DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.52059#0055
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by Mulcaster (in his Positions, ed. Quick, p. 274):
“ The Maister therefore must have in his table a cata-
logue of schoole faultes, beginning at the commande-
mentes, for swearing, for disobedience, for lying, for
false witness, for picking, and so thorough out; then to
the meaner heresies, trewantry, absence, tardies, and so
forth Which in all these I wish our maister to
set down, with the number of stripes also, immutable
though not many.” He even appointed boys who had
to inform their master of the misdemeanours of the
others (p. 275). In a subsequent passage (p. 279),
he affirms that “ myselfe have had thousands under
my hand whom I never bet, neither they ever much
needed ; but if the rod had not bene in sight, and
assured them of punishment if they had swarved to
much, they would have deserved.”
Locke is another writer who denounces the use of
the rod, which he says is the only instrument of govern-
ment that tutors generally know, or even think of
{Thoughts on Education, § 47). Even in the Univer-
sities corporal punishment was in use. Milton is said
to have been flogged when at Christ’s College, Cam-
bridge. The latest instance is reported in 1667, in the
Admonition Book of Emmanuel College.1 At a later
date Dr. Johnson bears witness to the great severity
exercised at Lichfield School, where he was educated.
It is not perhaps surprising that such treatment was
thought unworthy the future representative of an an-
cient family, an opinion repeatedly expressed in Defoe’s
book. But it seems to have been not uncommon to
treat gentlemen’s sons with exceptional leniency. J.
1 Cf. Mark Pattison’s Life of Milton.
by Mulcaster (in his Positions, ed. Quick, p. 274):
“ The Maister therefore must have in his table a cata-
logue of schoole faultes, beginning at the commande-
mentes, for swearing, for disobedience, for lying, for
false witness, for picking, and so thorough out; then to
the meaner heresies, trewantry, absence, tardies, and so
forth Which in all these I wish our maister to
set down, with the number of stripes also, immutable
though not many.” He even appointed boys who had
to inform their master of the misdemeanours of the
others (p. 275). In a subsequent passage (p. 279),
he affirms that “ myselfe have had thousands under
my hand whom I never bet, neither they ever much
needed ; but if the rod had not bene in sight, and
assured them of punishment if they had swarved to
much, they would have deserved.”
Locke is another writer who denounces the use of
the rod, which he says is the only instrument of govern-
ment that tutors generally know, or even think of
{Thoughts on Education, § 47). Even in the Univer-
sities corporal punishment was in use. Milton is said
to have been flogged when at Christ’s College, Cam-
bridge. The latest instance is reported in 1667, in the
Admonition Book of Emmanuel College.1 At a later
date Dr. Johnson bears witness to the great severity
exercised at Lichfield School, where he was educated.
It is not perhaps surprising that such treatment was
thought unworthy the future representative of an an-
cient family, an opinion repeatedly expressed in Defoe’s
book. But it seems to have been not uncommon to
treat gentlemen’s sons with exceptional leniency. J.
1 Cf. Mark Pattison’s Life of Milton.