Part 26
The wonder of the records of her learning is increased when we remember the frequent overtures of marriage that were laid before her, which must somewhat have occupied her thoughts, also the extraordinary fluctuations of her fortunes. The demands upon her hours, in the time both of her prosperity and adversity, must have been great. In 1525, when the Emperor broke off his engagement to her to marry Isabel of Portugal, she was sent to hold High Court with viceregal splendour, as the first Princess of Wales at Ludlow Castle. There she stayed for eighteen months. The Countess of Salisbury was still her State governess, and Mr. Featherstone her Latin tutor. She did not keep strictly to the advice of the prudent Vives; for she gave considerable time to dancing and playing on the virginals, and in her privy purse expenses there are many entries of her losses when _playing at cards_. On her return to her father’s Court, she is recorded not only to have danced with him, but to have danced in the ballets, and acted in the Court masques of the day, as well as in one of the comedies of Terence. It was a new and hitherto unheard-of proceeding for Royal ladies to appear as stage performers, but the example seems to have been followed. (Mary was always devoted to the Drama, and spent more on it in a year than did either her father or her sister.) In her sudden fall from her high estate, she relinquished only her gaieties, but continued her studies, including domestic economy, inculcated by Vives. Mary was restored to Court favour after the death of Anne Boleyn, and was on friendly terms with her later stepmothers, especially Katharine Parr. At the request of the latter she undertook the translation of the Latin paraphrase of St. John by Erasmus into the English language. She meant to have translated more, but an attack of illness laid her aside. Her rendering of St. John was printed and published in the same volume with the translations of the other paraphrases of Erasmus by the celebrated reformers, Kay, Cox, Udall, Old, and Allen, though her name was not affixed to the first edition.
Among her scientific tastes was the study of botany, and she imported many foreign plants and trees, striving to naturalize them. She also had a special interest in clock-making, like her relative Charles V. This was not, in her time, so commonplace a manufacture as it is to-day. Her value for time, and the exact measurement thereof, carry us back in thought to the days of her predecessor Alfred, with his candle-measured hours.
Prepared as she was for the throne, the misfortunes of her life make us almost believe in the power of evil stars. Her period of depression lasted too long for her health and spirits; the doctrine of the virtue of irresponsible feminine obedience prevented her from ever showing her true nature, except once. Her courage and prudence at the _coup d’état_ of Northumberland, her clemency afterwards, show what she might have been had she been allowed to act independently, as did the second royal student of the century.
Elizabeth was born on 7th September 1533. Her stars were fortunate, and the moon shone full upon her birth. Her physical health was excellent; her period of depression lasted just long enough to steady her flighty spirits and elevate her character. She was fortunate in the kind sympathy of Katharine Parr, that excellent and learned woman, who showed a genius for fulfilling wisely and tenderly the difficult duties of a stepmother. Elizabeth is said to have been very precocious, learning Latin, French, Italian, and music without difficulty. In a letter of the Princess Mary to her father, Henry VIII, 21 July 1536, she says: “My sister Elizabeth is well, and such a child toward as I doubt not but your Highness shall have cause to rejoice of in time coming.” She was four years old when her brother Edward was born, and Sir John Cheke, being appointed his tutor, sometimes gave her lessons. She was once reading with him when Leland called, and her tutor desired her to address the antiquary in Latin. She immediately did so, and the old scholar in return addressed to her four Latin verses of genuine admiration. By the age of twelve she had considerably advanced in history and geography, understood the principles of architecture, mathematics, and astronomy, was fond of poetry, and studied politics as a duty. She had a talent for languages, speaking French, Italian, Spanish, and Flemish with facility. Her tutor Ascham tells us what she had done in classics before she was sixteen. She had read almost the whole of Cicero and a great part of Livy, some of the Fathers, especially “St. Cyprian on the Training of a Maiden.” The select orations of Isocrates and the tragedies of Sophocles were her Greek text-books. During Mary’s reign Ascham wrote to John Sturmius:
The Lady Elizabeth and I are studying together, in the original Greek, 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.”