English School Terms in the Georgian Era

Many schools in the U.S. are in preparation for summer break. My son and DIL are both teacher and are counting the days, though my son will be off immediately for training to be an AP test reader. Teachers do NOT have their whole summer off.

Some students, however, are in summer school to take advantage of course credits to free up what was required in the school’s course of studies (When he was in high school, my son took the required “speech” class during the summer to make room for other courses. You will note in the next paragraph that I taught speech, but not at his high school.) Meanwhile, some students attend summer classes to repeat a course failed during the regular school year.

As a former teacher (40 years in the public classrooms of three different states and carrying multiple degrees in not only English, speech, journalism, and theatre, but also advanced degrees as a reading specialist), I often write stories with children and more often than not, I write about a young person with some sort of learning disability. That is what I studied. It was very sobering to enter state mental institutions where children were kept bed ridden because of their disabilities. My first year teaching was with many such students.

In my contemporary story, Second Chances: The Courtship Wars, the heroine has a Down Syndrome sister. The character in the story is based on my best friends’ since elementary school younger sister. The things that happen to the girl in the story did not necessary happen to our Vickie, but she was the inspiration for that character, and there is a large dose of Vickie’s spontaneity in the book’s character.

I wrote of another Down’s child in one of my Regency tales. The young man was the heir to the earldom, but the hero of A Touch of Cashémere, Book 3 of the Realm Series was the the young man’s guardian and brother and served him until he passed.

In my current Austen book, The Colonel’s Ungovernable Governess, which was released last month, our dear Colonel Fitzwilliam is uncle (and later guardian) for his brother’s step-child. Lord Vincent Jennings is what we might call a high-functioning child on the spectrum these days. I know someone will call me out for that description, but I do not mean it in a derogatory manner. There is much fluidity in both the terms and the understanding of what constitutes someone on the spectrum. There are several children in my family and those my acquaintances who display some of the multiple “diagnosis” for those children. If the terms had been around in my days, I might have been considered “somewhere on the spectrum” myself, as I was in kindergarten at three and was taking college classes at barely fifteen. However, I grew up in the Sputnik generation, where the government wanted us to “beat the Russians” in every manner. No one thought twice about my successes or any of those from my fellow classmates. It was expected of us.

Now, while my generation often “dropped” music and art classes for more advanced mathematics and science classes and, generally, spent between 180 – 185 days in the classroom, children in the Georgian era did not spend so much time in school. Schooling was not compulsory, even for the aristocracy. The young men at university, spent as much time socializing as they did in the classroom. So, what was it like for a child in the Georgian era? For one thing, Oxford placed an emphasis on literature, while Cambridge leaned more to mathematics. Yet, let us explore some generalities.

The above is an example of the school terms found in one of author Suzi Love’s books, but I wished to share it as a marker of when the children during Jane Austen’s England would have returned to school, and what each term meant, for in my latest Austen-inspired tale, The Colonel’s Ungovernable Governess, much of the action in compacted between the Easter Term and the Michael Term and there are three children, two of them young boys whose schooling plays a part of in the plot line. My British readers will wonder why I bother to attempt “to get it right”, while I hope my American readers will be able to make more sense of such details in the tale. 

Before we get into specifics of each boarding school and the terms, let us first revisit some givens as to the education of both males and females, though my story has a young boy who is the colonel’s nephew and the heroine has a brother, both 10 years of age. So most of what I am sharing is dealing with the male education. 

At around the age of five, children no longer had a “nurse,” but rather came under the care of a “governess.” There was no rule of thumb as to whether a governess addressed only the education of the young girls, so I chose to have the governess in my story tend the boy and his sister, for they are twins. Such a person was sometimes referred to as the “nursery governess.” Generally though, the word “governess” is for girls and “tutor” is for boys. 

Boys, especially as I have written my young lad as an earl, would require lessons in reading, writing, arithmetic, history, geography, etc. Girls would receive much the same, but would also learn as Carolin Bingley reminds us in Pride and Prejudice . . . 

“A woman must have a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, all the modern languages, to deserve the word; and besides all this, she must possess a certain something in her air and manner of walking, the tone of her voice, her address and expressions, or the word will be but half deserved.”

Later education included languages, such as French, Greek, and Latin, geography, science, astronomy, philosophy, business, literature, and traveling abroad, as well as social graces such as dancing, music, etc. Some boys, before they left for school, studied in the home of a learned man. Jane Austen’s father supplemented his income by educating boys in his home. Ironically, though the schools catered to the landed gentry and the aristocracy, the curriculum did not include land management and bookkeeping. Sons of the men of trade learned those skills. (A bit circular in the thinking, right?)

We must recall, in the Regency, a boarding school was called a “public school,” meaning the boys received their education outside of their homes. The public schools were Eton, Harrow, Westminster, Charterhouse, Shrewsbury, Winchester, and Rugby. Between ten and twelve seemed to be the age boys went out to school. 

Okay, we have an overview of the curriculum, though with both the colonel’s and Mr. Darcy’s help, in my story, my young Lord Vincent learns many other necessary skills which will serve him as the earl when he is able to sit in the House of Lords. Now, let us look at the school terms: 

The School Terms, as you can see in the example at the top have specific names. These names are, as are the court sessions, associated with the church calendar. 

