the crown orations of Demosthenes and Æschines. She reads her lessons
to me, and at one glance so completely comprehends not only the idiom
of the language and the sense of the orator, but the exact bearings
of the cause and the public acts, manners, and usages of the Athenian
people that you would marvel to behold her.
In addition to the tongues, she studied rhetoric, philosophy, and
divinity, and history remained her favourite study. In Ascham’s
“Scholemaster,” which was not published until after his death, he
praised her as being far above the ordinary university students.
Scaliger declared that she knew more than any of the great men of her
time, which was certainly flattery. But there are many apparently
genuine anecdotes of her prompt replies to foreign ambassadors in their
own tongue or in Latin.
During her happy years with her brother Edward she shared his studies
and read with him the Scriptures. He called her his “sweet sister
Temperance,” probably in allusion to that name in John Hall’s “Court of
Virtue,” in which, instead of the heathen muses, the Christian virtues
are grouped around their Queen.
Elizabeth appears early not only as a student but as an _author_. Much
of the literature of the period was translation. At the age of twelve
she rendered out of English into Latin, French, and Italian the prayers
and meditations collected out of prime writers by Queen Katharine Parr.
About the same time she translated as a treatise, published in 1548,
the “Godly Meditation of the Christian Soule, compiled in French by
Lady Margaret, Queen of Navarre, aptlie translated into English by the
ryght vertuous Lady Elizabeth, daughter to our Soveraigne Lord King
Henrie the VIII.” Appended to this was her metrical rendering of the
fourteenth Psalm; and thus, curiously enough, Queen Elizabeth appears
as the versifier of the first metrical Psalm printed _with date_. This
little volume was reprinted in 1595, again in Bentley’s “Monument of
Matrons,” and a facsimile edition was brought out by Dr. Percy Ames in
1897. Other verses are ascribed to her, and translations from Boethius
and Plutarch.
Elizabeth studied politics far more deeply than her sister; she
remained unmarried; her frivolity and flirtation often veiled astute
statecraft; she kept Lord Burleigh as her adviser, and fortune gave her
health and a long life. She guided her country, through the difficult
tides of the Reformation, into the harbour of prosperity and peace,
and her people glorified her name. She inherited the great men born in
her sister’s short reign, and other great men hastened to be born just
after her accession. All other reigns put together do not contribute
so much to the great Literature of the world.
These two remarkable sisters had two remarkable cousins, who may be
called their political victims, destined to be so through the action
of Henry VIII concerning the succession, which “made confusion worse
confounded.” But it is only as _students_ that I now discuss them.
Lady Jane Grey (1537-1553-4) was eldest daughter of the new Duke of
Suffolk, and Frances, eldest daughter of Charles Brandon, Duke of
Suffolk, and Mary, daughter of Henry VII. She had a fine genius, and
she was carefully educated under the care of Mr. Aylmer, afterwards
Bishop of London. Ballard says of her:
She understood perfectly both kinds of philosophy, and could express
herself very properly in the Latin and Greek tongues. Sir Thomas
Chaloner, her contemporary, says she was well versed in Hebrew,
Chaldee, Arabic, French, and Italian. She played instrumental music
well with a curious hand, and was excellent at her needle.
Roger Ascham, Queen Elizabeth’s tutor, tells a story of her. When he
called on her to take leave before he went abroad, he found that the
Duke and Duchess and all their household were hunting in the park.
I found her in the chamber reading “Phaedon Platonis,” in Greek.
I asked her why she preferred this to the sport in the park, and
she answered: “One of the greatest benefits that God ever gave me,
is, that He sent me so sharp and severe parents, and so gentle a
schoolmaster.”
She described how sharply they checked and corrected her, so that she
wearied for the time to come that she must go to Mr. Aylmer,
who teacheth me so gently, so pleasantly, and with such fair
allurements to learning, that I think the time all nothing while I am
with him, and when I am called from him I fall on weeping, because,
whatever I do else but learning is full of grief, trouble, fear,
and whole misliking unto me. And thus my book hath been so much my
pleasure, that all other pleasures be but trifles and very troubles
unto me.
Foxe says of her:
If her fortune had been but as good as her bringing up, joyned with
fineness of wit, she might have been comparable ... not only to any
other women that deserveth high praise for their singular learning,
but also to the university men, which have taken many degrees of the
schools.
