¹ Whitehead, Alfred North The Aims of Education and Other Essays (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1929), 74.Google Scholar

² Kimball, Bruce A. Orators and Philosophers: A History of the Idea of Liberal Education, expanded edition (New York: College Entrance Examination Board, 1995), 17–18.Google Scholar

³ Charlton, Kenneth “The Liberal-Vocational Debate in Early Modern England,“ in Preparation for Life: The Paradox of Education in the Late Twentieth Century, ed., Burstyn, Joan M. (Philadelphia and London: The Falmer Press, 1986), 2.Google Scholar

⁴ Gutek, Gerald L. A History of the Western Educational Experience (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 1972), 75–81, and Charlton, Kenneth Education in Renaissance England, (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1965), 16–20.Google Scholar

⁵ See Stone, Lawrence “The Educational Revolution in England, 1560–1640,“ Past and Presently (1964); Jordan, W.K. The Charities of Rural England (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1965); and Orme, Nicholas Education and Society in Medieval and Renaissance England (London and Roncerverte: The Hambledon Press, 1989).Google Scholar

⁶ For a description of teacher types in early modern England, see Kenneth Charlton, “The Teaching Profession in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century England,” University of Birmingham Historical Journal 11 (1967): 29–43.Google Scholar

⁷ Charlton, “The Liberal-Vocational Debate,” 1–18. Similarly, Lisa Jardine and Anthony Grafton indentify a “pragmatic humanism“ in Tudor and Stuart England—associating the liberal arts with practical training more than intellectual and moral formation. Anthony Grafton and Lisa Jardine, From Humanism to the Humanities: Education and the Liberal Arts in Fifteenth-and Sixteenth-Century Europe (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986), 184–200. Also see Rothblatt, Sheldon Tradition and Change in English Liberal Education: An Essay in History and Culture (London: Faber and Faber, 1976), 25.Google Scholar

⁸ For discussion of the demand for handwriting skill in early modern England, see Schulz, Herbert C. “The Teaching of Handwriting in Tudor and Stuart Times,“ Huntington Library Quarterly 6 (1943): 381–425 and Charlton, Education in Renaissance England, 267–9.Google Scholar

⁹ Goldberg, Jonathan Writing Matter: From the Hands of the English Renaissance (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), 54.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Billingsley, Martin The Pen's Excellencie or The Secretaries Delight (1618), B4v. The types and numbers of writing schools in early modern England are described in Schulz, “The Teaching of Handwriting,” 403–10.Google Scholar

¹¹ Becker, David The Practice of Letters: The Hofer Collection of Writing Manuals, 1514–1800 (Cambridge, MA: The Harvard College Library, 1997), xi–xiv.Google Scholar

¹² In researching this study, I examined the seventeenth-century English copybooks in Chicago's Newberry Library, which contains the most comprehensive collection of writing manuals in the United States and perhaps anywhere. Special thanks to Paul Gehl, Custodian of the Newberry's Wing, John W. Foundation on the History of Printing.Google Scholar

¹³ Watson, Foster ed., Vives on Education, a Translation of De Tradendis Disciplinis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1913), 55–56.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Brinsley, John Ludus Literarius, Or The Grammar Schoole (1612; reprint, Menston England: The Scolar Press Limited, 1968), 267–8.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Kimball, Bruce A. “Toward Pragmatic Liberal Education,“ in The Condition of American Liberal Education: Pragmatism and a Changing Tradition” ed. Orrill, Robert (New York: College Entrance Examination Board, 1995), 6; Kimball, Orators & Philosophers, 74–113.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Cocker, Edward The Guide to Penmanship (1664), 1.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Heal, Ambrose The English Writing-Masters and Their Copy-Books, 1570–1800 (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1931), xii. According to Heal, the writing master was “a well-read man, if we may judge from the selections from the classics with which he delighted to adorn his copybooks.” He suspected, however, “that these flourishes were not so much a sign of scholarship as useful to create an impression of learning” (xviii).Google Scholar

¹⁸ Cocker, The Compleat Writing Master (London, 1676), 21–23.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Ibid, 23–24.Google Scholar

²⁰ Writing master William Elder described knowledge of how to make nine different types of ink as well as how “to write White upon Black” and “with Leaf Gold.” William Elder, The Modish-Penman (1691).Google Scholar

²¹ Billingsley, The Pen's Excellencie, D1–D2.Google Scholar

²² Schulz, “The Teaching of Handwriting,“ 414–19 and Jenkinson, Hilary “The Teaching and Practice of Handwriting in England,“ History II (1926), 211–17.Google Scholar

