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New Zealand Tablet, Volume II, Issue 62, 4 July 1874, Page 12

Origin of Apprenticeships. — Apprenticeship is supposed to hare had its origin in the twelfth century. In 1400, the practice o£ apprenticing boys to trades had become so common that complaints arose of a consequent want of agricultural laborers, and in the reign of Henry IV., it was therefore enacted that no person, who had not land or rent to the value of 20s. a year, which was then a comparatively large sum, should be allowed to bind his son or daughter apprentice, amd this law remained for some time in force. The sons of knights, esquirea, and gentlemen were, at a far later date, noticed by an old writer as flocking to London to be apprenticed. An Act passed in the 7th year of the reign of Queen Mizabeth established seven years as the period of apprenticeship.—*' Furniture Gazette.' It does not appear to be generally known that Sir Garnet Wolseley has but one eye, having lost the other when, a lieutenant in the Crimea, while leading a forlorn hope against Sebastopol. Both he and Sir Archibald Alison, the chief of his staff, were not only in the rery hardest of the work in the Russian campaign, but both were setorelyiwounded— Sir Archibald losing his arm in one of the frays.