The young king was devoted to her, and his personal affection prepared
him to fall in with Northumberland’s designs to induce him to leave
the crown to her. Her own judgment declared in favour of the accession
of Mary, and she did not wish a crown for herself. It was through
obedience to her parents only that she submitted to be proclaimed, and
went to the Tower as Queen, to remain as prisoner. Mary was inclined to
deal gently with her; she let her father go off scot-free. But when he
associated himself anew with Wyat’s rising, he sealed not only his own
fate, but that of his daughter.
The Lady Jane was one of the few who, having grasped and accepted the
principles of Protestantism, remained firm at the hour of trial. Mary,
anxious to convert her, sent her former tutor, then her chaplain,
Feckenham, afterwards Abbot of Westminster, to discuss religious
questions with her. Her firm and clear replies showed her acuteness and
trained habits of thought, as well as the purity of her faith. She is
the most wonderful illustration of that strange distinction between the
cultured girls of that period and of our own--their early maturity in
thought and action. Compare the tender, dignified, and tragic picture
of the ten days’ queen, of little more than sixteen years of age, with
the average upper-class High School girl of to-day of the same age,
and no more need be said of sixteenth-century education and its results.
Dr. Fuller says of her:
She had the innocency of childhood, the beauty of youth, the solidity
of middle-age, the gravity of old age, and all at sixteen; the birth
of a princess, the learning of a clerk, the life of a saint, yet the
death of a malefactor for her parents’ offences.
Youngest, fairest, and most unfortunate of the four remarkable cousins,
Marie Stuart, born 1542, a queen at a week old, is more remembered for
the charm of her personality than for her scholarship. More has been
thought and written about her than about all the other queens of the
century put together. Opinions are divided about her character, and I
dare not touch the question now. But of her native genius and aptitude
for study there is no doubt. The little Princess, with her four Maries,
had even in the charming and sequestered island of Inchmahome, before
she was six years old, commenced her studies in Latin,[108] French,
Spanish, and Italian. Henry VIII wished to marry her to his son Edward
VI, and sent an army with fire and sword to fetch her. The Scots “had
no objection to the marriage, but misliked the manner of such rough
wooing,” and sent her off to France, accompanied by her governess,
Lady Fleming, and her four Maries, “Marie Beaton, Marie Seaton, Marie
Carmichael, and _me_.”
There her studies were directed by Margaret, the sister of Henry II
of France, one of the most accomplished and learned ladies of her
time. The little Princess delighted in work, in religion, and was most
amenable to discipline. She learned Greek and Italian with facility,
but was not taught English or Scotch, that French might be paramount
in her heart. Her Latin exercises in 1554 have been printed by the
Warton Club. Her skill in elocution delighted the French Court, when
in 1554 she gave a Latin oration. The subject she chose was intensely
suggestive--“The Praise of Learned Ladies.” In this she stated her
opinion that women were able to excel in anything if they only had
an opportunity given them. She was fond of poetry, in which Ronsard
taught her to essay her powers, had a taste for music, played well on
several instruments, was a fine dancer, a graceful rider, and delighted
in needlework. Accomplishments so varied are rarely found in one
person. She married the Dauphin in 1558; his father died in 1559, and
she became Queen, but her husband died in 1560. Fortune dealt hardly
with her; her lot was cast in times too difficult for her and in
circumstances discordant with her education.
Katharine Parr (1509-1548) was the elder daughter of Sir Thomas Parr,
of Kendal, and Dame Maud, his wife, “who, following the example of Sir
Thomas More and other great men, bestowed on her a learned education,
as the most valuable addition he could make to her other charms.”
She had been married twice before she became Queen, 12 July 1543,
and was fortunate enough to survive her husband. She wrote several
religious books and translations, and procured several learned persons
to translate Erasmus’s “Paraphrase of the New Testament,” one of whom
was her stepdaughter, the Princess Mary. She was deeply interested
in the religious questions of the day, and very nearly suffered with
Anne Askew. The Bishop of Winchester and Chancellor Wriothesley had
conspired against her so artfully, persuading the King that she set
up her judgement against his, that he had signed the warrant for her
arrest. Warned by a friend, she so skilfully explained matters to the
King, that his love and trust returned, and he reproached Wriothesley.