²³ Schulz, “The Teaching of Handwriting,“ 385.Google Scholar

²⁴ Heal, The English Writing-Masters, xv–xvii.Google Scholar

²⁵ Craftsmen frequently used shop signs and tradecards, which could often reach folio size, to advertise their skills. Ambrose Heal, The Signboards of Old London Shops: A Review of the Shop Signs employed by the London Tradesmen during the XVIIth and XVIIIth Centuries (London: B.T. Batsford, Ltd, 1947), 4–5. For an example of an especially detailed broadsheet trade-card, see Smith, John Compendium of Writing Being a Small Speciman of All the Usual Hands of England (London, 1684).Google Scholar

²⁶ Kostelneck, Charles “From Pen to Print: The New Visual Landscape of Professional Communication,“ Journal of Business and Technical Communication 8 (fan, 1994), 101–2. Writing master Thomas Watson described his Copy Book (1700?) as “composed of diver New devised Knots and beautified with many other Curious Shapes & Flourishes.”Google Scholar

²⁷ Heal, The English Writing-Masters, xvi. Tamara Plakins Thornton also discusses the perception of English and American writing masters as craftsmen in Handwriting in America: A Cultural History (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1996), 12–16.Google Scholar

²⁸ Billingsley, The Pen's Excellencie, B4.Google Scholar

²⁹ Heal, The English Writing-Masters, 44.Google Scholar

³⁰ John Davies of Hereford, The Writing Schoolmaster or The Anatomic of Faire Writing (London, 1636), A3v–A4.Google Scholar

³¹ Dekker, Thomas Lanthorne and Candle-Light (London, 1609; reprint, Amsterdam: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, Ltd., 1973), K4v. The Character literature, which was a popular early modern genre comprised of short sketches depicting social and moral types, also includes sketches of scriveners, clerks, and even the quill, but no other writing masters. For a discussion of the Character's place within early seventeenth-century English literature, see Benjamin Boyce, The Theophrastan Character in England to 1642 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1947).Google Scholar

³² By the seventeenth century, fortunate birth was clearly not enough or even an essential characteristic of nobility. See Ustick, W. Lee “Changing Ideals of Aristocratic Character and Conduct in Seventeenth-Century England,“ Modern Philology (November 1932): 147–166.Google Scholar

³³ Virgil Heltzel defines the courtesy literature as “any work, or significant part of a work, which sets forth for the gentleman (or gentlewoman) first, the qualities or criteria, inherent or acquired, which he must possess; second, his formation (including his various interests, exercises, recreations, and amusements) and his education; and, third, his conduct.” Virgil Heltzel, A Check List of Courtesy Books in the Newberry Library (Chicago: Newberry Library, 1942), viii.Google Scholar

³⁴ Ustick, W. Lee “Changing Ideals,“ 154–6.Google Scholar

³⁵ Kelso, Ruth “The Doctrine of the English Gentleman in the Sixteenth Century,“ University of Illinois Studies in Language and Literature 14 (1929): 130–48. For specific studies deemed proper to the gentleman, see Elyot, Thomas The Boke Named the Governour (London: 1531) and Peacham, Henry The Compleat Gentleman (London, 1622), the most representative courtesy books of the era.Google Scholar

³⁶ Ustick, “Changing Ideals,“ 156–7.Google Scholar

³⁷ Kelso, “Doctrine of the Gentleman,“ 66.Google Scholar

³⁸ Mulcaster, Richard Positions (London, 1581; reprint, London and New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1888), 31–4.Google Scholar

³⁹ Henry Peacham insisted that “Mechanical Arts and Artists, whosoever labour for their livelihood and gaine, have no share at all in Nobility and Gentry… [for] their bodies are spent in labour and travaille.” Peacham, The Complete Gentleman (London, 1622; reprint, Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1906), 12–3. Also see Kelso, “The Doctrine of the Gentleman,” 62–65, for a discussion of an early seventeenth-century controversy over apprenticeship and its appropriateness for the gentleman.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Kelso, Doctrine for the Lady of the Renaissance (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1956), 46; Parker, Rozsika The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine (London: The Women's Press, 1984).Google Scholar

⁴¹ Mulcaster, Positions, 177 180. Tamara Plakins Thornton suggests that in eighteenth-and nineteenth-century America, handwriting was associated with embroidery and other domestic skills that marked feminine breeding. Thornton, Handwriting in America, 8.Google Scholar

⁴² Ruth Kelso discusses the liberal studies considered appropriate for the Renaissance lady in the Doctrine for the Lady, 58–77.Google Scholar

