From many of these old-fashioned schools boys and girls were apprenticed. Connected with old parishes there are still funds for placing out boys and girls to trades and crafts. All through the Middle Ages, and right on into modern times, children were set to work when quite young, and it was a common custom to send them away from home for this purpose. The children of the upper classes, the boys especially, were trained in the households of other nobles and squires. The idea was to bring them up "hardy", though to us it seems a somewhat unnatural way of doing it. An Italian, who visited England about the year 1500, was much struck by this English custom, and he did not at all approve of such young children being given over to the bringing up by strangers. Both boys and girls from quite well-to-do homes were very often thus sent out, when they were between seven and nine years of age, and apprenticed for seven or nine years, not only to learn some trade or craft, but to private houses where they were set to do menial and drudging work of all sorts. The idea was "that they might learn better manners" than they would do at home. In many wealthy homes it is still the practice to send boys to boarding-school when they reach ten years of age for the greater part of each year, away from home and home influence, before they are sent on to a public school and, later, to a university.

All through the Middle Ages the only way by which a man could become a craftsman was by being first of all an apprentice, and the rules by which a lad was bound to a master were very strict. Things did not alter much in this respect in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. An apprentice was always bound for seven years in the presence of magistrates. The master had to find his apprentice in food, clothing, lodging, and to instruct him in his art, or "mystery" as it was called. The apprentice lived in his master's house, and was bound to serve him.

His master could chastise him if he was idle or "saucy", and even have him sent to the house of correction for further punishment. Both masters and apprentices could complain of each other to the magistrates at the Quarter Sessions, and the hearing of the complaints often took up a lot of time. According to many of the complaints, of which records still exist, some of the apprentices must have had rather a hard time—"seven years, hard". Some complained of having to eat mouldy cheese and rotten meat; others, of their ragged clothes; others, that their masters beat them with pokers, hammers, pint-pots, to say nothing of whips and sticks; prevented them from going to church; and others, that their masters turned them out of doors, or ran away and left them. The masters, on their side, often complain that their apprentices are idle, that they rob them, that they stop out at night and keep company with bad characters, and so on. So it seems they did not always get on well together.

But then there were the others—those who made the best of it. Where the master did his duty, and the apprentice took pains to learn, they got on pretty well together. It was not an easy life for the apprentice, but it made him a craftsman.

The children of those who belonged to the poorer classes were apprenticed to unskilled occupations in a similar way, and if the parents neglected to do this the parish authorities interfered and found places and masters for them.

In some parts of the country there were little schools where children were taught straw-plait and lace-making. Some of these lasted right down to days which people still living can remember, in Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire.