\paperw5085 \margr0\margl0 \plain \fs20 \f1 \fs22 Education during the Elizabethan period was the prerogative of the gentry, since peasants and farm labourers learnt all they nee
ded to know from the changing seasons, the sky and the land. Formal teaching in the grammar schools was closely related to the Church, largely catering to those destined to take up an ecclesiastical career. However, æreformedÆ religion had already intr
oduced church services in English rather than in Latin, and essentially called for greater literacy on the part of its adherents. Thus the gentry, who had hitherto been apprenticed in other great households, began to undergo a more formalised education
in \ATXnt901 schools and universities\ATXnt0 . In fact the period saw a great expansion within the existing English and Scottish universities, with new colleges being founded to strengthen Protestantism in both \b \cf4 \ATXht12351000 Oxford and Cambridg
e\b0 \cf0 \ATXht0 . An increasing number of the gentry not intending a Church career spent time at the universities after around 1550. One third of the English Members of Parliament were university men in 1563, whereas by 1593 over half of them were un
