It brought with it difficulties. Thomas Chalkley (1675–1741) recalled his experience in the 1680s:

When between eight and ten years of age, my father and mother sent me near two miles to school, to Richard Scoryer, in the suburbs of London. I went mostly by myself to school; and many and various were the exercises I went through, by beatings and stonings along the streets, being distinguished to the people (by the badge of plainness which my parents put upon me) of what profession I was; divers telling me, ‘Twas no more sin to kill me, than it was to kill a dog’.