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Margaret Thatcher
Margaret
Thatcher
A Life and Legacy

D A V I D CA N N A D I N E

1
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 29/11/2016, SPi

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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 29/11/2016, SPi

In memory of
Mrs Thurman
‘The full accounting of how my political
work affected the lives of others is something
we will only know on Judgment Day.’
(Margaret Thatcher, 1995)1
 TABLE O F CON TEN TS

Preface viii

1. Bound for Politics, 1925–59 1

2. Unexpected Leader, 1959–79 13
3. Challenging Beginnings, 1979–81 28
4. Victory Overseas, 1981–83 39
5. Enemies Within, 1983–86 59
6. Thatcherism Triumphant? 1986–89 79
7. Isolation and Defenestration, 1989–90 97
8. Aftermath and Afterlife, 1990–2013 111

Endnotes 127
Guide to Further Reading 133
Dramatis Personae 137
Glossary 147
Chronology 151
Opinion Polls 155
Index 156

vii
 PREFACE

I first encountered what was in retrospect Margaret

Thatcher’s avatar and anticipation during the autumn of
1955, when I began my formal education as a pupil at a
state-funded, Church of England primary school on the
western side of Birmingham. The school’s headmistress
was ‘Mrs Thurman’ (or ‘Mrs T’), and she was a figure by
turns unforgettable, intimidating, charismatic, and inspir-
ational. She was always impeccably coiffured, she often
wore well-cut blue suits, she was tirelessly and overwhelm-
ingly energetic, and when she lost her temper she was
utterly terrifying, reducing not only her errant pupils, but
also grown men, to quivering jelly and tearful wrecks. She
was a brilliant headmistress. Her motto for her school was
‘Only the best is good enough’, and she constantly urged
us all to strive to make the most that we could of ourselves.
It was not until later life that I came to realize just how
much I owed her. Unlike many in the teaching profession
of her day, Mrs Thurman was a staunch Conservative;
she was also a committed Christian, and a vehement
anti-Communist, and I can still recall the speech she gave,
at a morning assembly in 1956, denouncing the Soviet
 Preface

invasion of Hungary as an unconscionable act of tyranny

and aggression.
So when Margaret Thatcher burst upon the British polit-
ical scene during the 1970s, initially as Secretary of State for
Education, and subsequently as Conservative Party leader
and Prime Minister, I thought that I already knew some-
thing about this second ‘Mrs T’: for in her appearance,
energy, demeanour, and attitudes she seemed to bear a
close resemblance to Mrs Thurman, albeit multiplied by a
hundred. For most of the 1980s, I lived and worked in
Britain, and, like many people, I regarded Thatcher as in
some ways admirable, but in others difficult to take. From
1988 to 1998, I taught British history at Columbia Univer-
sity in New York: Thatcher was a marvellous subject on
which to lecture, she invested Britain and thus British his-
tory with renewed interest and fascination for a transatlan-
tic audience, and she was warmly and widely admired by
American Republicans, who could not understand why her
own party had turned against her in November 1990. On
returning to work in the United Kingdom, I found myself
sitting on a University of London committee that Margaret
Thatcher chaired, and the early impressions that I had
formed of her were amply confirmed. She was past her
prime-ministerial prime, but it did not require much imagina-
tion to recognize and appreciate how impressive she must
have been at the peak of her powers, both in terms of the
extraordinary force of her intimidating personality and her
complete mastery of the business in hand.
By the time Thatcher died in 2013 she had been in public
life for more than forty years, she had been the dominant

ix
Preface

figure in Britain during the 1980s, I had seen how she had
been regarded on both sides of the Atlantic, and thanks to
my earlier encounters with Mrs Thurman I had, albeit
inadvertently, been given more than just an inkling of the
remarkable person that she undoubtedly was. So when, two
years ago, my colleagues at the Oxford Dictionary of National
Biography urged that I should contribute the entry on her,
I found the invitation – and the challenge – irresistible. It
would be the largest entry for any twentieth-century prime
minister since Churchill’s, but with the added complication
that while some people regarded her, like him, as having
been the saviour of her country, others saw her in a com-
pletely different light. ‘Divisive’ was the word often used to
describe Thatcher, by friend and foe alike, during her decade
of power and on into her retirement, and it continues to be
applied in the years since her death. In writing my entry on
her, I sought to be as even-handed as possible, viewing her
with what I regard as a necessary and deserving combination
of sympathy (she was a major historical figure, with many
admirable qualities) and detachment (her critics, both inside
the Conservative Party and far beyond, often had a case,
although not invariably so).
While I was working on my ODNB entry, Oxford Univer-
sity Press also decided to publish it as a separate, stand-alone
volume. Although my essay on Thatcher is one of the largest
in the Dictionary, it makes for a relatively concise book when
put between hard covers. As many authors have observed,
from Pascal onwards, writing short carries with it as many
challenges as writing long, and having produced histories
and biographies not only at length but also more briefly,

x
 Preface

I am well aware of just how different those challenges are.

And while history and biography are often regarded as close
and kindred activities, anyone who has tried their hand at
both genres also knows that in some ways the approaches
and sensibilities they require are far from being the same. In
the pages that follow, I have tried to give fitting attention
to each stage of Thatcher’s remarkable career, and to do as
much justice as the constraints of space allowed to the many
issues by which she was preoccupied in her public life. I have
also sought to set her biography in a broader historical
context, and to view her prime ministership from the
longer-term perspective that is now available, more than
a quarter of a century since she ceased to hold the office.
As such, this slim volume makes no claim to anticipate
or provide the ‘full accounting’ of Judgment Day to which
Thatcher attached such importance, but it does offer
what I hope is a readable and reliable version of her life
for our times.
In writing the original ODNB entry, and in preparing it for
publication as a book, my first thanks go to my colleagues at
the Dictionary, Philip Carter, Mark Curthoys and (especially)
Alex May, and to Jo Payne of Oxford University Press, not
only for persuading me to take on this task, but also for their
sustained help, constant engagement, and encouraging sup-
port while I was discharging and completing it. Three exem-
plary Britons, namely Charles Moore, Stuart Proffitt, and
Peter Riddell, made detailed and penetrating comments
on my earlier drafts, correcting errors of fact, and greatly
improving my final text. Four good American friends, Gary
MacDowell, Emerson S. Moore, and Dan and Michelle

xi
Preface

Waterman, constantly reminded me of the importance of

the transatlantic dimension and perspective. Linda Colley
and I lived through most of the 1980s together, and much
that I have written here has been influenced by her views
and informed by her recollections. And from the beginning
to the end of this enterprise, the daunting and demanding
shade of Mrs Thurman has never been far away. I dare to
hope that she would have approved of the result, and that
she might even have recognized some reflections of herself
in the pages that follow.
David Cannadine
Princeton
13 October 2016

xii
 1
Bound for Politics,
1925–59

‘I did not grow up with the sense of division and

conflict between classes.’
(Margaret Thatcher, 1995)1

‘[Margaret] always stood out because teenage girls

don’t know where they’re going. She did.’
(Shirley Ellis, a childhood friend)2

Grantham to Oxford

Margaret Hilda Roberts was born at 1 North Parade, Grantham,

Lincolnshire, on 13 October 1925, the younger daughter of
Alfred Roberts and his wife, Beatrice Ethel, née Stephenson.
Although she distanced herself from her hometown at the
earliest opportunity, and seldom felt nostalgic towards it in
her years of power and fame, Grantham was very important
in the life and mental make-up of the woman who achieved
national renown and international celebrity as ‘Mrs Thatcher’.
Situated at the north-eastern extremity of the English midlands,

