To understand anything about the reasons why schoolbooks became printed products, the role that religion played in dictating primary education from the fifteenth through the eighteenth century must be made clear. The history of print in England cannot be divorced from its religious context. When society transitioned from the codex to the printed book, these printed materials reflected the relationship between Catholicism and literacy (Ford 1897, 4). Some of the earliest printed materials in England in the fifteenth century were texts that included the alphabet, “the Pater Noster, [and] the Ave Maria,” and therefore laid the representative groundwork for The New England Primer by joining “alphabet and creed” (Ford 1897, 4). These books were intended to instruct children to read while also teaching them the tenets of Catholicism.

             However, this tradition of Catholicism began to change as the Reformation began to influence the people in England during the reign of King Henry VIII (Ford 1897, 4). King Henry made it illegal for individuals to print primers that did not align with the Church of Rome (Ford 1897, 5). These “unauthorized” primers offered an alternative Christian worldview, and this anti-Catholic spirit serves as the philosophical basis of the New England Primer as it wholly a Protestant text (Ford, 1897, 5). The idea behind instructing children to read so that they may read the Bible informed the creation of primers as the cornerstone of primary education in England, and therefore also in the New England Colonies. It is not surprising, then, that primers were originally considered “books of private devotion” (Svobodny 1985, 69), which accurately reflects their content, which was most often a compilation of “hymns, the catechism, the Lord’s Prayer, and related matter” (Carpenter 1963, 23). The book cited by Heartman as the predecessor of the New England Primer is The Protestant Tutor, a primer originating in England and first published in 1607 by B. and F. Harris in London (Carpenter 1963, 23-4). According to Carpenter, “The Protestant Tutor was strongly anti-Catholic, and had more religious than secular matter in it” (1963, 23). The religious nature of The Protestant Tutor directly influenced the development of The New England Primer and the individual whom Carpenter notes that Heartman has cited as responsible for first printing The New England Primer was a printer by the name of John Gaine, whose name has been noted in a Stationer’s Register of London dating back to October 5, 1683 in connection with a book “Entituled the New England Primer or Milk for Babes. vjd Jno. Gain” (Carpenter 1963, 23-4). Carpenter states that it is widely believed that this is the earliest known recorded reference to The New England Primer (1963, 24). While it is unclear what connection John Gaine has to Benjamin Harris, the first recorded reference to the primer in America can be found in the almanac, News from the Stars, printed in Boston in 1690 (Carpenter 1963, 24) and printed by Benjamin Harris at London Coffee-House in Boston. Carpenter speculates that it would have made sense that Harrison was responsible for printing the first copies of The New England Primer on American soil, because he embodied a spirit similar to the spirit upheld in the content of the primer itself, because it has been noted that he also printed material relating to the Salem Witchcraft cases in 1692 (Carpenter 1963, 25). Thus it is Harrison that seems to be most strongly associated with the first copies printed of the primer in America.