Edward and Elizabeth Woodville was invalid, and consequently its issue was illegitimate. At this time Edward and his brother Richard, duke of York, were living in the Tower of London. Shortly afterwards a movement was organized to free them from captivity, and then it became known that they were already dead; but, though it was the general conviction that they had been murdered, it was twenty years before the manner of this deed was discovered. According to the narrative of Sir Thomas More, Sir Robert Brackenbury, the constable of the Tower, refused to obey Richard's command to put the young princes to death; but he complied with a warrant ordering him to give up his keys for one night to Sir James Tyrell, who had arranged for the assassination. Two men, Miles Forest and John Dighton, then smothered the youths under pillows while they were asleep. The murder was committed most probably in August or September 1483. Horace Walpole has attempted to cast doubts upon the murder of the princes, and Sir C.R. Markham has argued that the deed was committed by order of Henry VII. Both these views, however, have been traversed by James Gairdner, and there seems little doubt that Sir Thomas More's story is substantially correct.

See RICHARD III.; and in addition, Sir Thomas More, _History of Richard III._, edited by J.R. Lumby (Cambridge, 1883); Horace Walpole, _Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of Richard III._ (London, 1768); J. Gairdner, _Richard III._ (Cambridge, 1898); J. Gairdner and C.R. Markham in the _English Historical Review_, vol. vi. (London, 1891); Sir C.R. Markham, _Richard III._ (1907).

EDWARD VI. (1537-1553), king of England and Ireland, born at Greenwich on the 12th of October 1537, was the only child of Henry VIII. by his third wife, Jane Seymour, who died of puerperal fever twelve days later. The story that the mother's life was deliberately sacrificed by the performance of Caesarean section is unfounded, although Jane's death was little noticed amid the rejoicings which greeted the advent of a male heir to the throne. But in spite of Holbein's vivacious portrait of Edward at the age of two (now at Hanover), he was a frail child, and a short life was anticipated for him from his early years. This did not prevent a strenuous education; until the age of six he was naturally left in the charge of women, but when he was only seven his tutor Dr Coxe, afterwards bishop of Ely, writes that he could decline any Latin noun and conjugate any regular verb (_L. and P._, 1544, ii. 726); "every day in the mass-time he readeth a portion of Solomon's Proverbs, wherein he delighteth much." Sir John Cheke, Sir Anthony Cooke and Roger Ascham all helped to teach him Latin, Greek and French; and by the age of thirteen he had read Aristotle's _Ethics_ in the original and was himself translating Cicero's _De philosophia_ into Greek.

Edward was duke of Cornwall from his birth, but he was never prince of Wales, and he was only nine when he succeeded his father as king of England and Ireland and supreme head of the church (28th of January 1546/7). His nonage threw power into the hands of Somerset and then of Northumberland, and enabled Gardiner and Bonner to maintain that the royal supremacy over the church was, or should be, in abeyance. Projects for his marriage were hardly even the occasion, but only the excuse, for Somerset's war on Scotland and Northumberland's subsequent alliance with France. All factions sought to control his person, not because of his personality but because of his position; he was like the Great Seal, only more so, an indispensable adjunct to the wielder of authority. The Protector's brother tried to bribe him with pocket-money; Northumberland was more subtle and established a complete dominion over his mind, and then put him forward at the age of fourteen as entitled to all the power of Henry VIII. But he was only Northumberland's mask; of his individual influence on the course of history during his reign there is hardly a trace. A posthumous effort was made to give him the credit of a humane desire to save Joan Bocher from the flames; but he recorded with apparently cold-blooded indifference the execution of both his uncles, and he certainly made no attempt to mitigate the harassing attentions which the council paid his sister Mary. This passed for piety with the zealots, and the persecutions of Mary's reign reflected a halo on that of the Protestant Josiah. So strong was the regret that rumours of his survival persisted, and hare-brained youths were found to personate him throughout Mary's and even far into Elizabeth's reign.

It was well that they were false, for Edward showed signs of all the Tudor obstinacy, and he was a fanatic into the bargain, as no other Tudor was except Mary. The combination would probably have involved England in disasters far greater than any that ensued upon his premature death; and it was much better that the Anglican settlement of religion should have been left to the compromising temper of Elizabeth. As it was, he bequeathed a legacy of woe; his health began to fail in 1552, and in May 1553 it was known that he was dying. But his will and the various drafts of it only betray the agitated and illogical efforts of Northumberland to contrive some means whereby he might continue to control the government and prevent the administration of justice. Mary and Elizabeth were to be excluded from the throne, as not sufficiently pliant instruments; Mary Stuart was ignored as being under Scottish, Catholic and French influence; the duchess of Suffolk, Lady Jane's mother, was excluded because she was married, and the duke her husband might claim the crown matrimonial. In fact, all females were excluded, except Jane, on the ground that no woman could reign; even she was excluded in the first draft, and the crown was left to "the Lady Jane's heirs male." But this draft was manipulated so as to read "the Lady Jane and her heirs male." That Edward himself was responsible for these delirious provisions is improbable. But he had been so impregnated with the divine right of kings and the divine truth of Protestantism that he thought he was entitled and bound to override the succession as established by law and exclude a Catholic from the throne; and his last recorded words were vehement injunctions to Cranmer to sign the will. He died at Greenwich on the 6th of July 1553, and was buried in Henry VII.'s chapel by Cranmer with Protestant rites on the 8th of August, while Mary had Mass said for his soul in the Tower.

J.G. Nichols collected almost all that is known of Edward VI. in his excellent edition of the king's _Journal_. A few additional facts and suggestions can be gleaned from the _Letters and Papers of Henry VIII._ vols. xii.-xxi.; _Acts of the Privy Council_, ed. Dasent, vols. i.-iv.; Domestic, Spanish, Venetian and Foreign _Calendars of State Papers_; Froude's _History_; Dixon's _Hist. Church of England_; A.F. Pollard's _England under Somerset_ and _Life of Cranmer_; and _English Historical Review_, xxiii. 286, &c. Sir Clements Markham's _Edward VI._ (1907) emphasizes his interest in geography. (A. F. P.)

EDWARD VII. (ALBERT EDWARD) (1841-1910), king of Great Britain and Ireland, and of the British Dominions beyond the Seas, emperor of India, the eldest son and second child of Queen Victoria and of Albert, prince consort, was born at Buckingham Palace on the 9th of November 1841. He was created prince of Wales and earl of Chester on the 4th of December following, and was baptized on the 25th of January 1842. In his childhood he was educated by the dowager Lady Lyttelton; and in his boyhood successively by the Rev. Henry Mildred Birch, Mr F.W. Gibbes, the Rev. C.F. Tarver and Mr Herbert W. Fisher. He afterwards resided at Edinburgh, studying chemistry in its industrial applications under Professor (afterwards Lord) Playfair at the university; at Christ Church, Oxford; and at Trinity College, Cambridge. In November 1858 he was made a knight of the Garter and a colonel in the army. In 1859 he travelled in Italy and Spain, and in 1860 paid a visit as "Lord Renfrew" to the United States and Canada.

Upon the completion of his Cambridge course in June 1861 he joined the camp at the Curragh. The prince consort died on the 13th of December, and in 1862 the prince of Wales went for a tour in the Holy Land (February-June) under the guidance of Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, afterwards dean of Westminster. Early in 1863 he was sworn of the privy council, and took his seat in the House of Lords as duke of Cornwall. The estate of Sandringham, in Norfolk, was purchased for him out of the savings of his minority, and his town residence was fixed at Marlborough House.

His impending marriage to the princess Alexandra, daughter of Christian IX., king of Denmark (b. December 1, 1844), had already been announced, and took place on the 10th of March at Windsor, the beauty and grace of the princess captivating the heart of the nation. Parliament granted the prince an income of L40,000 a year, exclusive of the revenues of the duchy of Cornwall, and he relinquished his right of succession to the duchy of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Prince Albert Victor, afterwards duke of Clarence, was the first offspring of the marriage, being born on the 8th of January 1864. The births followed of Prince George Frederick Ernest Albert, afterwards duke of York (see GEORGE V.), on the 3rd of June 1865; Princess Louise Victoria Alexandra Dagmar, by marriage duchess of Fife, princess royal, on the 20th of February 1867; Princess Victoria Alexandra Olga Mary, on the 6th of July 1868; and Princess Maud Charlotte Mary Victoria, afterwards queen of Norway, on the 26th of November 1869.

