Note 358 — Chapter XII · OBLIGATORY CIVIL MARRIAGE IN THE NEW ENGLAND COLONIES

An important epoch in the history of social progress is reached when our New England ancestors recognized the support of popular education as a proper function of local government. The event is all the more remarkable because it led the development of thought in the mother-country by more than two centuries and a half. However, the primary motive of the Massachusetts act of 1647 for the establishment of elementary and grammar schools was to provide religious knowledge. "It being one cheife p'iect of yt ould deluder, Satan, to keepe men from the knowledge of ye Scriptures, as in formr times by keeping ym in an unknowne tongue, so in these lattr times by p'swading from ye use of tongues, yt so at least ye true sence & meaning of ye originall might be clouded by false glosses of saint seeming deceivers, yt learning may not be buried in ye grave of or fathrs in ye church & co[=m]onwealth," etc.—Mass. Col. Rec., II, 203. Cf. also Howard, Local Const. Hist., I, 66-70; and idem, "The State University in America," Atlantic Monthly, LXVII (1891), 332 ff.