dissenter may teach only what he calls "the leading and uncontroverted principles of Christianity," is it not to be feared that the disregard shown to all religious systems and creeds, may so confound the distinctions between right and wrong, that it may eventually occasion the rejection of Christianity altogether?" After initial successes, the Lancasterian schools were criticized for poor standards and harsh discipline. Lancaster had rejected corporal punishment, but misbehaving children might find themselves tied up in sacks, or hoisted above the classroom in cages. Robert Southey was an opponent of corporal punishment, also: but he wrote in 1812, after giving examples of shaming punishments listed in Lancaster's writings: However objectionable the rod may be [...] it becomes a wise and humane engine of punishment when compared to the yokes and shackles, the cords, and fetters, and cages of Mr. Lancaster. After Lancaster's initial royal recognition, the monarchy turned away in the 1810s, and the Church of England sustained its hostility. Controversy and ouster Lancaster fell out with the Society over a number of issues. There was poor financial management, and he was imprisoned in a sponging house for debt. According to Francis Place, a committee member from 1812, they had information that Lancaster had been privately beating a number of the boys. Critics accused him of deism and homosexuality. He was ousted from the Society in 1814. A group of young teachers had come up through the Lancasterian System: Thomas Harrod, James George Penney, John Pickton, John Veevers, John Thomas Crossley. It was Pickton who replaced Lancaster at Borough Road. The Society renamed itself the British and Foreign School Society (BFSS), a contrast with the Anglican National School System. Lancaster, by then a bankrupt, resented the new name. He still travelled the United Kingdom, lecturing and creating local organisations. In the Americas In 1818, backed by the mill owner David Holt and other friends, Lancaster and his family sailed to the United States. He had significant American supporters: Roberts Vaux and Robert Ralston in Philadelphia, and DeWitt Clinton in New York. Clinton had founded a Lancasterian school in 1806, prompted by Thomas Eddy, who knew of Lancaster's work via Patrick Colquhoun in London. Eddy had recently recruited a BFSS master, Charles Pickton trained by Lancaster, for the New York school, leaving no place for Lancaster himself. Lancaster helped to start the first model school in Philadelphia to train teachers