The King left her Regent of the country when he went abroad, and she
fulfilled her duties well; and her skill in nursing alleviated his
sufferings till his death.
Anne Askew (1520-1546) was the daughter of Sir William Askew, of
Kelsay in Lincolnshire, who educated her liberally, but married her
against her will to Mr. Kyme. She demeaned herself as a Christian wife;
but when, through reading the Scriptures, she saw the force of the
Protestant doctrines, her husband drove her from his home and informed
against her. She was seized, dragged before the Inquisitor, Christopher
Dare, examined, brought before the King’s Council, tried at Guildhall,
and condemned as a heretic, though she defended herself skilfully. They
put her to the rack to find the names of other ladies of her opinion.
She bore it, and was silent, and was burned on 16th July 1546. And this
was the fate the last wife of Henry VIII escaped.
Sir Thomas More, Lord High Chancellor of England, preferred knowledge
to all other riches. Erasmus wrote to a friend in Italy:
What is it, you say, which captivates me so much in England? It
is because I have found a pleasant and salubrious air: I have met
with humanity, politeness, and learning; learning not trite and
superficial, but deep and accurate--true old Greek and Latin learning.
When Colet discourses, I seem to hear Plato himself: In Grocyn I
admire a universal compass of learning: Linacre’s acuteness, depth,
and accuracy are not to be exceeded; nor did Nature ever form anything
more elegant, exquisite, and accomplished than Sir Thomas More.
In a well-known letter to a friend about the choice of a wife Sir
Thomas says:
May she be learned, if possible, or at least capable of being made so!
A woman thus accomplished will be always drawing sentences and maxims
of virtue out of the best authors of antiquity. She will infuse
knowledge into your children with their milk and train them up in
wisdom.
Such wives did he prepare his own daughters to be; Margaret Roper,
Elizabeth Dancy, and Cecilia Heron. Erasmus described their home at
Chelsea as a “little academe combined with a university of Christian
religion.” The favourite was the eldest, Margaret (1508-44), who was
most like her father. He procured some of the best linguists of the
age to teach her the learned languages, as Dr. Clement and Mr. William
Gonell, and other great masters to instruct her in the liberal arts and
sciences, philosophy, logic, rhetoric, music, mathematics, astronomy,
and arithmetic. Her letters and orations delighted the most learned of
her contemporaries, as the great Cardinal Pole, John Voysey, Bishop
of Exeter, and Erasmus, who called her “the ornament of Britain.” The
tutor of the Duke of Richmond wrote to Sir Thomas More to express his
regret that he had not been present when his daughter “disputed of
philosophy before the King.” The love and tenderness of her father
were equal to his wisdom, and the story of their lives is ideally
beautiful. When she married Mr. William Roper, of Eltham, Kent, he kept
up communion in correspondence. In one letter he says:
Farewell, dearest daughter, and commend me kindly to your husband, my
loving sonne, who maketh me rejoice that he studieth the same things
as you do, and whereas I am wont to counsel you to give place to your
husband, now on the other side I give you licence to maister him in
the knowledge of the spheres. Commend me to all your schoolfellows and
to your maister especially.
She wrote and translated many works, especially Eusebius’s
“Ecclesiastical History” out of Greek into Latin, which her daughter,
Mary Roper, another learned student, translated afterwards out of Latin
into English.
Leland the antiquary writes of Sir Thomas More’s daughters, verses
translated thus:
The purest Latin authors were their joy
They loved in Rome’s politest style to write
And with the choicest eloquence indite.
Nor were they conversant alone in these
They turned o’er Homer and Demosthenes,
From Aristotle’s Store of Learning too
The mystic Art of reasoning well they drew.
Then blush ye men, if you neglect to trace
Those heights of learning which the Females grace.
Associated with them in their life and studies was Margaret Giggs
(1508-70), a niece of Sir Thomas More. She is included in both
of Holbein’s portrait-groups of the More family, and was also
distinguished for her aptitude in learning. Algebra was her special
study, and Sir Thomas More sent an algorism stone of hers from the
Tower. She married their family tutor, Dr. John Clement, and Leland
wrote her epithalamium. Her husband made her little inferior to himself
in Latin and Greek, and she assisted him in his translations. She and
her husband went abroad on Elizabeth’s accession. Her only daughter,
Winifred, married William Rastell, nephew of Sir Thomas More.
