The third typical kind of arrangement was the endowment—funds whose proceeds were earmarked for the support of a schoolteacher's salary. Most endowed schools were located in towns and cities, and most educational endowments can, again, be traced to the period of the Reformation. They were at one and the same time a natural consequence of the proselytizing piety of the age of reform and counter-reform, and an expression of the general evolution in sentiment that has been called the "renfermement"—the drive in the seventeenth century to confine problem populations. Ecoles de charité (charity schools) and écoles des pauvres along with workhouses, hôpitaux, and similar urban institutions provided means for taking troublesome elements off the crowded streets to put them behind walls. Indeed, endowed schools were often managed and supported by the charity bureaus and aumônes which ran the other methods of confinement as well.

— Schooling in Western Europe by Mary Jo Maynes (Page 24)