From the time of their marriage the prince and princess were prominently before the country. Queen Victoria remained in retirement, but they filled her place at important public functions. The prince's readiness to promote every worthy cause was most marked; no one was a more constant attendant at meetings for objects of public utility of a non-political nature, and his speeches were always characterized by excellent sense. The most important external event of these years was a tour to Egypt, undertaken in 1869 in company with the duke of Sutherland, Sir Samuel Baker and others, an account of which was published by Mrs William Grey. The prince also visited Ireland more than once, and opened the International Exhibition of 1871.

On the 23rd of November 1871 it was announced that the prince would be prevented from paying a visit which had been arranged to the Maharajah Dhuleep Singh by a feverish attack. It soon appeared that the malady was typhoid, contracted as was supposed, on a visit to Scarborough. The case became so serious that on November 29 the queen and Princess Alice hurried to Sandringham. On the 1st of December there was a slight rally, but on the 8th so serious a relapse occurred that for some days the prince's life was despaired of. Under the skilful treatment of Sir William Jenner, Sir William Gull and Sir James Paget, however, the crisis was surmounted by December 16, and by Christmas day the danger was regarded as virtually over. On the 27th of February 1872 a thanksgiving was held at St Paul's, amid imposing demonstrations of public joy.

In January 1874 the prince of Wales attended the marriage at St. Petersburg of his brother, the duke of Edinburgh, with the grand-duchess Marie of Russia. In the same year he paid a historic visit to Birmingham, where Mr Joseph Chamberlain, not yet a member of parliament, received him officially as mayor. In March 1875 it was officially announced that he would make a visit to India, carrying out an idea originally conceived by the first Indian viceroy, Earl Canning. He was supposed to travel as heir-apparent, not as representative of the queen; but the characters could not be kept apart, and in fact the prince's visit was a political event of great importance. Leaving England on October 11, he was received at Bombay by the viceroy, Lord Northbrook. Here he met a very large number of Indian feudatory princes, whose acquaintance he subsequently improved by visiting at their courts during the seventeen weeks which he spent in the country. During these four months the prince travelled nearly 8000 m. by land and 2500 m. by sea, became acquainted with more rajahs than had all the viceroys who had reigned over India, and saw more of the country than any living Englishman. The visit led up to the queen's assumption of the title of empress of India in the following year.

The prince's life after this date was full of conspicuous public appearances. In 1885 he visited Ireland at a time of much political excitement, and was received enthusiastically in many quarters and without symptoms of ill-will in any. In 1886 he filled the presidency of the Indian and Colonial Exhibition, opened the Mersey Tunnel, and laid the first stone of the Tower Bridge. In 1887 a large share of the arrangements for the queen's Jubilee devolved upon him. On the 27th of July 1589 his eldest daughter, Princess Louise, was married to the duke of Fife. In the autumn he paid a semi-incognito visit to Paris, where he was always highly popular, viewed the Exhibition, and ascended the Eiffel Tower. In 1890 he opened the Forth Bridge. On the 14th of January 1892, however, a heavy blow fell upon him and his house by the death of his eldest son, Prince Albert Victor, duke of Clarence, after a brief illness. The young prince, who with his brother George had made the tour of the world (1879-1882) in H.M.S. "Bacchante," and after a short career at Oxford and Cambridge was just settling down to play his part in public life, had recently become engaged to Princess Victoria Mary of Teck (b. May 26, 1867), and the popularity of the heir to the crown had been increased by the expression of his satisfaction at his son's bride being an English princess. On the 6th of July 1893 the broken thread was reunited by her marriage to Prince George, duke of York.