1
Thatcher: A Life and Legacy

Grantham was a provincial market town, on the main road

(A1) and the east coast railway line (LNER) from London to
Edinburgh, with a population holding steady at about
20,000 throughout the inter-war years. There was little by
way of heavy industry or a factory-based working class, and
its civic politics were largely consensual and non-partisan—
except, as Thatcher remembered and regretted, in the case of
the Labour Party. The local grandees were the Brownlows,
who lived nearby at Belton House, and the fifth Baron
Brownlow was serving as mayor of Grantham in 1925, the
year of Margaret’s birth. There was no large-scale unemploy-
ment of the kind that was found in the manufacturing
towns and cities of the north, but Grantham shared the
hardships of the late 1920s and early 1930s, and in the
economic recovery that came later in the years immediately
before the Second World War. Despite the excellent rail and
road connections north and south, the great cities of Lon-
don and Edinburgh were far away, not only geographically,
but culturally and socially as well.
Inter-war Grantham was a somewhat claustrophobic pool,
where Alfred Roberts was becoming a big fish when his
second daughter (he and Beatrice had no more children)
was born. His father had been a Northamptonshire boot-
maker, from whom he may have inherited his unostenta-
tious Liberal politics; and in his sustained determination to
improve himself, and to be of service to his fellow citizens,
Margaret’s father might have stepped straight from the
pages of Samuel Smiles’s Self-Help, a book which later
became talismanic to his younger daughter. He had left
school at thirteen because, being one of a large family, he

2
 Bound for Politics

needed to earn his living, and he went into the grocery

trade. But he was also eager to make his way in the world,
and this he did by voracious reading, and by his active
involvement in the Methodist church. By the time he
moved to Grantham and married Beatrice Stephenson, he
had saved enough money to acquire a shop on North Par-
ade, and not long before Margaret was born he opened a
second store on Huntingtower Road. From this base Alfred
Roberts launched himself into the civic life of the town: he
was a lay preacher at the Methodist chapel; he became a
Rotarian and a justice of the peace; he was a local councillor,
elected as an Independent; he was a governor of Kesteven
and Grantham Girls’ School; and he would later become an
alderman and serve as mayor of Grantham in 1945–6.
Margaret Roberts was born above the family shop, and her
upbringing was spartan: there was no garden, the lavatory
was outside, and there was no hot water. Her parents were
not rich, although the family business would prosper in a
modest sort of way. But Alfred Roberts loathed any form
of extravagance and hated anything that smacked of self-
indulgence. The domestic regime over which he presided
was austere and puritanical, joyless, and lacking in warmth.
At least twice every Sunday, Margaret and her sister, Muriel,
were taken to worship at the Finkin Street Methodist
Church, where their father often preached the sermon.
From an early age the girls were taught the importance of
order, precision, and attention to detail; they were escorted
on weekly visits to the local library to borrow improving
books; as soon as they were old enough, they served behind
the counter in the family shop; conversation at home was

3
Thatcher: A Life and Legacy

earnest and high-minded; and Alfred and Beatrice rarely

took holidays. Thrift, hard work, self-help, self-reliance, and
self-improvement were the governing imperatives of the
Roberts household; duty invariably came before pleasure,
and public service before personal gratification. Integrity
mattered above all else, and it was important to hold opin-
ions because they were right, not because they were popular.
These were the lessons learned, and the virtues internal-
ized, by the young Margaret Roberts, and as prime minister
she would later celebrate them as the ‘Victorian values’
which she believed had made the United Kingdom great
in the past, and which under her leadership would make
it great again. ‘We were Methodists’, she would recall,
invoking one aspect of her father’s legacy, ‘and Methodist
means method’.3 ‘Those poor shopkeepers!’, she allegedly
exclaimed in the summer of 1981, invoking another,
on hearing of the damaged retail stores in the Toxteth
riots.4 When prime minister, Thatcher would declare
that she owed ‘almost everything’ to her father.5 Her rela-
tions with her mother were never as close. Yet Margaret
learned more from Beatrice than she would later admit, for
although she would never be a conventional housewife,
she liked to clean, to sew, and to decorate and furnish the
places where she lived; she would often provide late-night
meals for her personal staff at 10 Downing Street; and she
would elevate the domestic verities of hearth and home
into governing principles and political imperatives. ‘Some
say I preach merely the homilies of housekeeping or the
parables of the parlour’, she told the lord mayor’s banquet
in November 1982. ‘But I do not repent. Those parables

4
 Bound for Politics

would have saved many a financier from failure and many

a country from crisis’.6
Alfred Roberts was self-made and self-taught, but he was
determined that his daughters should be given every educa-
tional opportunity he had been denied. Both girls attended
the local primary school, and later went on to Kesteven and
Grantham Girls’ School, of whose governors Roberts would
eventually become chairman. Margaret won a scholarship,
she was serious, intelligent, competitive, and hard-working,
possessed great powers of concentration, and was already
hyperactive and seemed able to get by with very little sleep.
She kept her distance from the other girls, and in later life
would prefer the company of men to that of women; but
she also played hockey for the school team, liked dancing
and going to the cinema, and evinced an early interest in
elegant and stylish clothes. She also took elocution classes,
won prizes for recitations, and became a confident and
well-prepared debater. She sat her school certificate in the
summer of 1941, and obtained distinctions in chemistry,
arithmetic, and algebra. In the sixth form she specialized in
the sciences, particularly chemistry, because she believed
they were ‘the way of the future’ (and she may have been
influenced by the fact that Grantham’s most famous son
was Sir Isaac Newton). She also evinced a growing fascin-
ation with the law, from seeing her father in action at the
magistrates’ court.
Margaret Roberts was brighter, more energetic, and
more ambitious than her sister, Muriel (who was training
in Birmingham to be a physiotherapist), and with the
encouragement of her father she set her sights on gaining

5
Thatcher: A Life and Legacy

a scholarship to Oxford University (the money would be

essential). She sat the exam for Somerville College in the
autumn of 1942, but narrowly failed to win an award;
instead she was offered an ordinary place for the autumn
of 1944, and resigned herself to filling in with an extra year
at school, of which she now became joint head girl. But
someone who had taken a place at Somerville for the
autumn of 1943 unexpectedly dropped out; it was offered
to Margaret Roberts and she accepted, her father being deter-
mined to pay the bills somehow. ‘Margaret’, her final school
report concluded, ‘is ambitious and deserves to do well’.7
She would become a lifelong admirer of grammar schools,
which she regarded as providing a ladder of opportunity
for people from unprivileged backgrounds, and when she
accepted a peerage in 1992 she took her territorial designa-
tion from her school, not from her home town. Yet this
would not prevent her, as secretary of state for education
between 1970 and 1974, from acquiescing, albeit reluc-
tantly, in the closure of more grammar schools than anyone
in her position has done, before or since.