Sir Anthony Cooke, one of the learned tutors of Edward VI, also gave
his daughters an education so liberal that they became the wonder of
their age. He considered that women should be educated on the same
lines as men, and that they were quite as fit. Mildred (1526-89), was
well skilled in the Greek and Latin tongues, particularly Greek. She
delighted in reading the works of Basil the Great, Cyril Chrysostom,
Gregory Nazianzen, and other similar writers. She translated part
of St. Chrysostom into English. When she presented the Cambridge
University Library with a great Bible in Hebrew and other languages,
she sent with it a Greek letter. In 1546 she married Sir William Cecil,
afterwards Lord Burleigh, and became the mother of Anne Countess of
Oxford, and Robert Cecil, afterwards Earl of Salisbury. Her marriage
was happy, and after her death her husband wrote “Meditations” upon her
goodness, her private charity and helps to learning.
Anne, born 1528, second daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke, was also
liberally educated, and distinguished among the _literati_ of the
time. She was said to be “a choice lady, eminent for piety, virtue,
and learning, and exquisitely skilled in the Greek, Latin, and Italian
tongues,” and was associated with her father by being made governess to
King Edward VI. She translated out of Italian into English twenty-five
sermons written by Bernardino Ochino, 1550. She also rendered out of
Latin into English Bishop Jewel’s “Apology for the Church of England,”
for which she had great praise from the author and the Archbishop.
“Besides the honour done to her sex, and to the degree of ladies, she
had done pleasure to the author of the Latin book, by delivering him
by her clear translation from the perils of ambiguous and doubtful
constructions.” She married Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper of the
Great Seal, and had two sons, Anthony and Francis, whose great powers
she cultivated from their earliest years.
Elizabeth, born 1529, third daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke, was also
learned in languages and sciences. She translated out of French a tract
on transubstantiation, afterwards printed, and was consulted by all the
learned men of her age. She married, first, Sir Thomas Hoby, Ambassador
in France; and second, Lord John Russel, son and heir to the Earl of
Bedford, and carefully educated her children.
Katherine, born 1530, fourth daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke, was also
famous for learning in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and for her skill in
poetry. A specimen of her talent is preserved in Sir John Harington’s
notes to his “Ariosto,” and by Dr. Thomas Fuller in his “Worthies of
England” (328). Probably a certain timidity of his own powers in this
accomplishment induced one of her admirers to employ George Buchanan to
write verses for him. These appear among George Buchanan’s epigrams and
three short poems, “To the learned daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke, in
the name of Henry Killigrew, Englishman.” This gentleman she afterwards
married.
The three daughters of the unfortunate Duke of Somerset, Protector of
England, under Edward VI, Lady Anne, Lady Margaret, and Lady Jane, were
also widely famed for their learning and culture. They wrote 400 Latin
verses on the death of Margaret of Valois, the Queen of Navarre, and
it was said of them by Ronsard that if Orpheus had heard them sing, he
would have become their scholar.
Lady Jane, the eldest daughter of the famous poet the Earl of Surrey,
who married the unfortunate Charles Neville, Earl of Westmoreland, was
a distinguished scholar. Foxe, the Martyrologist, was her tutor, and
he said of her that “she might well stand in competition with the most
learned men of the time, for the praise of elegancy both in Greek and
Latin.”
Henry, Lord Maltravers, only son of the Earl of Arundel, one of the few
representatives left of the ancient nobility, excelled in all manner
of good learning and languages, and gave a learned education to his
son and his two daughters, Mary, Duchess of Norfolk, and Jane, Lady
Lumley. Mary translated selections from Greek into Latin, and Jane,
“Isocrates,” the “Iphigenia” of Euripides and others referred to in
Ascham’s “Schoolmaster.” Their exercise-books of translations are still
preserved in the Royal MSS. The former died at the age of sixteen,
after she had given birth to Philip, afterwards Earl of Arundel.
Mary, daughter of Sir Thomas Arundel, who was first married to Robert
Ratcliff, secondly to Henry Howard, Earl of Arundel, was also a
distinguished scholar. She translated from English into Latin “The Wise
Sayings and Eminent Deeds of the Emperor Alexander Severus.” She also
translated from Greek into Latin select “Sentences of the Seven Wise
Grecian Philosophers,” and “Similes collected from the Books of Plato,
Aristotle, Seneca, and other Philosophers.” These she dedicated to her
father.