The year 1894 was a busy one for the prince of Wales, who became a member of the royal commission on the housing of the poor, opened the Tower Bridge, attended the Welsh Eisteddfod and was duly initiated, and paid two visits to Russia--one for the marriage of the grand-duchess Xenia, the other for the funeral of the tsar, his brother-in-law. In 1896 he became first chancellor of the university of Wales, and his first act after his installation at Aberystwyth was to confer an honorary degree upon the princess. He had already been for some years a trustee of the British Museum. On the 22nd of July 1896 his daughter. Princess Maud, was married to Prince Charles of Denmark, who in 1905 was offered and accepted the crown of the new kingdom of Norway. The arrangements for the queen's Jubilee of 1897 depended upon the prince even more than those of the corresponding celebration in 1887: he rode on the queen's right at the great procession to St Paul's, and as an admiral of the fleet presided at the naval review at Spithead. In July 1898 the prince had the misfortune to fracture his knee-cap while on a visit to Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild, but completely recovered from the effects of the accident. In December 1899, while passing through Brussels on his way to St Petersburg, he was fired at by a miserable lad named Sipido, crazed by reading anarchist literature. Fortunately no injury was done.

It was the especial distinction of Albert Edward, while prince of Wales, to have been a substantial support of the throne before he was called upon to fill it. This cannot be said of any of his predecessors except Edward the Black Prince. He was exemplary in the discharge of his public duties, and in his scrupulous detachment from party politics. He was a keen patron of the theatre, and his thoroughly British taste for sport was as pronounced as his inclination for most of the contemporary amusements of society. The "Tranby Croft Case" (1890), in which Sir William Gordon Cumming brought an unsuccessful libel action for having been accused of cheating at a game of baccarat, caused some comment in connexion with the prince's appearance in the witness-box on behalf of the defendants. But it did him no disservice with the people to have twice won the Derby with his horses Persimmon (1896) and Diamond Jubilee (1900)--his third victory, in 1909, with Minoru, being the first occasion on which the race had been won by a reigning sovereign; and his interest in yacht-racing was conspicuously shown at all the important fixtures, his yacht "Britannia" being one of the best of her day. His activity in the life of the nation may be illustrated by his establishment (1897) of the Prince of Wales's (afterwards King Edward's) Hospital Fund, his devotion to the cause of Masonry (he was first elected grand master of the Freemasons of England in 1874), and his position as a bencher of the Middle Temple, where he also became (1887) treasurer.

On the death of Queen Victoria on the 22nd of January 1901, the question what title the new king would assume was speedily set at rest by the popular announcement that he would be called Edward the Seventh. The new reign began auspiciously by the holding of a privy council at St James's Palace, at which the king announced his intention to follow in his predecessor's footsteps and to govern as a constitutional sovereign, and received the oaths of allegiance. On the 14th of February the king and queen opened parliament in state. Shortly afterwards it was announced that the visit of the duke and duchess of York to Australia, in order to inaugurate the new Commonwealth, which had been sanctioned by Queen Victoria, would be proceeded with; and on the 16th of March they set out on board the "Ophir" with a brilliant suite. The tour lasted till November 1, the duke and duchess having visited Australia, New Zealand, the Cape and Canada; and on their return the king, on November 9, created the duke prince of Wales and earl of Chester. Meanwhile parliament had settled the new civil list at L470,000 a year, and the royal title had been enlarged to include the colonial empire by an act enabling the king to style himself "Edward VII., by the grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and of all the British Dominions beyond the Seas, King, Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India." At the end of May 1902 the long-drawn-out war in South Africa came at last to an end, and the coronation was fixed for the 26th of June. But on the 24th, amid general consternation, the king was announced to be suffering from perityphlitis, necessitating the immediate performance of an operation; and the coronation, for which unprecedented preparations had been made, had to be postponed. The operation--performed by Sir Frederick Treves--was, however, so marvellously successful, and the king's progress towards recovery so rapid and uninterrupted, that within a fortnight he was pronounced out of danger, and soon afterwards it was decided to hold the coronation service on August 9. Though shorn of much of the magnificence which would have been added to it in June by the presence of foreign royalties and the preparations for a great procession through London, the solemnity duly took place on that date in Westminster Abbey amid great rejoicings. The king spent several weeks (partly in a yachting trip round the coast and up to Stornoway) in recruiting his health, and on the 25th of October he went in procession through the main streets of south London, when he was most enthusiastically received. Next day the king and queen attended St Paul's cathedral in state to return thanks for his restoration to health. On New Year's day 1903 the coronation was proclaimed in India at a magnificent durbar at Delhi.