The road to Westminster

Oxford would eventually provide the route whereby Margaret

Roberts escaped the cloying limitations of English provincial
life. But the ancient university town was far from Grantham
in more ways than one, and when she first appeared at Som-
erville, she had spent scarcely a night away from home. She
was initially apprehensive, homesick, and lonely, and having
failed to win a scholarship, was almost always short of

6
 Bound for Politics

money. Then, as later, her response to adversity was to work

harder than ever, and harder than anyone else. As at school,
she was an able and highly motivated student, but neither of
the academics with whom she came into the closest contact
considered her brilliant. Janet Vaughan, who became princi-
pal of Somerville in 1945, thought her ‘a perfectly good
second-class chemist’;8 while Dorothy Hodgkin, the future
Nobel laureate and probably the most eminent woman with
whom Margaret ever dealt (both would become members of
the Order of Merit), rated her as ‘good. One could always rely
on her producing a sensible, well-read essay’.9 Hodgkin
employed her as a research assistant during her fourth year,
and Margaret duly obtained a sound second-class degree. For
the rest of her life she retained a genuine interest in the
sciences. She would later claim that being the first prime
minister to have graduated in one of those subjects was a
more signal achievement than being the first woman to
occupy 10 Downing Street, and the speech she delivered to
the Royal Society in 1988 expressing concern about global
warming would be the first by a major world leader.
Somerville tended to be left-wing in its political sympa-
thies, and that was certainly true of Vaughan and Hodgkin.
But Margaret Roberts had already espoused a very different
creed, and once again her father was the formative figure.
By the mid-1930s Alfred Roberts had become a Conservative
in all but name: he disliked the Co-operative Party, which
controlled Labour in Grantham and was opposed to inde-
pendent shopkeepers like himself. At the general election
of 1935 he signed the nomination papers of the local Tory
candidate, Sir Victor Warrender, and at the time of Munich

7
Thatcher: A Life and Legacy

he was an ardent supporter of Neville Chamberlain and his

policy of appeasement. Margaret Roberts absorbed most (but
not all) of her father’s views, and her first direct involvement
in politics was working for Warrender on polling day. At
Somerville she joined the Oxford University Conservative
Association and in her final year became its president, the
highest political office to which a woman undergraduate
could then aspire, since membership of the Oxford Union
was restricted to men. She met such leading Tories as Peter
Thorneycroft (whom she made party chairman in 1975); she
campaigned in the general election of 1945 for Quintin
Hogg (who as Lord Hailsham she would appoint as her
lord chancellor in 1979); she reorganized the University
Conservative Association and increased membership; and,
as a young ‘representative’, she began to attend national
gatherings of the party faithful.
By the time she left Oxford in the summer of 1947
Margaret Roberts was a very different person from the anx-
ious and lonely figure who had arrived at Somerville four
years earlier. She would never fully conquer the insecurities
deriving from her lowly born status, but she was already set
on a political career, and her views were conventionally
Conservative: strong admiration for Winston Churchill, a
firm belief in the greatness of Britain and its empire, support
for the ideas of John Maynard Keynes and William Bever-
idge on employment and social security, and dismay at
the outcome of the general election of 1945 (and she read
F. A. Hayek’s Road to Serfdom, which attacked the idea of an
ever more intrusive state and reasserted the importance of
free-market freedom, although it made little impact on her

8
 Bound for Politics

at the time). But Oxford had not been all work and politics,
as she had discovered a broader and richer life than Gran-
tham had offered. For the University Conservative Associ-
ation was a social as well as a political organization, and
despite being constantly short of money, Margaret Roberts
enjoyed the dinners and the dances, and she always dressed
well, borrowing clothes and jewellery from her sister. Oxford
also provided her first boyfriends, and she took one of them,
Tony Bray, to Grantham, where he attended chapel with her
parents. But, by then, Margaret was distancing herself from
her family and her home-town, and although she remained
loyal to her father’s values and example her professional,
political, and personal lives would all be spent in London
and the south-east.
After graduation Margaret Roberts found work as a
research chemist, initially with British Xylonite Plastics,
located at Manningtree in Essex (which produced the mater-
ials for spectacle frames), and then with J. Lyons & Co. at
Hammersmith in London (where she tested the quality
of cake fillings and ice cream). But while these were her day
jobs, her real passion was politics, and thanks to the con-
nections she had made in Oxford, her assiduous attendance
at party conferences, and her impressive performance before
the selection committee, she was adopted as the prospective
parliamentary candidate for the Dartford constituency in
Kent. There was no chance that she would win, since it was
a safe Labour seat, but in the general elections of February
1950 and October 1951, when she was the youngest Conser-
vative candidate in the contests, she campaigned with energy
and determination, attracted considerable media attention,

9
Thatcher: A Life and Legacy

and reduced the Labour majority from 19,714 in 1945 to

13,638 in 1950, and 12,334 the following year. (The seat
was to remain in Labour hands until the 1970 election.) She
also continued to mix politics and pleasure. One boyfriend
was a Scottish farmer, Willie Cullen, who would later marry
her sister, Muriel; another was a doctor, Robert Henderson,
who was twice her age. On the evening of her adoption
meeting for Dartford she met a man who was ‘very reserved
but quite nice’, with ‘plenty of money’, and who was ‘a
perfect gentleman’.10 His name was Denis Thatcher, and he
and Margaret were married on 13 December 1951.
Like several of the men with whom she had gone out,
Denis Thatcher was considerably older than the woman
who would one day make his name world famous. He had
attended a public school, and had served as a staff officer in
the army during the Second World War, when he was men-
tioned in dispatches. He was active in the Dartford Conser-
vative Association, but he had no political ambitions
for himself. By the time he met Margaret Roberts he was
the manager of a prosperous family business, which made
paints, wood preservers, deck cleaners, and industrial chem-
icals, and for which he had worked, apart from the war years,
since 1934. He had married Margaret Kempson in 1942,
but by the time he was demobilized in 1946 she had left
him for another man, and they divorced soon after. Denis
was determined to remarry, but his careful courtship of
Margaret Roberts lasted well over two years. Nor was she
initially smitten with him, as she had been with Robert
Henderson. But Denis was an ex-soldier, he was athletic
and well-dressed, he knew about business and money, he

10
 Bound for Politics

had a certain ‘style and dash’,11 and he drove a Jaguar.

Although Margaret was the better educated of the two,
Denis was much richer, and offered a passport to the home
counties identity and respectability she was determined to
acquire.
Her marriage transformed the second Margaret Thatcher’s
life, beginning with their honeymoon in Madeira, which was
the first time she had been abroad, and she soon completed
the task of distancing herself from her home, her family,
her class, and her religion (Margaret and Denis married
at Wesley’s Chapel in London’s City Road, but thereafter
moved towards the Church of England, and in her last years
she was a regular worshipper at the Royal Hospital, Chelsea).
Denis reinforced many of her political views, especially her
dislike of the Labour Party and trades unions, and her sup-
port for the British empire in general and for white South
Africa in particular. He also brought her the financial secur-
ity she had not previously known, and she would never
have to work for a living. But being a full-time housewife
held no allure, and she decided to read for the bar, enrolling
at the Inns of Court School of Law in early 1952. She passed
her exams in December 1953, was called to the bar by Lin-
coln’s Inn soon after, and specialized in the subject of tax
law. The experience of mastering complex financial argu-
ments would stand her in good stead in later life, and she
came to believe that the rule of law was an essential aspect of
freedom and democracy. In August 1953 she had given birth
to twins: Carol and Mark. Margaret and Denis were genu-
inely fond of their children, but he was often abroad on
business, and she was determined that they would neither