Lady Elizabeth Fane, wife of Sir Ralph Fane (who was sent to the
Tower with the Duke of Somerset and suffered with him in 1551), was
thoroughly educated, after the fashion of her time, though not so
brilliant as many of her contemporaries. She translated and versified
21 Psalms and 102 Proverbs in English, printed by Robert Crowland, 1550.
Elizabeth Jane Weston, born about 1558, was gifted with fine talent,
which was highly cultivated. She left England young, and settled in
Prague. She wrote several Latin books in prose and verse, highly
esteemed by the learned men of the time. She is ranked on the Continent
with Sir Thomas More and the best Latin poets of the century, was
highly praised by Scaliger, and complimented by Nicholas May in a Latin
epigram. She married Mr. John Leon, a gentleman of the Emperor’s Court.
Catherine Tishem was a great linguist, and could read Galen in the
original, which few physicians of her time could do. She married
Gualterus Gruter of Antwerp, and was the chief instructor of her son
John Gruter the famous philologist.
Elizabeth Legge, born 1580, was noted for her faculty of acquiring
languages, having studied thoroughly the Latin, French, Spanish,
and _Irish_ tongues, besides cultivating her poetical powers.
Unfortunately, she could not make use of her acquirements, as she lost
her sight in consequence of severe study. She never married, lived
chiefly in Ireland, and died at the age of 105.
Ballard also mentions Esther Inglis as a scholar, though she is chiefly
noted for her beautiful handwriting, which is preserved in the British
Museum.
Many ladies of the century were known as writers, as Elizabeth
Grimeston, and more as patrons of literature. But by far the greatest
woman author of the later century was Mary, sister of Sir Philip
Sidney, and wife of the Earl of Pembroke. She was carefully educated
in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and shared her distinguished brother’s
literary tastes. She was married in 1577, and her eldest son, William,
was born in 1580. About that time Sir Philip Sidney was in disfavour
at Court, and stayed with her at Wilton House, where was a good
library. They retired together in the summer to a small house at
Ivychurch, where they continued their literary pursuits. Two years
afterwards Sir Philip dedicated to her his romance, “the Countess
of Pembroke’s Arcadia,” first printed by Ponsonby. She did not like
it as it stood, so corrected and expanded it much, and republished
it. She also translated a “Discourse upon Life and Death” from the
French of Plessis du Mornay, her brother’s friend, published 1590; and
rendered very freely into English blank verse Robert Garnier’s French
tragedy of Marcus Antonius, adding choral lyrics of her own. Some of
the passages are finer than anything her brother produced. She edited
and published her brother’s poems after his death, and completed the
metrical translation of the Psalms which he had begun, and worked up to
the forty-third, but she did not publish these. They lie in the British
Museum, Add. MSS., 12047-8. She lost her father in May, her mother in
August, and her brother in October 1586. She expressed her sorrow for
his loss in a poem published by Spenser with his “Astrophel” (1595),
and awkwardly named by him “The Dolefull Lay of Clorinda.”
Spenser says of her in “Colin Clout’s Come Home Again”:
Urania sister unto Astrophel
In whose brave mind as in a golden coffer
All heavenly gifts and riches locked are
More rich than pearls of Ind, or gold of Ophir,
And in her sex more wonderful and rare.
In a dedicatory sonnet to “The Faery Queene” he says:
Your brother’s goodly image lives
In the divine resemblance of your face.
and elsewhere he repeats:
The gentlest shepherdess that lived that day,
And most resembling in shape and spirit
Her brother dear.
He dedicates to her also his “Ruines of Time,” in which he praises her
brother.
Abraham Fraunce extols her, and produces “The Countess of Pembroke’s
Ivychurch, 1591,” and “The Countess of Pembroke’s Emmanuel.”
The poet Daniel became tutor to her sons, and to her he dedicated his
“Delia,” a collection of sonnets (1592), and his tragedy of “Cleopatra”
as companion to her “Mark Antony.”
Thomas Nash says of her, in prefatory lines to the 1591 edition of
Sidney’s “Astrophel”: “The artes do adore her as a second Minerva, and
our poets extol her as patroness of their inventions.” Osborne says of
her: