§15. John Harvard. XIV. English Grammar Schools. Vol. 7. Cavalier and Puritan. The Cambridge History of English and American Literature: An Encyclopedia in Eighteen Volumes. 1907

The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
Volume VII. Cavalier and Puritan.

XIV. English Grammar Schools.

§ 15. John Harvard.

We may here mention that, within the period covered by the present chapter, was born in Southwark, near by London Bridge, John Harvard (1607), who, after graduating at Cambridge, where he was a member of Emmanuel college, set sail for New England, and left half his estate in endowment of a school or college devoted to “the education of the English and Indian youth of this country in knowledge and godlynes,” a school which has developed into the Cambridge of the New world.

With the advance of the seventeenth century, and the growing influence of puritanism, the position and relations of provincial grammar schools became, for a time, considerably modified. Hitherto, the close connection with the universities of most of those which possessed any endowment—the necessary result of their scholars being eligible to scholarships or exhibitions at one or other of the colleges, while the master was generally a graduate of Oxford or of Cambridge—had led to the education they imparted being strictly classical in character and modelled on the requirements of a university curriculum.