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“Set Them to the Cyphering Schoole”: Reading, Writing, and Arithmetical Education, circa 1540–1700

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 July 2017

Jessica Otis
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Abstract

During the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, English men and women replaced their existing oral and object-based arithmetical practices with literate practices based on Arabic numerals. While the adoption of Arabic numerals was incentivized by continental commercial developments, this article argues that England's increasing literacy rates and the development of vernacular arithmetic textbooks enabled changing arithmetical practices. By exploring the qualities of printed books, analyzing marginalia in arithmetic textbooks, and examining changing educational advertisements and curricula over time, we can demonstrate the importance of literacy and literature to early modern arithmetical education.

Keywords

mathematicsarithmeticnumeracyliteracyeducationwritingtextbooksmarginaliaRobert RecordeHumfrey BakerEdward Cocker
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 56 , Issue 3 , July 2017 , pp. 453 - 482
Copyright
Copyright © The North American Conference on British Studies 2017 

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84 Robert Norton had previously translated a Dutch treatise on decimal arithmetic and published it in 1608. Stevin, Simon, Disme: the Art of Tenths, or, Decimall Arithmetike, trans. Norton, Robert (London, 1608)Google Scholar; Recorde, Robert, The Grounde of Artes, ed. Dee, John, Mellis, John, and Norton, Robert (London, 1615), A1rGoogle Scholar.

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100 Ibid., 65, 71–85.

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102 Schoolmasters’ licenses rarely survived in full, as they were kept by individual schoolmasters in their private records. Instead, most instances of licenses come from ecclesiastical visitations, where the contents of licenses were summarized for the visitation record. Cressy, David, Education in Tudor and Stuart England (New York, 1975), 32 Google Scholar.

103 In this usage, accidence signifies the “branch of grammar which deals with the inflection of words, grammatical morphology.” OED, s.v., “accidence, n 2”; Cressy, Education, 33–34.

104 Cressy, Literacy, 36.

105 Ibid., 35–41.

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111 Cressy, Literacy, 30; Charlton, Women, Religion and Education, 149.

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113 See, for example, The ABC with The Catechisme: That is to say, an Instruction to bee taught and learned of euery Child, before he be brought to be confirmed by the Bishop (London, 1633)Google Scholar, which was reprinted at various times throughout the seventeenth century.

114 White, John, The Country-Man's Conductor in reading and writing true English … and some arithmetical rules to be learnt by children, before or as soon as they are put to Writing (Exeter, 1701), A1r, A5vGoogle Scholar.

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116 Thomas, “Meaning of Literacy,” 102–3.

117 Jewell, Education, 85–86.

118 Brinsley, Ludus Literarius, 25.

119 Jewell, Education, 84.

120 Although the grammar school was teaching Arabic numerals and ciphering as early as 1597, the school's various accountants used Roman numerals to record monetary entries and sums until 1669/70. Stocks, George Alfred, ed., The Records of Blackburn Grammar School, Remains, Historical and Literary, connected with the Palatine Counties of Lancashire and Chester, n.s., 66 (Manchester, 1909), 1:73Google Scholar.

121 Ibid., 1:74.

122 Cressy, Education, 65.

123 Lilly, William, Merlini Anglici Ephemeris: Or, Astrological Judgments for the year 1677 (London, 1677), F8vGoogle Scholar.

124 Mellis advertised his school in the versions of Recorde's The Ground of Artes that he edited, from 1582 until 1607. His advertisement also appeared in the 1610 edition, “now lastly corrected by John Wade,” but was replaced by N. Physhe in the 1615 edition. Recorde, Ground of Artes (1607), Mm8r; Recorde, Ground of Artes (1610), A1r; Recorde, Records Arithmeticke (1615), Oo3v.

125 Ruth Wallis, “Hodder, James (fl. 1659–1673), arithmetician,” ODNB, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/13416.

126 Ruth Wallis, “Cocker, Edward (1631/2–1676), calligrapher and arithmetician,” ODNB, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/5779.

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130 Green, Humanism, 310.

131 Minns, Chris and Wallis, Patrick, “Rules and Reality: Quantifying the Practice of Apprenticeship in Early Modern England,” Economic History Review 65, no. 2 (May 2012): 556–79, at 559CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wallis, Patrick, “Apprenticeship and Training in Premodern England,” Journal of Economic History 68, no. 3 (September 2008): 832–61, at 836CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

132 Willis, Arthur J. and Merson, A. L., eds., A Calendar of Southampton Apprenticeship Registers, 1609–1740 (Southampton, 1968), 19 Google Scholar.

133 John Rigges, apprenticed in 1611 to his uncle, was to be instructed in his uncle's trade and “alsoe to be enxtructed in all other trades or sciences as the said Frauncis Rigges shall use during the said terme.” Ibid., 2.

134 Vanes, Education and Apprenticeship, 21.

135 Willis and Merson, Calendar, 86.

136 Ibid., 38.