Parliamentary grants are to be made (1) to school boards, (2) to the managers of any school which is efficiently contributing to secular education. No grant shall be made m respect of (1) religious instruction, (2) new schools, not being public schools, unless it appears that they are required regard being had to the religious belief of the parents of the children for whom they are intended, or other special circumstances of the locality. Section 68 is the conscience clause, and it may be mentioned that the preamble of the Act states that it is expedient that managers of public schools should be at liberty to continue the custom ot giving "instruction in religion to children whose parents did not object, with liberty to parents, without forfeiting any of the other advantages of the schools, to elect that their children should not receive such instruction." Section 69 imposes on parents the duty of providing elementary instruction for children between five and thirteen and the parochial board shall pay the fee for poor parents. Defaulters may be prosecuted ; and persons receiving children into their houses or workshops shall be deemed to have undertaken the duties of parents with reference to the education of children. A certificate of the child s proficiency by an inspector protects the parent or employer from proceedings under the Act. Other clauses relate to the non-educational duties imposed by various Acts on schoolmasters (now transferred to registrars), and to the " Schoolmasters Widows Fund," to which new masters are not required to contribute.
The Education Board, continued by Order in Council to 6th August 1877, has been further continued by statute to 6th August 1878.
Ireland.—The public elementary school system depends on grants made to the lord-lieutenant, to be expended under the direction of commissioners nominated by the Crown, and named " The Commissioners of National Education." The commissioners were incorporated by this name in 1845, with power to hold land to the yearly value of 40,000. The following statement, taken from the rules and regula tions of the commissioners appended to their report for 1873, exhibits the leading points of the system as contrasted with that now established in England and Scotland.
"The object of the system of national education is to afford combined Literary and moral and separate religious instruction to children of all persuasions, as far as possible in the same school, upon the fundamental principle that no attempt shall be made to interfere with the peculiar religious tenets of any description of Christian pupils. It is an earnest wish of Her Majesty s Government and of the commissioners that the clergy and laity of the different religious denominations should co-operate in conducting national schools."
The commissioners grant aid either to vested schools (i.e., schools vested in themselves, or in local trustees to be maintained by them as national schools) or to non-vested (i.e., private schools), arid the grant may be towards pay ment of salary or supply of books, or, in the case of vested schools, towards providing buildings.
The local government of the national schools is vested in the local patrons or managers thereof, and the local patron is the person who applies in the first instance to place the school in connection with the board, unless otherwise specified. The patron may manage the school by himself or by a deputy. If the school is controlled by a committee or vested in trustees, they are the patrons. A patron may nominate his successor, and in case of death, his legal representative if he was a layman, and his successor in office if he was a clerical patron, will be recognized by the com missioners. The local patrons have the power of appoint ing and removing teachers, subject to a rule requiring three months notice to the teacher. Every national school must be visited three times a year by inspectors.
In non-vested schools, the commissioners do not in general make any conditions as to the use of the building after school hours ; but no national school house shall be employed at any time, even temporarily, as the stated place of divine worship of any religious community, and no grant will be made to a school held in a place of worship. In all national schools there must be secular instruction four hours a day upon five days in the week. Religious instruc tion must be so arranged that each school shall be open to the children of all communions, that due regard be had to parental right and authority, and that accordingly no child shall receive or be present at any religious instruction of which his parents or guardians disapprove. In non-vested schools it is for the patrons and local managers to determine whether any and what religious instruction shall be given. In all national schools, the patrons have the right to permit the Scriptures to be read; and in all vested schools they must afford opportunities for the same, if the parents or guardians require it.
EDWARD, or Eadward I., king of the Anglo-Saxons, was the eldest son of Alfred the Great, and succeeded his father, by the voice of the Witan, 26th October 901. He was then about thirty years of age, and had already in 893 distinguished himself by inflicting a disastrous defeat on the Danes at Farnham. His election to the throne was disputed by his cousin Ethelwold, who, leaguing himself with the Danes of Northumbria, waged with varying success a civil war of four years' duration. It was brought to a close in 906 by Ethelwold's death in battle, when Edward concluded a peace with the East Anglians and Northumbrians. The pacification was not, however, of a very satisfactory nature, and was not of long continuance, for in 910 Edward "sent out a force of West Saxons and Mercians, who greatly spoiled the army of the north," and in 911 the Danes, receiving large reinforcements from France, made repeated attacks on Wessex and Mercia. Against this common enemy Edward and his sister Ethelfleda, who became " lady of Mercia" in 912, formed conjoint measures. Ethelfleda drove the Danes from Mercia, and to secure her conquests erected the fortresses of Bridgenorth, Stafford, Tamworth, and Warwick ; while Edward, by adopting the same methods in East Anglia and Essex, gradually accomplished the complete subjugation of the Danes. On the death of Ethelfleda in 922 he annexed Mercia to his own crown, and became king of all England south of the Humber. But this was not the whole result of his victories, for the Danes of Northumbria, the Welsh, the Scots, and the Britons of Strathclyde, either from dread of his power or from desire for his protection, voluntarily chose him to be their " father and lord." He died in 925. Inferior to his father in the higher moral and intellectual qualities, Edward manifested gifts superior to his as a legislator and warrior ; and under him the Anglo-Saxon rule attained a fame and influence to which it had never before made a near approximation.
EDWARD, or Eadward II., surnamed the Martyr, an Anglo-Saxon king, succeeded his father Edgar in 975, at the age of about thirteeen years. He was the elder son of Edgar, and is said to have been recommended by him as his successor; but the party in the state opposed to the monks supported nevertheless the claims of his younger brother Ethelred, son of Elfrida, and only seven years of age. The influence of Dunstan was, however, sufficiently great to overbear all opposition, and in a somewhat summary fashion he presented Edward to the Witan at Winchester, and consecrated him king. During his short reign the only circumstances worthy of notice are the quarrels between the two parties in the state, and the rapid decline of the authority of Dunstan and the monks. The death of Edward, which occurred in 978, was the result of a base act of treachery on the part of Elfrida. He was returning exhausted from the chase at Wareham when he was lured to her residence, and was stabbed in the back while partaking of hospitality before her palace gate.
surnamed, on account of his reputation for superior sanctity, the Confessor, was the son of Ethelred II. and Emma, daughter of Richard I. of Normandy, and was born at Islip, Oxfordshire, probably in 1004. On the election
of Swend to the throne of England in 1013, Emma with