11
Thatcher: A Life and Legacy

interfere with her legal activities nor thwart her political

ambitions. The Thatchers could afford ample childcare,
and Carol and Mark were sent away to school at the earliest
opportunity.
Thatcher had made her position plain on such matters in
an article in the Sunday Graphic published in February 1952.
Women, she believed, should not feel obliged to stay at
home: they should embrace careers, thereby developing tal-
ents and abilities that would otherwise be wasted. More of
them should go into politics, and if they were good enough,
they ought to rise to high office: perhaps to be chancellor of
the exchequer or foreign secretary (but that was as far as she
was willing to speculate). Later that year an event occurred
which Thatcher never forgot or forgave, and which further
turned her against her home town and also against Labour-
controlled local authorities. After thirty years of public ser-
vice Alderman Alfred Roberts was brutally thrown off the
Grantham town council by the controlling Labour group, in
an act which his daughter regarded as mean-spirited, vin-
dictive, and ungrateful. The following month, in June 1952,
she renewed her search for a constituency, and she applied
unsuccessfully for several seats in the south-east. But her
persistence paid off, and in March 1958 she was shortlisted
for the safe Conservative seat of Finchley, a moderately
prosperous, petit bourgeois, owner-occupied London suburb,
with a significant Jewish population. She was adopted, and
at the general election of October 1959 she increased the
previous majority of 12,825 to 16,260. From this secure and
impregnable base, she would launch and sustain the most
extraordinary political career of modern times.

12
 2
Unexpected Leader,
1959–79

‘I think it would be extremely difficult for a woman to

make it to the top.’
(Margaret Thatcher, 1974)1

‘I doubt that most of the Tory MPs who had voted for
Thatcher at the time understood quite what they had
done; perhaps she did not understand it herself.’
(William Waldegrave, 2015)2

MP to secretary of state

Margaret Thatcher was one of only twelve women Conser-

vative MPs among the Commons intake of 1959, but unlike
the rest of them she hit the ground running. By good for-
tune she immediately came second in the annual ballot for
parliamentary time to sponsor a private member’s bill,
which meant she introduced her first piece of legislation in
her maiden speech on 5 February 1960. The aim of the
measure was to prevent local councils from excluding the

13
Thatcher: A Life and Legacy

press from their meetings, as some of them, usually Labour-

controlled, had recently been doing. It was an early example
of Thatcher’s abiding hostility to organized labour and trade
union power, and her speech introducing the bill was widely
praised for its command of detail, and for the fluency and
conviction with which she delivered it. In October 1961 the
prime minister, Harold Macmillan, appointed her parlia-
mentary secretary to the minister of pensions, the lowliest
rung on the government ladder, and a post usually given to
a woman, because pensions, like education, were deemed a
‘feminine’ subject. Thatcher rapidly mastered the complex-
ities of such arcane issues as national insurance, and on the
whole took a favourable view of her officials; indeed the
permanent secretary, Sir Eric Bowyer, rather admired her.
For three years Thatcher continued her work at the Min-
istry of Pensions. Despite some qualms that public spending
was increasing too much, she generally went along with
government policies, including the decision to apply to
join the Common Market. She thought Macmillan was los-
ing his grip by the end of his premiership, and she became a
strong supporter of the fourteenth earl of Home as his suc-
cessor in October 1963. At the general election of October
1964, which Labour won by the slimmest of margins, she
easily held Finchley, but with her majority reduced to 8,802.
Soon after, Denis suffered a nervous breakdown, and for a
time the Thatchers’ marriage seemed in jeopardy. The man-
agement of the family company was becoming increasingly
burdensome; he had a mother, a sister, and an aunt to look
after; and Margaret’s hyper-energy and almost complete
absorption in politics left him exhausted, lonely, and

14
 Unexpected Leader

confused. Later in 1964 Denis sailed to South Africa, where

he stayed for two months: neither he nor Margaret knew
whether he would return to her. It was the greatest crisis of
their marriage; but Denis came back, and soon afterwards he
sold the family company to Castrol on very advantageous
terms, and they immediately re-employed him. Castrol was
later taken over by Burmah Oil, of which Denis became a
director, and he eventually retired in 1975, the same year
that Margaret would win the Conservative Party leadership.
From 1964 to 1970 the Tories were in opposition, and Sir
Alec Douglas-Home (as the earl of Home had become on
disclaiming his peerage) resigned as party leader in July
1965. The effective choice as his successor was between
Reginald Maudling and Edward Heath, and Thatcher voted
for Heath because she thought he would be better at taking
on the Labour leader, Harold Wilson. During her years in
opposition she held six shadow posts. She was a junior
spokesman for pensions, then housing and land (from
October 1965), then Treasury affairs (after the general elec-
tion of March 1966, when she bucked the national trend by
increasing her majority to 9464); on being promoted to
the shadow cabinet in October 1967 she was successively
responsible for fuel and power, transport (from November
1968), and finally education (from October 1969). She
mastered these many different briefs with varying enthu-
siasm, but she engaged with all of them with unfailing
energy, application, and efficiency. Her combative Commons
performances consistently impressed by her command
of detail and her fearless determination to take on some
of Labour’s biggest names over such controversial issues as

15
Thatcher: A Life and Legacy

the imposition of selective employment tax. But the chem-

istry between Thatcher and Heath did not work, as her
undeniable assertiveness grated with his incorrigible abra-
siveness, and he promoted her only belatedly and grudg-
ingly to the shadow cabinet, fearing—rightly, as it turned
out—that ‘we’ll never be able to get rid of her’.3
Being in opposition also gave Thatcher the freedom to
undertake extensive foreign travel for the first time: not for
self-indulgent holidays, but for serious and self-improving
purposes. She visited Israel, Sweden, and the Soviet Union,
but she paid little heed to the heartlands of Europe, and her
two longest and most important trips were to the United
States, in 1967 and 1969. Official Washington did not con-
sider her sufficiently significant to put itself out for her, but
she travelled widely across the country, and found America
exciting and enthralling. She liked the welcoming warmth
of its people; she admired their entrepreneurial energy,
their belief in the free market, and their determined and
simultaneous pursuit of wealth and self-improvement;
and she thought Britain might learn from the example of a
governing and fiscal regime that was less intrusive in its
reach and less punitive in its taxation. These were scarcely
original or nuanced views of a vast and varied country; but
to Thatcher, America’s values and aspirations bore a striking
resemblance to those she had learned at her father’s knee,
and the United States would become the model for what she
wanted to achieve in Britain. Yet while America offered
international validation for the corner-shop culture with
which she had grown up in Grantham, her ties to her home
town and family further attenuated as her own horizons

16
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
in 1780 and a committee appointed to assist in [Sidenote: Five
establishing others. They appear to have been schools 1792]
successful; five schools were reported in 1792,
though one was about to be discontinued. Not all of the masters
were Friends.
The statement that Negroes were being [Sidenote:
educated in 1765, induces one to believe that Uwchlan]
Friends’ children were provided for. Three schools
were mentioned in 1779, in which the masters and [Sidenote:
Nantmeal School,
many of the employers were Friends. In 1789 a 1789]
school was established at Nantmeal under a
special committee of Uwchlan Meeting; it was [Sidenote: London
Grove]
reported discontinued in 1787. The meeting at
London Grove, established (1792), reported no schools in its
compass before the end of the century; although an elaborate plan
was drawn up for the establishment of school funds.
Youths’ meetings were established by Sadsbury [Sidenote:
as early as 1739 and instances in which poor Sadsbury]
children were educated are cited for 1769. The first
committee seems to have been appointed for [Sidenote: Lampeter
schools in 1779. A school was reported for boarding school]
Sadsbury in 1782, but was later discontinued for a
brief time, which cannot be definitely determined. In [Sidenote:
schools]
Three
1792 it was agreed that Lampeter Preparative
might have permission to establish a boarding school. A plan for
funds was drawn up, but no success reported in raising them until
1798. Three schools are reported established, and under the care of
Quaker masters in 1797.
The entire number of schools set up by the [Sidenote: Total,
above named meetings was eighteen or nineteen. 18 or 19 schools]
 CHAPTER VIII
SCHOOLS OF DELAWARE COUNTY

