Though we are all familiar with the lives of certain notable ladies who reached a high standard of learning during the sixteenth century, little or nothing is known concerning the general education of girls and women of that period. No Royal Reports enlighten us concerning their opportunities, and no private study has elicited and combined a definite series of details. It is therefore important to note and collate all that may be gleaned concerning this interesting subject.

There is reason to believe that in earlier times the schools that were founded, were intended for “liberi”—not “pueri” alone—and that what education there was for the people was open to children of both sexes, as the trades were. I may illustrate what I mean by the statute enacted 7 Henry IV, c. 17.

But by a limitation of meaning, the word “children” lost its ambiguity of sex, and privileges became limited to boys which our ancestors intended for girls and boys. This took place all the more rapidly in the sixteenth century. Reforms and reformations have always a tendency to be to the disadvantage of women.

The intellectual developments of England during the sixteenth century were moulded by three main streams of influence—that of the Italian Renaissance, which partially passed to us through France; that of the German and Swiss Reformation; and that of the rapid improvements in the art of printing. Social and political changes stimulated the national intellect to high fervours, and the literary spirit predominated. How much women shared in the general advance of culture is too frequently only a matter of inference, just as we may learn that a sheep, which we have not seen, has passed through a hedge by a fleece of wool caught on the branches. That many women had learned to read we may infer from the religious history of the time. We hear of women as amid those who flocked to buy the testaments of Tyndale and the great Bibles of Rogers; of women who suffered as heretics during the first half, and as recusants during the second half, of the century, doomed by the discovery of their books. And we know, on the other side, that Dr. John Hall, of Maidstone, in his “Court of Virtue,” reproached the gayer maidens of the country with reading wicked songs and romances, when they should have been reading the Scriptures. When the decisions of the foreign universities against King Henry’s marriage “were publyshed, all wyse men in the realme moche abhorred that marriage; but women and such as wer more wylful than wyse or learneyd spake against the Determinacion and sayde that the Universities were corrupt, and enticed so to doo,”[106] an opinion that many wise men have held since. How were they educated? Probably all mothers who knew taught their daughters, if only for the sake of acquiring medical and cookery receipts. Doubtless, all who were rich enough had tutors, and there is every reason to believe that any number of unrecorded Dame Schools flourished throughout the length and breadth of the land, where children of both sexes were taught the elements of reading from the Hornbook. (One lady who was admitted to the Guild of Boston in the early part of the century was described as a schoolmistress.) I have been fortunate enough to find corroboration of my opinion in the pages of a notable book on the education of boys, by Richard Mulcaster, First Master of the Merchant Taylors’ School, 1581. He says: “Seeing that I begin so low as the first elementary, wherein we see that young maidens be also ordinarily trained,” etc. That seems to imply primary education for many, if not for the mass of the people.

A still thicker veil hides us from the true state of their secondary education. The destruction of the convents involved the destruction of many opportunities of feminine culture. Fuller says of them: “They were the schools where the girls and maids of the neighbourhood were taught to read and work, and sometimes a little Latin was taught them, music, and Church History.”

Among the numerous schools founded or refounded in the century, the Collegiate schools seem always to have been reserved for boys, but we have no means of knowing whether the schools founded by private laymen for children were not originally intended for both sexes in England, as they always were in Scotland, at the Reformation. We know that Christ Church Hospital was so, and it is quite probable that many others have since drifted into the one-sided channel of masculine privilege. Stow includes in his list of “charitable men” the names of many women. The number of grants to schools and colleges is remarkable, and suggests sympathy with education, that might have extended to that of girls. He concludes: “Thus much for the worthiness of citizens, both men and women, in this citie.” I have not yet met an instance of a private foundation of a school expressly for girls, or even of one in which they were stated to have been included, until the next century. Then Lucy, daughter of Sir Henry Goodyere, niece of Drayton’s Warwickshire “Idea,” prevailed on her husband, Sir Francis Nethersole of Kent, to found a school in her native town of Polesworth, with “a liberal maintenance of a schoolmaster and schoolmistress, to teach the children of the parish, the boys to read and write English, the girls to read and to work with the needle.” Whether the founders were following an old custom, or whether they found that unprotected foundations were apt to lapse, their intention was preserved by cutting in stone over the doorways, associated with their coats of arms, the words “puerorum, puellarum” (Dugdale’s “Warwickshire” under “Polesworth”).