Michaelmas Term (a word we are all familiar with because Mr. Bingley let Netherfield before Michaelmas, which is one of the four quarter days, meaning “taxes” to be paid). The Michaelmas session runs for eight weeks after the Feast of St Michael, which falls on 29 September. Generally, the Michaelmas term begins the first few days of October, depending on whether it is a weekend or not.

Hilary Term is the second of the school terms at Oxford and Dublin universities, not at Cambridge. It runs from January to March and is named “Hilary” after St Hilary of Poitiers, who is celebrated on 13 January and the date, generally, falls within this academic term. The term lasts 10 weeks after the feast of St Hilary. 

Trinity Term varies some because of the”movement” of Easter. Many schools, universities and law courts had Easter terms.  The fact that Easter was a moveable feast meant that one could not always tie the terms to the calendar nor have them be the same length every year. All schools were closed for Holy week preceding Easter and then most did not reopen until the Wednesday after Easter as Monday and Tuesday would be considered part of the holidays.

Many other dates for court, banks, etc., were calculated as being “so many days” after Easter, meaning they would change yearly.

Additionally, the periods when the schools and law courts were not in session were called vacations, not holidays, despite contemporary English usage.

Nancy Regency Researcher describes it this way: 15 Sundays to 21 Sundays after the feast of St Hilary (6 Sundays) with Trinity Sunday as the first Sunday after Pentecost or Whitsunday (as it is called in the UK. Pentecost is celebrated seven weeks (50 days) after Easter Sunday, since its name. Pentecost falls on the tenth day after Ascension Thursday. 

Eton had terms called “Halves.” These were the existing parameters: 

September to two weeks before Christmas

Christmas holidays: a fortnight before and after Christmas

January to Palm Sunday.

Easter holidays were a fortnight from Palm Sunday.

Week after Easter to end of July The Summer holiday from the end of July for five weeks.

* Senior boys returned later.

Meanwhile, Cambridge did not have a Term called “Trinity.” Their Easter Term was longer. 

As the Darcys lived in Derbyshire, and I have placed members of the Fitzwilliam family in Derbyshire (Earl of Matlock) and the eldest Fitzwilliam son (at William’s Wood in Lincolnshire), and the young earl’s estate in North Yorkshire, we may assume all within my story attended or would attend Cambridge. We know Darcy and Wickham and the colonel all attended Cambridge, from Chapter 35 of Pride and Prejudice. 

“Mr. Wickham is the son of a very respectable man, who had for many years the management of all the Pemberley estates, and whose good conduct in the discharge of his trust naturally inclined my father to be of service to him; and on George Wickham, who was his godson, his kindness was therefore liberally bestowed. My father supported him at school, and afterwards at Cambridge—most important assistance, as his own father, always poor from the extravagance of his wife, would have been unable to give him a gentleman’s education. “ . . . 

“For the truth of everything here related, I can appeal more particularly to the testimony of Colonel Fitzwilliam, who, from our near relationship and constant intimacy, and, still more, as one of the executors of my father’s will, has been unavoidably acquainted with every particular of these transactions. “

Let us look at some of a sample school term for the year 1804, during the Georgian era as an example of what to expect. (Note: Part of this was shared on Nancy Regency Researcher, but I added specific dates from the 1804 calendar and school term. 

1804 (taken from A Pocket Companion for Oxford)

10 October 1803 to 17 December 1803 – Michaelmas Term 

14 January 1804 to 24 March 1804 (ends on Saturday before Palm Sunday) – Hilary Term

11 April 1804 (the Wednesday after Low Sunday, which is the Sunday after Easter) to 17 May 1804, which is the Thursday before Whitsunday (the Pentecost) – Easter Term

30 May 1804 (the Wednesday after Trinity Sunday, which is the Sunday after Whitsunday) to the Saturday after Act Sunday. In 1804, 1 July was the first Sunday of the month. Therefore, the term would end on 7 July 1804. 

Bear with me on this explanation of Act Sunday. I am taking this from the footnotes of a lecture on Newman Reader via The National Institute of Newman Studies – copyright 2007 – based on the works of John Henry Newman. 

Footnote #2 [Act Sunday. “The candidate,” says Huber on the English Universities, “emancipated from his teacher, makes himself known to the other teachers by taking part in the disputations in the schools. These services afterwards become formal public acts, disputationes, responsiones, lecturæ cursoriæ. A more especially solemn Act formed the actual close of the whole course of study. The licence was then conferred on him by the Chancellor. A custom arose that all the final and solemn exercises should fall in the second term of the year (hence called the Act Term), and be closed on the last Saturday in term by a solemn general Act, the Vesperiæ, by keeping which the candidates of all degrees in their different Faculties were considered qualified and entitled to begin the exercises connected with their new degree upon the following Monday. This fresh beginning (inceptio) took place with the greatest solemnity, and formed the point of richest brilliancy in the scholastic year. In Oxford it was called emphatically ‘the Act,’ in Cambridge ‘the Commencement.’” {Abridged from F. W. Newman’s translation.) The Act Sunday is or was the Sunday next before the Act, which falls in the first week of July.]

Again, thanks to Nancy Regency Researcher and to the following for their input on the subject

Education and Other Forms of Child Torture in the Regency Era

Eton College During the Regency

Reading the Regency – Education, Part 1

Schools in Regency England Part 2: The Middle and Upper Classes