The activity of the several monthly meetings in [Sidenote: The

Delaware County in the establishment of schools meetings]
will be considered under the heads of the
respective meetings in the following order, Chester, Darby, Radnor,
and Concord. These are four of the earliest monthly meetings
established in Pennsylvania, the dates of their establishment being:
Chester, 1681; and Darby, Radnor, and Concord in 1684.[648] The
aim of this chapter, as of the others dealing with the several
counties, is to present, first the source material which has been
found to have any bearing on the establishment of schools and the
attitude of the monthly meetings toward them.
Penn having come to New Castle on October 27, [Sidenote:
1682, and performed the ceremonies of taking Naming of
Chester]
possession of the province,[649] appears to have
gone thence to Upland, from whence he sent a letter to Ephriam
Harman (dated October 29, 1682) regarding summoning a court to
be held at New Castle (November 2, 1682).[650] But Upland was not
destined to remain the name of the city, as Penn’s biographers tell
us. It is stated that Penn, having arrived and being filled with emotion
at having had a successful journey, turned to a friend and said,
“What wilt thou that I should call this place?” He replied,
“Chester.”[651]
In passing it should be mentioned that an interest [Sidenote:
in education does not date entirely from the coming Education before
of the Quakers and the establishment of Penn’s coming of
Quakers]
colony. The records of the court of Upland inform
us (1679) that, without a doubt, some children received the
advantages of an education. It may have been very restricted, we
cannot determine that. The records of that date state, however, that:
“The Plt demands of this Deft 200 Gilders for teaching this Defts
children to read one yeare.”[652] There is no doubt that Friends were
not concerned with education in this case.[653]
The first meetings of Chester Monthly Meeting were held in the
Court House[654] at Chester, and meetings for worship usually
among the members at their homes, previously designated.[655] In
March, 1686, Urin Keen conveyed in trust to John Simcock, Thomas
Brassey, John Brinton, Caleb Pusey, Randall Vernon, Thomas
Vernon, Joshua Hastings, Mordecai Maddock, Thomas Martin,
Richard Few, Walter Faucet and Edward Carter, a piece of ground in
Chester
[Sidenote:
beginning at said Urin’s lot or Garding, and so Property granted
running, 60 feet along and fronting the street the meeting and
house built]
towards the prison house, thence down the
lower edge in Chester Creek—thence along the Creek 60 feet
—thence to the place of beginning ... to the use and behoof of
the said Chester—the people of God called Quakers and their
successors forever.[656]

In the year following, it was urged by the monthly meeting that

Friends agree with workmen to build a meeting house at Chester 24
feet square by 16 feet in height.[657] The first meeting house, built on
the ground above mentioned, was completed about 1793.[658]
The earliest record of schools established by [Sidenote: First
Friends dates back to about 1770. Though this is land devised for
the first record of a device of property for the schools in 1769]
purpose, and the minutes of the meeting are also [Sidenote:
negligent of educational affairs, it does not seem Hoskins wills
probable to the writer that the locality was without ground for
schools]
schools. There were probably neighborhood
schools, not subject to any organization on the part [Sidenote: Poor to
of the meeting. On December 31, 1769, Joseph be schooled]
Hoskins, a Friend, willed a lot of ground for the use of schools,[659]
and though his death did not occur till some years later, the meeting
appears to have known of the intended bequest and to have built a
school house in 1770.[660] It was further ordered by the will that the
sum of thirty pounds be paid to John Eyre and James Barton for the
schooling and education of such poor children of the inhabitants of
the borough of said Chester as the preparative meeting shall for the
time being think fit to order and direct.[661] Mr. Jordan in his history of
the county, describes the schoolhouse:

The schoolhouse was built of bricks, laid in Flemish bond,

the ends of the headers being burnt black, a style much in
vogue at that time. In the south gable large numerals, 1770,
were inserted in the wall, the figures being formed by the
black ends of the headers.[662]

The school mentioned in the committee’s report [Sidenote: School

on schools situated at Middletown,[663] was at Middletown
probably in 1740]
established by Friends in 1783, but an earlier
school existed (1740), according to Mr. Jordan,[664] [Sidenote: Land
the buildings for the same having been donated by donated by Taylor
and wife]
Thomas Yarnall and Thomas Minshall, whose
names are very prominently mentioned in Quaker records. The
meeting minutes make no mention of such a school being
established, however, and it must be understood to have been
entirely on individual initiative. In 1791, Enock Taylor and wife,
Quakers, conveyed a quarter acre of land to the use of Chester
Monthly Meeting of Friends for the use of a school.[665] Judging,
however, from the later reports of the monthly meeting we would be
led to believe that no school was established at that time.[666] On
December 20, 1791, David Hall conveyed adjoining property for the
same use.[667]
About 1778 the monthly meeting became more [Sidenote:
active in regard to its interest in schools, appointing Committees
committees to investigate conditions and report the appointed on
education]
state to its sessions.[668] In 1779 and 1781, there
appeared two reports on the condition of the [Sidenote:
Negroes and their education which are presented Subscriptions to
be started for
in another chapter.[669] In 1782 there likewise funds]
appeared a report of the committee on schools in
general.[670] This committee, appointed in accord with the
suggestions of the yearly meeting, agreed substantially that the best
way to the establishment of schools systematically, was to arrange
for a subscription which might be applied to that use at the discretion
of the monthly meeting. This was to be used for paying the master’s
salary, and to educate poor Friends’ children, where it might appear
to be of advantage to do so.[671] These suggestions were directed to
be copied and put into the hands of the members in each of the
preparative meetings.[672] Three months thereafter, the meeting
appointed a treasurer for funds and a committee for the oversight of
schools, who were to act in general accord with the suggestions
made in the first report.[673] The minute of the meeting of that date
runs as follows:

A form of subscription was proposed which might be

entered into by those who desired, and was approved by the
meeting and all urged to forward the signing of it.[674]

The work thus started was not entirely [Sidenote:

satisfactory to the committee, however. They report Qualified teachers
that “the work goes very slowly” and name, as one scarce]
cause, the great difficulty of getting suitable
teachers.[675] Provision seems to have been made for the schooling
of poor children, “such as can conveniently be sent.”[676] This
reference may mean that all such were schooled who were within
reach of a school, or that they sent all for whom they had a sufficient
fund. In 1783 they acknowledged the receipt of the most recent
advices of the yearly meeting which again recommended the serious
subject of schools to their attention. Again in 1792 we find this
minute:

The subject of schools being now resumed and the several

paragraphs contained in the extracts of 1778, 1779 and 1789
being read relative thereto, Friends, of the several preparative
meetings are desired to pay close attention to the several
repeated advises of the yearly meeting on this important
subject.[677]