Whatever may be proved of foundations, I have always been convinced of the existence of voluntary secondary schools (see “L.L.L.,” iv, 2), and here again Richard Mulcaster supports my opinion. As master of a boys’ school, and professing only to write for them, he might well have passed over girls, but he did not. He devotes a whole chapter to the subject of their education. Seeing that some still doubted the wisdom of teaching them further than the elementary, he gives, as four good reasons for doing so:

In expanding these heads, he adds suggestions that in modern terminology at least would imply that there were special opportunities for girls; for he says: “The custom of my countrie hath made the maiden’s training her approved travail,” though elsewhere he states that “there is no public provision, but such as the professors of their training do make of themselves.” He would not have them go to the public grammar schools or the universities, but advises all parents to educate them according to their powers. He regrets that girls in general only study until about the age of thirteen or fourteen, “wherein the matter which they must deal withal, cannot be very much in so little time, for the perfitting thereof requireth much travail!” “Some Timon will say, What should women do with learning? Such a churlish carper will never pick out the best!” “Is it nothing to us to have our children’s mothers well furnished in mind, and well strengthened in body?” Mulcaster would give them the pencil to draw, the pen to write; teach them some logic, rhetoric, philosophy to furnish their general discourses, and the knowledge of some tongues, as well as housewifery. He says that the selection of studies depended upon whether a girl was intended to marry or to earn her bread. As the trades-guilds were then open to them, education would be of value to those prepared to enter any of these, or to become teachers, or practitioners in some branches of medicine, such as barber-surgeons, midwives, etc. Mulcaster, besides giving theories, states facts:

to the German, the French, or the Italians?

As they are “educated according to the wealth of their parents, the greater born have better means of prosecuting it best.”

I quote so much, as this is the sole special authority I have for their secondary education. We know of their higher culture from Spenser, Harrison, and others. It is evident that private tutors were the teachers of at least the higher education to women, and after the suppression of the monasteries the number of these “poor scholars” would be greatly increased for a time. But the profession of governess had already been established.

In Dr. Dee’s Diary he notes, 1st September 1587:

I have not been able to learn anything of voluntary schools in general, but there is reference to one in the description of the education of one girl of the wealthy upper middle classes of London, daughter of one great merchant, and wife of another. Though her fame shows that her successes were not quite commonplace, it also suggests that she had numerous competitors and rivals. Elizabeth Withypoll[107] is included by Ballard among his “learned ladies”; and Stow notes her distinction, as may be seen on her tombstone in the south aisle of the parish church of St. Michael in Crooked Lane. Many such may have passed into oblivion; this has been handed on to us.

It is interesting to know that there was at least one school for upper class girls in England, where English was taught, and where Elizabeth won the prize, interesting also that she used her English to read the Scriptures at that date. There is almost a hint that her husband taught her accounts, and it is possible she helped him with his business affairs. Doubtless Elizabeth, however, learned her accomplishments from tutors and masters, and there she becomes a link with the upper ten thousand, educated in the same way to a high standard in learning and accomplishments, such as we see suggested in “The Taming of the Shrew.”

Petrucio Ubaldini, a Florentine who came to England in 1551, says:

Erasmus, in his Epistles, says:

Udall, the Master of Eton, speaks with admiration of their advance in learning:

Dr. Wotton, in his “Reflections upon Ancient and Modern Learning,” says that “learning was so very modish then, that the fair sex seemed to believe that Greek and Latin added to their charms. Plato and Aristotle untranslated were the frequent ornaments of their closets. One would think by its effects that it was a proper way of educating them, since there are no accounts in history of so many great women in any one age as are to be found between the years fifteen and sixteen hundred.”

Amid all the discussions over the causes of the great outburst of literature in the sixteenth century I have never noted any one allude to the fact that the cultivation of the mothers paved the way for the higher development of the sons. Sir Thomas Elyot, who wrote “The Defence of Good Women” (1545), also advised his sister, Margery Puttenham, on the bringing up of her children, Margery, Richard, and George who wrote “The Art of English Poesie.”

Lyly dedicated his “Euphues” to the ladies and gentlewomen of England, a work which more than any other one volume refined the old and moulded the later English speech; Shakespeare wrote of, and to, cultivated women; numerous ladies were patronesses of struggling authors, and nearly every poet of the time has his dedication to, if not his adoration of, some peerless woman. The very delicacy and power of the poems on the passion of love bear witness to the culture of the women as well as that of the men: for example, the “Amoretti” of Spenser.