At home the king opened parliament in person in February 1903, and on the 31st of March he sailed from Portsmouth to pay a visit to the king of Portugal at Lisbon, leaving Lisbon for Gibraltar on the 7th of April. On the 11th he held a review of the garrison troops and next day left for Malta, and the tour was continued to Naples (23rd of April). On the 27th of April he was received at Rome by the king of Italy--the first time an English king as such had been there; and two days later he paid a visit to Leo XIII. at the Vatican. On May day he was received in Paris by President Loubet. Later in the year return visits were paid to England by President Loubet (July) and the king and queen of Italy (November). On the 11th of May His Majesty paid his first formal visit to Edinburgh, and held courts at Holyrood. In July the king and queen went to Ireland, and though the Dublin corporation refused to vote a loyal address the reception was generally cordial. In September the king took his annual "cure" at Marienbad, and paid a visit to Vienna, where he was received by the Austrian emperor. In 1904 again the king and queen went to Ireland; in June the king was cordially received by the German emperor at the yacht-races at Kiel, and he included a visit to Hamburg, where the welcome was hearty. In November the king and queen of Portugal were entertained at Windsor and at the Guildhall.

The success of King Edward as a promoter of international friendliness, and the advantage of so efficient a type of kingship, attracted universal attention, and treaties of arbitration were concluded by Great Britain with France, Spain, Italy, Germany and Portugal in 1903 and 1904. In his first two years the king had already earned the title of Edward the Peacemaker, and established his position as a source of new strength to the state. This reputation was confirmed in the years which followed, during which the royal hand was to be seen in the progress of foreign affairs in a manner somewhat new to old-fashioned politicians. The _entente_ with France was promoted by his influence, notably by his reception of President Fallieres in England in 1908. It was noticed that the permanent under-secretary for foreign affairs, Sir Charles Hardinge, generally accompanied the king, as one of his suite, on his visits abroad: and the conclusion of the Anglo-Russian agreement (1907)--which was attributed with some reason to royal policy--was hotly criticized in Radical quarters. It was pointed out that neither the foreign secretary (Sir E. Grey) nor any other secretary of state accompanied the king on his foreign visits. These objections were, however, scouted by the government, and undeniably public opinion approved of the sovereign's personal activity in a sphere peculiarly his own. The strengthening of British influence in Europe, which was the marked result of the Anglo-French and Anglo-Russian _ententes_, and of the closer ties between England and countries like Portugal and Spain (whose young king Alfonso married Princess Ena of Battenberg, King Edward's niece), had, indeed, temporarily the effect of rousing German suspicion, the view taken being that the object of British foreign policy was to isolate Germany; and during 1907 and 1908 the political situation was coloured by the discussions in the press with regard to Anglo-German rivalry. But in February 1909 the king and queen paid a state visit to the Kaiser in Berlin, where the greatest cordiality was displayed on all sides; the event was prepared for, in both countries, as a means of dispelling the clouds which had gathered over the relations between England and Germany, and the success of the visit proved once more how powerful King Edward's personality could be as an agency for peace and international amity.

During the year 1909, however, the political situation at home was developing into an acute constitutional crisis, which seemed likely to involve the Crown in serious difficulties. Mr Lloyd-George's budget convulsed the House of Commons and the country, and was eventually rejected by the House of Lords; and the Liberal government now put in the forefront of its programme the abolition of the Peers' "veto." As was hinted, not obscurely, later by the doctors, King Edward, although certainly not prejudiced against a Liberal ministry, was seriously disturbed in mind and health by the progress of events, which culminated in the return of Mr Asquith to office after the elections of January 1910, and in his statement that, if necessary, guarantees would be sought from the Crown for the purpose of enforcing the will of the representative chamber. A remarkable sign of the king's discomfort was his insertion, in the official "King's Speech" at the opening of parliament, of the words "in the opinion of my advisers," in connexion with the passage dealing with the House of Lords. The king had been far from robust for some little time, and while he was taking change and rest at Biarritz in the early spring of 1910 he had a bronchial attack which caused some anxiety, although the public heard nothing of it. When he returned to England there is no doubt that he was acutely affected by the prospect of being forcibly dragged into the political conflict. In the country at large there was indeed considerable confidence that the king's tact and experience would help to bring order out of chaos; but this was not to be. Within two days the public heard with consternation that he was ill, and then was dead. On May 5 it was announced that he had bronchitis; and he died at 11.45 P.M. on the 6th, of heart failure. On May 17, 18 and 19 there was an impressive lying-in-state in Westminster Hall, attended by unprecedented crowds; and on May 20 the burial took place at Windsor, after a great funeral procession through London, the coffin being followed by the new king, George V., and by eight foreign sovereigns--the German emperor, the kings of Greece, Spain, Portugal, Denmark, Norway, Belgium and Bulgaria--besides the archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria (heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary), the prince consort of Holland and many other royalties, and a number of special ambassadors, including Mr Roosevelt as representative of the United States. Mourning was as sincere as it was universal; for not only England and the British Empire, but the world, had lost a king who was both a very human man and a tried and trusted statesman.

Queen Victoria's long reign had solidly established the constitutional monarchy; it remained for her son to rehabilitate the idea of English kingship by showing how the sovereign could be no less constitutional but personally more monarchical. While prince of Wales he had had little real training in statecraft, but when he became king his genuine capacity for affairs was shown. Ably advised by such men as Lord Knollys and Lord Esher, he devoted himself to the work of removing the Throne from its former isolation, and bringing it into touch with all sections of the community for the promotion of social happiness and welfare. His own love of pageantry and his interest in the stately ordering of court functions responded, moreover, to a marked inclination on the part of the public and of "society" for such things. It was significant that even Radicals and Socialists began to advocate extensions of the prerogative, and to insist on the active part which the Crown should play in public life. The king won the genuine affection and confidence of the people; and in Queen Alexandra he had an ideal consort, to whom all hearts went out. (H. Ch.)

EDWARD, prince of Wales, known as "THE BLACK PRINCE" (1330-1376), the eldest son of Edward III. and Philippa of Hainaut, was born at Woodstock on the 15th of June 1330. Contemporaries called him Edward of Woodstock, and his surname of the Black Prince cannot be traced back earlier than the 16th century. It is supposed to have been derived from his wearing black armour. In 1333 he was made earl of Chester, and in 1337 duke of Cornwall, being the first duke ever created in England. Nominal warden of England during his father's absences abroad in 1338 and 1342, he was created prince of Wales in 1343, and in 1345 he first accompanied his father on a foreign expedition.

His real career begins, however, with Edward III.'s Norman campaign of 1346. On landing at La Hogue he was knighted by his father, and took a prominent part in the whole of the campaign. He commanded the right wing of the English forces at Crecy, and, though hard pressed for a time by the French, took his full share in gaining the victory. Next year he was at the siege of Calais, and returned to England in October 1347 with his father. He was one of the original knights of the Garter, and participated in his father's chivalrous adventures at Calais in 1349 and in the battle off Winchelsea in 1350. In September 1355 he was sent to Gascony at the head of an English army, having been appointed his father's lieutenant there in July. He was warmly welcomed by the Gascons, and at once led a foray through Armagnac and Languedoc. By November he had got as far as Narbonne, whence he returned to Bordeaux, where he kept his Christmas court. In August 1356 he started from Bergerac on another marauding expedition, this time in a northerly direction. He penetrated as far as the Loire, but was there compelled to retire before the superior forces of King John of France. On the 19th of September the two armies met in the battle of Poitiers, fought about 6 m. south-east of the city. It was the hardest-fought and most important battle of the Hundred Years' War, and Edward's victory was due both to the excellence of his tactical disposition of his forces and to the superior fighting capacity of his army. The flank march of the Captal de Buch, which decided the fate of the day, was of Edward's own devising, and the captivity of King John attested the completeness of his triumph. He treated his prisoner with almost ostentatious magnanimity, and took him to Bordeaux, whence they sailed to England in May 1357. On the 24th of that month he led his prisoner in triumph through the streets of London. In 1359 he took part in his father's invasion of northern France, and had a large share in the negotiations at Bretigny and Calais.