In 1796 the concern of a boarding school, which we have found

was also interesting all of the other monthly meetings, in the
Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, came also to the attention of Chester.
They indicated their willingness to coöperate in the scheme by the
appointment of a committee, which appears from a minute made in
the meeting in 1793.
[Sidenote:
William Worrall, Daniel Sharpless, Josiah Subscriptions
Rhoads, Edward Fell, Mahlon Parsons, Roger promoted for
Dirks, Thomas Sharpless and Jacob Minshall boarding school]
are appointed to prepare a subscription paper and promote
Friends’ subscriptions towards the establishment and support
of the boarding school agreeable to the recommendations of
our last Yearly Meeting, and report of their care to next or a
future meeting.[678]

The general state of schools under the meeting’s jurisdiction is

made known by the following report sent in by the school committee
to the monthly meeting held on 1-27-1800.
[Sidenote: Three
The committee appointed to the care of schools under
schools report there are three kept within the Chester Meeting]
verge of this meeting under Friends care, viz.:
1. One at Springfield taught by a Friend.
 2. One at Middletown, taught by a person not in
membership.
3. One at Blue Hill under similar circumstances, all of which
we trust are conducted in a good degree orderly, but that
there has been little or no addition to our fund since last year,
except what it has increased by use. The school committee
also informs that the Friends who were by the last will of our
Friend George Miller and James Turner, left trustees to the
lots at Blue Hill have conveyed the same by instruments of
writing duly executed as follows, to wit: the dwelling house
and lot to Jacob Minshall, Edward Fell, Ambrose Smedley,
Isaac Sharpless, John Hill, Jr., and Joseph Pennell, Jr., and
the schoolhouse and lot to George Miller, Edward Fell,
Ambrose Smedley, James Smedley, Isaac Sharpless, John
Hill, Jr., and Joseph Jonnell, Jr., which said conveyances
have since been recorded and are lodged with the other
writings relating thereto, in the hands of the treasurer of the
school fund which is satisfactory to the meeting.[679]

The Blue Hill School, mentioned in the above report of the

committee, no doubt dated back to a few years following 1791, in
which James Turner bequeathed his “Blue Hill Estate” to George
Miller for the use of schools established at the direction of Chester
Monthly Meeting.[680]
[Sidenote: “Blue
I give, devise and bequeath to George Miller, Hill” estate
the son of my cousin George Miller, my house bequeathed by
James Turner]
and lot of Ground situated in the Province
aforesaid (commonly called Blue Hill) with the appurtenances
to hold by him and his heirs and assigns forever.
Upon special trust and confidence, nevertheless and to and
for the use, intent and purpose hereinafter expressed,
mentioned and declared, and moreover for the use of the
society of Protestants, commonly called Quakers, of and
belonging to the Monthly Meeting of Chester for the erecting
 one or more houses for the teaching and instructing youth
therein, and all necessary conveniences thereto belonging
under and subject to the rules and regulations and orders of
the said meeting for the time being forever.
Item, I give and bequeath to my Friend Jacob Minshall, all
the rest and residue of my estate in trust for the use of a
school which may at times be kept at or near my lot of ground
above mentioned, subject to the direction of the Chester
Monthly Meeting.[681]

The meeting’s schools also received a [Sidenote: Legacy

considerable assistance through a legacy of £50 from Thomas
left by Thomas Evans for the establishment and Evans]
support of a school within the verge of Chester
Monthly.[682] He makes it clear in his bequest that he has been
influenced to do this by the recommendations of the yearly meeting,
the influence of which has been instanced in many cases before this
one.
Not only to the advancement of education and enlightenment by
means of schools alone did Friends of the Chester Meeting lend their
encouragement. In a minute of 1689 we find an interesting reference
to assistance proposed for the encouragement of printing in
Philadelphia.
[Sidenote:
The business proposed to the Friends of Printing
Philadelphia concerning allowing William encouraged by
Bradford, the printer, £40 by the year to the meeting]
encourage him to continue in the art and practise of Printing.
This meeting approving the said proposal, orders for Darby
Monthly Meeting John Blunston and Joshua Fearne and for
Chester Monthly Meeting Caleb Pusey, Randall Vernon and
for Chichester Monthly Jacob Chandler and John Mendenhall
to take subscription according to proposal.[683]
 We have noticed that there appeared to be very [Sidenote: An
little in the records of the monthly meeting until early attention to
about 1770 and that they contained little of education
reported by the
educational interest before that time. The records quarterly meeting]
of the Quarterly Meeting of Chester (later known as
Concord) are, however, full of suggestions which indicate that
educational interests had their attention much before that date,
though they were not under a perfected organization. As early as
1732 advances were made for the care and instruction of poor
children which would fit them to earn a living. We may mention the
financial assistance promised by Joseph Mead in that year.

Our ancient Friend Joseph Mead having by letter

communicated to this meeting his mind, signifying his
willingness to do something that might be conducive towards
a public good, and in order thereto offers to give £50 toward a
stock to be kept in this meeting for the putting of poor Friends’
children to trades or for relieving of poor or indigent Friends
which this meeting very kindly accepts of at the hand of said
Friend.[684]... and this meeting being informed that our Friend
Joseph Mead continues steadfast in his mind respecting his
donation towards pious uses, and desires he may know to
whom he may deliver the said gift. After some consideration
thereon this meeting do nominate ... Jacob Howell and John
Davis to be receivers and are by this meeting empowered to
receive the above and all such bequests ..., in behalf of and
for the use of this meeting, and to put out upon interest as
soon as they conveniently can all such money into good and
responsible hands and to render to this meeting when
required thereto or to whom the said meeting shall appoint a
true and just account of what may be delivered hereafter by
any person or persons into their hands for the uses aforesaid.
[685]

In 1739 the interest arising from this gift was withdrawn at his
request and paid to the Springfield Friends to help them build their
meeting house.[686]
In response to the yearly meeting’s urgent request of 1746 and
1750,[687] we have their action recorded in this minute of the year
1754.
[Sidenote: Report
According to a minute of the advice of the required on state
Last Yearly Meeting concerning the settling of of legacies]
schools in the country, it is agreed for the
encouragement thereof that the several and respective clerks
of the monthly meetings belonging to this quarterly meeting
do inquire and bring in a true report of all legacies, donations
or estates which have been heretofore given to their
respective meetings and of the uses to which the moneys
arising therefrom are applied, and bring the account thereof to
our next meeting.[688]

The meetings at Darby were at first usually held [Sidenote: Darby]

at the home of John Blunston, who in 1687 deeded
one acre of ground in Darby aforesaid for the use [Sidenote: Land
deeded for
of building a meeting house,[689] on which the meeting]
meeting house was begun in the following year,
[690] and finished in 1689.[691] Happily, in the case of Darby Meeting
we can point out a definite statement concerning a school
established by the meeting, and which, quite probably, was the first
school at that place. In 1692 the minutes note that,
[Sidenote: B.
Agreed at this meeting that Benjamin Clift Clift’s school]
teach school, beginning the twelfth day of the
7th month, and to continue one whole year except two weeks.
[692]

His salary for the first year is not known, but the minutes a year
later give some clue as to the amount paid.
 Agreed at this meeting that Benjamin Clift teach school a
year, beginning this 20th day of this 9th month; and to have
£12/00/00.[693]

As has occurred in all other monthly meetings [Sidenote: Slight

thus far considered, there was always little done in activity before
the way of organization and supervision of school 1778]
affairs till after 1770.[694] There were however
various committees appointed from time to time, especially in the
case of legacies and donations which were quite common even at
early dates.[695] The movement towards better organization,
however, began more earnestly in 1778, with the receipt of a number
of letters from the yearly meeting, in regard to which the following
minute was made:
[Sidenote:
This meeting received a number of the Coöperation of
general epistles from the last Yearly Meeting monthly and
quarterly
held in London and also the same number of committees]
copies of an epistle from the same meeting to
our last Yearly Meeting, one of each were read at the close of
the meeting for worship, to satisfaction, and the clerk is
directed to read one of each the forepart of a first day
meeting. The remainder were distributed amongst Friends.
[696]

In the twelfth month Darby Friends received a [Sidenote:

committee appointed by the quarterly meeting Building for a
(Concord) to investigate conditions and promote school proposed]
schools among the monthly meetings.[697] John
Howe, Aaron Oakford, Isaac Lloyd, Benjamin Lobb, and Josiah
Bunting were appointed by Darby to join with the quarterly meeting’s
committee in its work.[698] The next year the question of building a
schoolhouse occupied their attention.[699] It was proposed to deal
with persons holding some land adjoining that of the meeting, that it
might be purchased as school property and a suitable building
erected thereon. Finding, however, that those holding the adjacent
property were not at the time disposed to sell, it was decided to
begin a subscription for erecting a schoolhouse on the meeting’s
land, which has been mentioned as having been left to the meeting’s
use by John Blunston.[700] The work on this building was evidently
begun between 1779 and 1781, as we may infer from the minute of
the latter year.

This meeting resuming the consideration of building a

house to accommodate a school were informed by one of the
committee that it appeared to be necessary the subscriptions
should be enlarged before the work could be completed;
therefore Abraham Bonsall, John Humphreys, and Phillip
Price are appointed with the former committee in order to
forward the work and to report what progress they have made
therein to next meeting; Benjamin Lobb requesting to be
released from the above service, Morris Truman is appointed
in his room.[701]

The tenor of a minute of the meeting next following was to the

effect that enough money had been secured for the completion of
the work.[702]
In 1784 another visit was received from the [Sidenote: State
committee of the quarterly meeting, whose purpose of school
was “the establishing and keeping up suitable satisfactory 1784]
schools,” as recommended in the several years [Sidenote: A
past.[703] The reports of the committee of the digest of report of
school at this date indicate that the status was 1790]
nearly what was expected by the yearly meeting,
respecting (1) foundation, (2) masters, (3) supervision by
committees, (4) accommodations for the master, etc.[704] In 1787,
Nathaniel Newlin one of the meeting’s representatives to the
quarterly meeting brought back a request from that body for “a
circumstantial account” of the state of schools, to be transmitted to
the quarterly meeting the next eighth month.[705] The said Nathaniel
was placed on the school committee in the eleventh month following,
[706] and later, John Bull and Benjamin Bartram were appointed in
the places of Aaron Oakford and Phillip Price who requested to be
released.[707] In the first month of the year following there was
produced a report by the committee, which in fact became the
governing document for the schools established and to be
established in Darby. There is presented here a digest of the report;
a complete statement of it may be found in Chapter II.
1. Recalling the advices of the yearly meeting, they recognize:

a. the advantages arising from established schools, and

b. the losses sustained from a want thereof.

2. Therefore it is agreed that in the future five Friends should be

appointed and called the Overseers of Darby School, three of them
to be sufficient number to transact business.
3. Their duties:

a. Visit the school.

b. Examine the progress of the scholars.
c. Inspect the teacher’s conduct.
d. Employ teachers, with the approbation of the meeting.
e. Discharge them in similar manner, if cause therefor arise.
f. Discharge unruly pupils, who will not submit to the rules
of the school.
g. Settle all differences arising between the master and any
employers.
h. Devise some plan for raising permanent funds for the
school; also to receive interest from the trustees of donations
given for education of the poor, and apply the same as
intended.
 i. Aid the trustees in getting better securities for the same.
j. Minutes of their proceedings are to be kept and reports
made to the monthly meeting once a year, and at other times
if called for.[708]

In 1792 the new overseers reported they had [Sidenote: New

continued to visit the school and inspect the overseers added
learning of the children, which they did with temporarily]
satisfaction, implying that all conditions were as [Sidenote:
desired.[709] In the eleventh month four new Schoolhouse to
members were appointed to the school overseers; be built on Lobb
lot by
[710] as it is not stated that any had been released, subscription]
we are uncertain as to whether the number
required had been increased or not; quite likely [Sidenote: Not
begun until 1797
they were appointed only for temporary assistance. or 1798]
In 1793 it was reported from the school overseers
that Benjamin Lobb had agreed to grant a lot of ground on the upper
part of his plantation, to build a schoolhouse upon; the overseers
proposed that the expenses be defrayed by subscription.[711] A
subscription was started for the same, and Friends desired to
forward it, that the school might be begun.[712] The cost of this
school was estimated at £110.[713] It is not known just when this
school under Friends’ care was begun in Upper Darby but at various
stages these things are known about it. (1) On the 28th of the third
month, 1793, it was reported that Lobb had offered the ground, (2)
the cost of the building was estimated, fifth month, second, 1793, at
£110, (3) eighth month, twelfth, 1793, the Chester Quarterly Meeting
received the report that Darby was going to establish a school for
Friends, (4) in 1796 the committee of overseers reported, “our school
has been kept in good degree accordingly as desired by the yearly
meeting,”[714] (5) the committee of overseers still mention but one
school under their care and (6) eighth month, second, 1798, the
school overseers report that the schools are kept as recommended
by the yearly meeting. It would appear then that the school did not
actually begin until some time between 1797 and 1798,[715] since all
prior reports had recognized but one school.
Mr. Jordan states that in 1779 a deed set aside 24 perches of
ground in upper Darby on the Darby-Haverford Road for the use of
schools.[716] This seems to have no connection with the schools
established by the meeting; it was the first official deed for ground for
schools, but many bequests of great value had been made
previously.[717] The text of the minutes recording these bequests
follows on a later page.
The state of schools as reported by the [Sidenote: The
committee in 1797 was as follows: state of education
in 1797 and]

Our school has been kept since last accounts ... as

recommended by the Yearly Meeting; visited by the overseers
and the scholars learning inspected to a good degree of
satisfaction. There has been expended for schooling children
of Friends and others the sum of £12/10 and on settlement
there appears a balance in the treasurer’s hands of £6/15/5;
the stock remains the same as at last year. Signed ... Morris
Truman, Isaac Oakford, and John Hunt.[718]

As mentioned above, the second school in Upper [Sidenote: 1798]

Darby seems to have been put into operation by
1798. The committee’s report, summarized, is as the following.[719]

1. Schools kept as recommended by the yearly meeting

since last year.
2. Scholars’ learning has been inspected.
3. Schools have been visited.
4. Children of the poor and of others have been schooled.
5. Stock remains at £14/00/00 as last year.
 Signed Truman Morris, John Hunt and Isaac Oakford.
As has been previously suggested the financial [Sidenote:
assistance to Darby schools came in a very Support of
considerable measure from legacies, left from time schools by
legacies]
to time, but it was also necessary to use
subscription and rate plans for school support. The text of one of
these bequests, as recorded in the Darby records, is given below.