⁴³ For example, the final page of John Ayres’ A Tutor to Penmanship (London: 1698) advertised his school, where taught, John “Writing Arithmetick and Merchant Accompts” while Thomas Ayres offered instruction in “Navigation Surveying Dialling Gauging Perspective Fortification, Gunnery Algebra Geometry And other usefull Parts of the Mathematics“ (25). Eleazar Wigan combined arithmetic and writing in his manual Practical Arithmetic (1696).Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Matlock, John Fax Nova Artis Scribendi (London, 1685), 28–30; Ayres, John The Accomplished Clerk, or Accurate Pen-man (London: 1683), 2.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Cocker, Edward Arts Glory, or the Pen-man's Treasury (London, 1674), B1, 2.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Weston, Thomas Ancillia Calligraphiae or the hand-maid to fair writing (1682?).Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Ibid.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Billingsley, The Pen's Excellencie, C2–C2v.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Ibid., C1v–C2. Writing also enabled women to keep diaries and maintain accounts, according to Billingsley. John Davies criticized the many writing masters who limited women to the Roman hand, even though “women have as much facility in joyning, and are as nimble handed in all manuall qualities… as men.” Davies, The Writing Schoolemaster, B2v.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ The paucity of feminine references in the copybooks leads Jonathan Goldberg to observe that the manuals “scarcely seem aware of the fact that women might write.” Goldberg, Writing Matters, 138. Although female writing masters were not unknown in England as Tamara Plakins Thornton suggests was the case in America, they were rare, with Heal including only four females in his 450 biographies of writing masters. Thornton, Handwriting in America, 7; Heal, The Writing Masters. Google Scholar

⁵¹ Browne, David The New Invention (St. Andrews, 1622), 1–2v.Google Scholar

⁵² Browne, David An Introduction to the True Understanding of the Whole Arte of Expedition (1638), B4–B4v.Google Scholar

⁵³ Ayres, A Tutor to Penmanship, part II preface.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Mulcaster, Richard also discussed handwriting's role as a preparation for the grammar school. Mulcaster, Positions, 31–4.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ Brinsley, Ludus Literarius, 27–8.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ Hoole, A New Discovery of the Old Art of Teaching School (London, 1660; reprint edition, Syracuse, NY: C.W. Bardeen 1912), 301–7.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Ibid., 301–5. Hodder, James the London writing master for Hoole's pupils, authored a copybook entitled Hodder's Remaines or A New Twelve Penny Copy Book (1675?).Google Scholar

⁵⁸ Brinsley, Ludus Literarius, 38.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ Dekker, Thomas “Westward Ho,“ in The Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker, ed., Bowers, Fredson vol. 2 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1955), 332–3.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ Hoole, A New Discovery, 302.Google Scholar

⁶¹ Brinsley, Ludus Literarius, 27 37–8. Brinsley also complained that “very often so soone as ever these Scriveners are gone, the Schollars whom they have taught, doe forget what they seemed to have gotten by them, unlesse they be kept to practice their writing daily. So that cost and time is commonly lost” (38).Google Scholar

⁶² Billingsley, The Pen's Excellencie, B4; Davies, The Writing Schoolmaster, A4.Google Scholar

⁶³ Browne, The New Invention, 6.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ Browne, Introduction, Blv.Google Scholar

⁶⁵ Matlock, Fax Nova Artis Scribendi, 4 16. William Elder's The Modish-Penman (1691) represented the extreme of Matlock's view, promising on its title page “Directions whereby, any Person can attain to write any of those Hands, with little practice.”Google Scholar

⁶⁶ Michael Apple notes a similar deskilling process in contemporary education. Apple, Michael W. “Teaching and Technology: The Hidden Effects of Computers on Teachers and Students,“ in The Curriculum: Problems, Politics, and Possibilities, Beyer, Landon E. and Apple, Michael W. ed., (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1988), 289–311.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ Browne, The New Invention, 7v–8, 193–4.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ Davies, The Writing Schoolmaster, B3.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ Johnson, J. A new Copie Booke of the Usual Hands of England (London, 1667), 3.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ Vincent, W.A.L. The Grammar Schools: Their Continuing Tradition, 1660–1714 (London: John Murray, 1969), 16–22, 191–219, passim.Google Scholar

⁷¹ Vincent, The Grammar Schools, 214 218.Google Scholar

⁷² Rothblatt, Tradition and Change, 25.Google Scholar

⁷³ Ayres, A Tutor to Penmanship, 22.Google Scholar

⁷⁴ Heal, The English Writing-Masters, 7; Vincent, The Grammar Schools, 214.Google Scholar

⁷⁵ For additional thoughts on the decline of the writing master in both England and America, see Jenkinson, “The Teaching and Practice of Handwriting in England,” 217–8 and Thornton, Handwriting in America, 46.Google Scholar