are generally so flagrant and obvious that an intelligent man with a very little experience has no difficulty in exposing them; and yet the apprentice himself is probably quite unconscious of them. It should also be remembered that in this country the whole movement is so young that it is not yet possible to secure men of ripe experience and wide reputation for all the training posts that are to be filled. It must needs be that some appointments will be somewhat experimental in character; and if here and there the success of the experiment be a little doubtful, that will not be a proof that training is useless, but only that we are lamentably late in instituting it. The second point made by our objector to the practical training is that the atmosphere of the class-room where criticism lessons go on is artificial; the presence of other adults beside the teacher makes it impossible that the boys should be as boyish as they often are when pitted against him alone. To put it bluntly, they cannot 'rag.' This is doubtless true, but it comes to a good deal less than appears at first sight. Most middle-aged men have got a very erroneous conception of the modern problems of class teaching. Their minds are stored with blurred recollections of a 'high old time' which they and their compeers used to spend in making life miserable for some unfortunate usher thirty-five years ago. On the one side, impudence; on the other, impotence; ingenious cruelty against resourceless weakness; a prevailing din without, and within an exultant sense of law defied and opportunities of learning thrown away for ever. Strange and wonderful scenes, records of unheard-of barbarism and rough Teutonic vitality! But for weal or woe they are gone. Modern school life, except for a quite occasional revival of the old spirit, knows them no more. The twentieth-century boy has learnt decorum, and the change is well-nigh incredible. It may be put quite shortly in this way. Whereas formerly the most pressing problem was to safeguard himself against tumult and effrontery, the schoolmaster of to-day has to think less of this than of apathy and peaceful inattention. Those are his worst enemies in class; and to meet them successfully he need not be a man of commanding presence or of terrific pluck, like Keate, but he must be a fairly good teacher. His class don't want to 'rag' him, nor do they exactly wish to use their brains in the right way; but they want, vaguely, to 'get on' or definitely to pass some examination; and if the master does not help them by his teaching, they will not throw things at him as they once did, but they will slumber. And methods whereby boys can be kept awake can be learnt. The last plea put forward by opponents of professional training touches on a matter of great social importance. It will be in the knowledge of my readers that the movement for training at length took definite shape in the Regulations of the Board of Education, VOL. LVII-No. 340 3 Q which give the conditions under which a teacher can be registered. Among them is a certain amount of obligatory professional training. Now it is a grave fact, full of ominous meaning for the future of the country, that the supply of men ready to become secondary schoolmasters has greatly fallen off since about 1895. There is seldom a conference among schoolmasters at which the subject is not discussed or alluded to, and, strange to say, a general rise of salary is advocated as the best remedy. The phenomenon, however, is pointed to by the opponents of training, who urge that it is most unwise, when the supply of men is insufficient, to make the road into the profession more difficult than before by these regulations and by compulsory training. A word first about salaries. It is, I believe, an acknowledged fact that in the humbler kinds of secondary schools salaries of men teachers are disgracefully low, and those of women teachers even worse. But when a rise of salary is held to be the sovereign remedy, it is well to remember that in the days when the market' was overflowing with applicants for schoolmasterships, and the shrinkage had not begun, salaries were even worse than they are now. This, of course, is a statement difficult to prove; but salaries could hardly be lower than they were in 1890, and since then the upward tendency of all salaries and wages for work has been most marked. And if it is urged in answer that other professions are now competing against teaching, and have raised their salaries, therefore schools must raise theirs, we may ask, Where is this mad competition to stop? And the remark might have some practical value if it were not that the Government Civil Service is the chief competitor against us, offering 400l. per annum, a social status, and a pension after many years of work, it is true far less interesting in most cases than a schoolmaster's, but probably less exacting on the whole. It has been asserted that in 1902, 70 per cent. of the first classmen of Oxford and Cambridge were engulphed into the capacious maw of the Government offices. Things were not so in 1890. Nor can it be supposed that the best use, or anything like it, is made of the good brain power of these men when once they have been absorbed. But be that as it may, that is the vortex down which they are plunged, and it seems absurd to use the diminished numbers of the candidates for teachers' posts as an argument against training. Whatever be the