Likewise I give and bequeath to my friend John Griffith,

Thomas Pearson, and Samuel Bunting, all of Darby aforesaid,
the sum of £50, nevertheless my aforesaid gift and bequest to
them is only in trust, that they the said John Griffith, Thomas
Pearson and Samuel Bunting shall reconvey and receive from
the hands of my executors aforesaid the sum of £50 and
when so received, put out the said monies to interest on good
securities with the approbation of the monthly meeting of the
people called Quakers in Darby aforesaid, and at the risk of
those benefitted thereby and so from time to time forever, with
the approbation of the said meeting for the time being. To the
intent and purpose that by and out of the interests and profits
thereof, they the said John Griffiths ... pay for the learning to
read and write of such and so many poor Friends children in
unity and church fellowship with the said people and
belonging to the said meeting, as the said meeting shall order
and appoint from time to time forever, and when any of my
said trustees shall die, it is my will and mind that the said
meeting shall appoint another to succeed and so from time to
time forever.[720]

Smith’s History of Delaware County states that [Sidenote:

as early as 1788 there was a school established at Radnor]
Radnor.[721] The first reference to a school found in [Sidenote: A
the Radnor Monthly Meeting’s records was in 1731. school mentioned
[722] At that date Richard Harrison and some in 1731]

Friends
 signified to this meeting in writing that the meeting appointed
last 7th month to be kept at the said Richard’s schoolhouse
was duly and religiously kept and further requested to be
permitted to keep an afternoon meeting ... which is allowed of
and to be at four o’clock.

The school had doubtless been in existence for [Sidenote: The

at least a short time before that. Their answers to poor educated]
the fifth query in 1757 state that they are careful of
the education of the poor and find themselves clear of placing
children from among Friends.[723] They also, at that date, report
themselves free of holding slaves;[724] likewise in 1759, in regard to
both.[725] In 1768, in regard to a case of apprenticing children, this
minute is recorded by the meeting:
[Sidenote:
The meeting taking the request to reimburse Children
them the expense accruing on account of Jane apprenticed]
Atkinson, deceased, into consideration, came to
a result of paying them as soon as we can, and as there is
one of her children not put out yet, it is desired Samuel
Humphreys and William Lawrence would take some care in
putting them out....[726]

In 1759 we find that Friends are reminded by the [Sidenote: Making

monthly meeting of the “necessary duty” of making wills
their wills in time of health, and that endeavors are recommended]
used to apply public gifts to the uses intended.[727]
The only “uses intended” must have been for some of these
purposes: The support of the poor, their education, for negro support
and education, or for purely religious purposes, all of which, the last
one excepted, were, in a way, if we may judge from other meetings’
practices, educational. The suggestion of leaving bequests for public
purposes, taken in connection with the answers to the fifth and
seventh queries, and the known fact that there was a school in 1731,
lead us to believe that the Radnor Meeting was pretty well awake to
educational problems. However true that may be, it is just as certain
that any exact data on her schools are very rare for the early period
before 1778. In that year the usual declaration of the yearly meeting
at Philadelphia was received concerning the question of schools.[728]
A committee of the quarterly meeting in 1778 [Sidenote: Report
produced a report embodying certain conclusions of quarterly
arrived at, both as to causes of existing evils and meeting]
the proposed solutions. Only a digest of this report
can be given here.[729]
1. We believe it a subject of much importance.
2. Corruptions have been introduced by mingling in outside
schools.
3. It is necessary to have schools under masters and mistresses
who take care of religious education.
4. We believe it our duty to spread the work through the yearly
meeting.
The effect of the yearly and quarterly meetings’ [Sidenote:
suggestions was the appointment of Samuel Committee
Briggs, William Lawrence, Jacob Jones, John appointed education]
on
Robeson, Samuel Richards, and Daniel Maule to
attend to the affairs of education, “as may be opened in the wisdom
of truth.”[730] This last may, to our modern way of thinking, suggest
rather a blind guidance, but not so to the old time Friends. The report
to the quarterly meeting in 1779 does not suggest that any progress
has been made, as was desired, save in respect to the masters
employed in the schools.

... to attend the ensuing quarterly meeting at Philadelphia,

and report, that the ... answers are to be transmitted as nearly
our state. That some care has been taken to advise such
negroes who have been restored to freedom. That the
proposals respecting schools have been under consideration
and some essays made by employing masters who are
 Friends. That small progress has been made as yet in
laboring for the pious education of the youth.[731]

The next step, as reported in 1781, was the [Sidenote:

appointment of Friends to attend each of the Preparatives
preparative meetings and to do all possible “to visited]
spread the concern” of schools and excite an [Sidenote: The
attention thereunto. No visits were as yet made to demands of the
individual families, and the general feeling of the yearly meeting]
meeting appeared to be that not much progress
had been made.[732] When reading these reports of the monthly
meetings it is well to keep in mind the chief things which the yearly
meeting had desired, (1) the establishment of permanent school
funds, (2) employment of Friends as teachers, (3) houses and
permanent lands, gardens and so forth to be provided for the
accommodation of the masters, etc. With this in mind it is easy to
see that the report of the meetings might be rather faltering even
though they were in some manner supplied with the benefits of
education. In 1781 the quarterly meeting advised those still
unsuccessful in their attempts to meet the set standards “should be
animated and encouraged to give weighty attention to this important
matter.”[733] The only success achieved by Radnor, according to
their own report, was in the employment of Friends for school
masters.[734] In 1786,

The important subjects ... relative to schools engages in

some degree the minds of Friends here but have little further
to mention at present saving that the teachers employed in
several schools appear to be those in religious profession
with Friends.[735]

In 1790 it was reported that one of the [Sidenote:

preparative meetings was considering the Purchase of
purchase of a lot of ground for the purpose of ground proposed]

schools,[736] probably that of Haverford. In July

1791 the committee on school affairs gave a pretty full report, at any
rate the best we can get, on the condition of Radnor’s schools
situated in each of the preparative meetings. The statement issued
by the committee was the following:
[Sidenote: Report
The committee on schools also produced of 1791]
their report thereon in writing as follows—We ...
take the interesting subject of schools into [Sidenote: Two
schools under
consideration, and to visit those wherein either Friends’ meeting]
our preparatives are concerned, have given
unction thereto, and find that although there are [Sidenote:
divers schools kept in the compass of the Haverford Radnor]
and

monthly meeting, two only appear subject to the

rule and direction of Friends, the one being at Haverford, kept
in a house erected in a small lot of ground belonging to that
meeting: This school we visited in company with a committee
of that preparative, which to us seems under its present
circumstances tolerably well conducted; but it does not
appear there are funds established, the salary of the master
being made up by the neighborhood subscription ... some
poor children principally are taught, the expense whereof is
defrayed out of a small annual income arising from a sum left
by a friend for such uses.—The other school is at Radnor, the
house being Friends’ property also; on a visit made to this
school in company of a committee of that preparative
meeting, we found it large at the time and under rules which
appeared pretty well adapted for the government thereof, but
the salary there, as in the aforementioned school, depends on
the transient subscription, and therefore uncertain. At Merion
and the Valley we have not discovered any progress made in
laying a foundation for schools in the way proposed by the
Yearly Meeting. After considering this weighty subject with
attention we are of the mind the several preparatives
(notwithstanding difficulties may occur) should be encouraged
to a continuance of care and exertion herein as strength may
be afforded; in order to carry into effect this desirable object
among us.—Signed on behalf of the said committee by