In October 1361 Edward married his cousin Joan, countess of Kent (1328-1385), the daughter and heiress of Edmund of Woodstock, earl of Kent, the younger son of Edward I. by his second wife Margaret of France. The lady, who enjoyed a great reputation for beauty, was in her thirty-third year, and the widow of Sir Thomas Holand, by whom she had had three children. Froissart says that the marriage was a love match, and that the king had no knowledge of it. However, Edward III. approved of his son's choice, and in July 1362 handed over to him all his dominions in southern France, with the title of prince of Aquitaine. In February 1363 Edward and Joan took ship for Gascony, which became his ordinary place of residence for the next eight years. He maintained a brilliant court at Bordeaux and Angouleme, and did his best to win the support of the Gascons. He was not, however, successful in winning over the greater nobles, who, with John, count of Armagnac, at their head, were dissatisfied with the separation from France, and looked with suspicion upon Edward's attempts to reform the administration as being likely to result in the curtailment of their feudal rights. Edward was better able to conciliate the towns, whose franchises he favoured and whose trade he fostered, hoping that they would prove a counterpoise to the aristocracy. He kept the chief posts of the administration mainly in English hands, and never really identified himself with the local life and traditions of his principality. He succeeded in clearing Aquitaine of the free companies, and kept good peace for nearly six years.

In 1367 Peter the Cruel, the deposed king of Castile, visited Edward at Bordeaux, and persuaded him to restore him to his throne by force. In February 1367 Edward led an army into Spain over the pass of Roncesvalles. After a difficult and dangerous march Edward reached the Ebro, and on the 3rd of April defeated Bertrand du Guesclin at Najera, the last of his great victories. He then proceeded to Burgos, and restored Peter to the throne of Castile. He remained in Castile for four months, living principally at Valladolid. His army wasted away during the hot Spanish summer, and Edward himself contracted the beginnings of a mortal disease. In August 1367 Edward led the remnant of his troops back through the pass of Roncesvalles, and returned to Bordeaux early in September. He had exhausted all his resources on the Spanish expedition, and was forced to seek from the estates of Aquitaine extraordinary sources of supply. A hearth tax for five years was willingly granted to him, and generally paid. The greater barons, however, found in this impost a pretext for revolt. The count of Armagnac, who had already made a secret understanding with Charles V., appealed against the hearth tax to the parlement of Paris. Cited before this body in January 1369, Edward declared that he would answer at Paris with sixty thousand men behind him. War broke out again, and Edward III. resumed the title of king of France. Thereupon Charles V. declared that all the English possessions in France were forfeited, and before the end of 1369 all Aquitaine was in full revolt. With weak health and impaired resources, the Black Prince showed little activity in dealing with his insurgent subjects, or in warding off French invasion. Though too ill to ride on horseback, he insisted upon commanding his troops, and on the 19th of September 1370 won his last barren success, by capturing the revolted city of Limoges and putting the population to the sword. Early in 1371 he returned to England, leaving the impossible task of holding Gascony to his brother John of Gaunt. In August 1372 he joined his father in an abortive expedition to France, but contrary winds prevented their landing, and he now abandoned military life for good. In October he resigned his principality on the ground that he could not afford to retain any longer so expensive a charge. His health now rapidly declined, but he still followed politics with interest, and did what he could to support the constitutional opposition of the great ecclesiastics to the administration of John of Gaunt and the anti-clerical courtiers. His last public act was to inspire the attack on Lancaster's influence made by the Good Parliament in the spring of 1376. The famous parliament was still in session when he died at Westminster on the 8th of July. He was buried in the east end of Canterbury cathedral on the 29th of September, where his magnificent tomb, erected in accordance with the instructions in his will, may still be seen. By Joan, "the fair maid of Kent," who died on the 7th of August 1385, the Black Prince left an only son, afterwards King Richard II.

For authorities see EDWARD III. To these may be added W. Hunt's article in the _Dict. Nat. Biog._; A. Collins's _Life of Edward, Prince of Wales_ (1740); G.P.R. James's _Life of Edward the Black Prince_ (1839); J. Moisant's _Le Prince Noir en Aquitaine_ (1894); and R.P. Dunn-Pattison's _The Black Prince_ (1910). (T. F. T.)