How common was it in Early Modern Europe, that urban tradesmen were illiterate but knew basic maths?

I didn't think much about this topic before, but I remember reading a Back to the Future fanfic some years ago that takes place in 1666 London during the Great Fire.

The blacksmith in the story (who is a Tannen ancestor by the way, but isn't evil like his future relatives), explains to one of Doc's children after he tries to leave a written note to him, that he was "only taught his numbers, not his letters" as a boy from the senior blacksmith he learned the trade from.

It wasn't elaborated further, but I guess it means basic written Arithmetic, like long addition and long subtraction (maybe even multiplication and division) for simple bookkeeping purposes to manage his finances and his stock of supplies, and maybe to make more accurately-sized metal tools by measuring them.


Was this generally the common condition for urban tradesmen like blacksmiths, tailors and cobblers in the Early Modern Period, whose trades weren't literacy-related?
 
At this point in western Europe, you could count roughly 1/5 of the urban population being able to sign a document, by the mid XVIth, probably higher in mid-XVIIth.
If we're talking of someone that knows well its arithmetic, it implies at the latest some basic litterary education, except if he learned this trough trade or familiarily (and even that is not a given), especially with the development of printing press and the cultural focus given on text.

So...Only being taught its numbers and not its letter, seem a bit counter-intuitive. On the other hand, more skilled or mindful of its numbers rather than its letters...
 
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