deterrent influence of the regulations, they can hardly frighten away one to a hundred of those who are dazzled by the attractions of a big initial salary, a social position, and a pension. Rather, it is reasonable to suppose that the profession will gain in esteem when it is known that it is no longer the only one into which all sorts of failures and nondescript flotsam and jetsam among the young men of the country may penetrate wholly without let or hindrance. To sum up, then, I would admit that extravagant claims have been put forward on behalf of the professional training of secondary teachers, and that it is probable that the benefits to be derived from it will never be of the showy and dazzling type, though they can scarcely fail to obtain general recognition as years go on. In the meantime, however, it is little short of gross unreasonableness for anyone who knows the difficulties of class teaching to deride the attempt the Government is now making to give men a better initial equipment for their task; and that this is still done seems to be a symptom of the remarkable disbelief in thoroughness of preparation which still characterises English people. E. LYTTELTON. THE FATE OF OLIVER CROMWELL'S REMAINS In the long and varied annals of Westminster Abbey there has been one event which stands altogether by itself; it was without precedent, and it has been without sequel. It is the only act of public sacrilege which has taken place within the walls of the Abbey Church. The ancient cloisters of Edward the Confessor, which have been the silent witnesses of every coronation in English history, have seen no other event similar to this. Its date was the 26th of January, 1661. while the event itself is unhappily notorious, the circumstances connected with it or arising out of it cannot but suggest to historical research some highly interesting questions. But Beneath the eastern wall of the Abbey Church, within the Chapel of King Henry the Seventh, and immediately behind Torregiano's stately monument, where the tumult of the Wars of the Roses was laid to rest in the grave of the last Lancastrian king and his wife, Elizabeth of York, is a plain slab of stone bearing the inscription: IN THIS VAULT WAS INTERRED OLIVER CROMWELL 1658 AND IN OR NEAR IT HENRY IRETON HIS SON IN LAW 1651 ALSO OFFICERS OF HIS ARMY AND COUNCIL HUMPHREY MACKWORTH 1654 JOHN BRADSHAW 1659 (PRESIDENT OF THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE) THESE WERE REMOVED IN 1661 Dean Stanley (Historical Memorials of Westminster Abbey, chap. iii. p. 161, 8th edit.) seems to be wrong in specifying the eve of the 30th of January, 1661' as the day on which Cromwell's body was dug up.' The remains of the great Protector and his mother and sister and the most intimate and highly honoured of his friends and associates are no longer there; they were disinterred (according to the inscription) at the Restoration; they were carried, as is traditionally believed, some to Tyburn, others to St. Margaret's Churchyard; the heads of Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw were set up on the roof of Westminster Hall; and for the time at least the fact that their bodies had reposed, even for a year or two, in the hallowed precincts of Westminster Abbey was, as far as possible, blotted out of remembrance. 'No mark,' says Dean Stanley, 'was left to indicate the spot where Oliver, with his kindred, lay beneath his stately hearse.' 2 But there was one exception. Not far from the grave of the Protector, in the same chapel, but on the north side of the altar of King Edward the Sixth, lay, and still lies, the body of ELIZABETH CLAYPOLE DAUGHTER OF OLIVER CROMWELL How it came about that the Protector's favourite daughter was buried and remained in death apart from him, although so near to his resting-place, and that, when the bodies of her family were ruthlessly disinterred, hers was suffered to remain in peace, it is not perhaps now possible to determine. It will be enough to say that a strangely pathetic interest attaches to her grave-the solitary remaining memorial of an event as unique in the history of the Abbey as was the Protectorate in the history of England.3 The task which I propose to myself is to see if it is possible to trace the fate of Cromwell's remains; and I ought to confess at once that, in carrying it out, I have received so much help from Mr. Herbert, of the British Museum, as to entitle him rather than myself to such credit (if any be due) as may arise from the light which I hope to shed upon a rather obscure historical problem. For the legends which have gathered round the remains of Oliver are, in Mr. Frederic Harrison's opinion, almost as strange as those which are told of Alexander, Charlemagne, or Barbarossa.' 4 It will be convenient, then, to set down certain facts in chronological order. (1) Oliver Cromwell died at Whitehall on the afternoon of the 3rd of September, 1658.5 The authorities who relate his death generally observe (a) that it took place on the anniversary of his victories 2 Historical Memorials of Westminster Abbey, chap. iii. p. 162. • Elizabeth Claypole died August 6, 1658. Cromwell, who is said to have injured his own health by attending her in her last illness, never got over the sorrow of her death. Oliver Cromwell, p. 228. ⚫ Bishop Burnet says he died of so slight a sickness that his death was not looked for' (History of My Own Time, chap. v. p. 147, Airy's edit.). |