I don't think your comment necessarily established that Britain could afford public education earlier. You can interpret 'afford' as "can literally pay for giv

I don't think your comment necessarily established that Britain could afford public education earlier. You can interpret 'afford' as "can literally pay for given any tradeoff" (I can afford a Mac Pro in that sense), or "can realistically make the tradeoffs" (short of cutting my 401k contribution, I don't have the money). Even in the first sense, you said nothing that implies that in the 16th century, the agricultural improvements that grew the population was large enough to spare children from agricultural work. All that population growth implies is that you've escaped the Malthusian trap. Going forward, my sense of the early industrial revolution was that families depended on the money from children's labor, though I could easily be wrong.