Two causes, besides the inspiration of the reforming spirit of the age, may be considered in regard to the advance of Englishwomen. The first was the association of the sexes in so many spheres. Foreign ambassadors note of the women that they go everywhere with their husbands, even to outdoor sports, such as hunting and hawking. In the semi-religious guilds established for good fellowship and a community of good works through life, and common prayers for each other at death, the initial and nobler forerunner of the modern Club, women joined freely in equal numbers and with privileges equal to men, the same standard of morality being demanded from each.

Most of the trade guilds were open to women by inheritance or by apprenticeship, and all were open to the widows of freemen. Women went to all the guild dinners with their male relatives; they went to the secret Bible readings, to the public sermons, and when the time came, to the theatres.

The other cause lay in the fact that the higher education of women was distinctly fashionable. I do not think that the reason it became so has ever been sufficiently realized.

Our natural detestation of Spanish religious intolerance and our political rivalry with Spain have blinded our eyes to much that we owed to that country. The widening of our geographical horizon seemed to stimulate and suggest new poetic ideas. There is no doubt that the English Sebastian Cabot did much for his country, but a greater halo of romance and wonder floated over the sails of Columbus that bore him to the golden islands of the Spanish Main. But women, as a sex, owed something more to Spain than the dreams of El Dorado, for thence came, early in the century, the noble but unfortunate Queen Katharine of Aragon. It was her intelligent culture that first made the higher education of women fashionable in the best sense of the word. She was the youngest of the four distinguished daughters of the “Ferdinand and Isabella to whom Columbus gave a new world.” Isabella was the most learned woman of her time, and she had taken special care of the education of her daughters.

When Katharine came to England as the affianced bride of Prince Arthur, the greatest lady in the land was the King’s mother, Margaret, the Countess of Richmond and Derby. She was a woman of wonderful abilities, with a tenacious memory and a piercing wit. She spoke French fluently, and had some acquaintance with Latin, but she always regretted that in her youth she had not made herself mistress of that language. She was very pious. About the beginning of the sixteenth century she translated out of French a Latin book called “The Mirroure of Gold for the Sinful Soul,” and “The Fourth Book of Dr. John Gerson’s Treatise of the Imitation and Following the Life of Christ.” She also commanded other translations, was a patroness of learned men, founded lectureships, schools, colleges, almshouses, and decided and wrote down the orders for state etiquette and the management of the Royal household.

But the culture of Katharine was more varied and liberal, and during the period of her supremacy she did much to mould the tastes of the Court. Everything that was best in Henry responded to her influence; it was only when he turned from her that his character began to change for the worse. Learned men sought her Court and her favour. Erasmus dedicated to her his book on “Christian Matrimony,” Ludovico Vives his work on “Education.”

The first sixteenth-century woman student of whose training we have any clear information was her sole surviving daughter, Mary Tudor, born 18 February 1515-16. The third day after, she was christened, confirmed, and proclaimed Princess. Not only had she a nurse selected in Catharine, wife of Leonard Pole, Esq., but a “Lady Maistress,” or governess, in Lady Margaret Bryan, a lady of great good sense and ability. The Countess of Salisbury was made State governess and head of her household.

Dr. Linacre, the learned physician, who had formerly been one of Prince Arthur’s tutors, was appointed her physician and her instructor in Latin. He wrote a Latin grammar for the child’s use, which seems crabbed enough to modern minds of riper years, and dedicated it to her with a complimentary preface, in which he speaks with praise of her docility and love of learning. This is all the more remarkable when we remember that Linacre died when she was eight years old. Lilly, who brought out later editions of this grammar, added his praises to those of Linacre. To Queen Katharine we may be said to owe the first treatise on the “Theory of Education for Women.”

Ludovico Vives, born 1492 in Valentia, who was accounted one of the three most learned men in Europe, was one of her correspondents. Knowing her desire to educate her daughter wisely, he published a treatise on the “Education of a Christian Woman” (1523), and dedicated it to her as the most learned woman of her age. (This was translated into English, and published in 1541, thus becoming the guide to many sixteenth-century mothers.) Queen Katharine asked him to draw up a special further course of study for her daughter, which he did. His works are even yet well worthy of study.

He considers the intellects of women inferior to those of men, but he would not on that account refuse them instruction, which they needed the more to develop their character. He said that a learned woman rarely or never failed in virtue. He did not fix the age at which they should commence to learn, but remarked that they should learn sewing and knitting at the same time as reading. He is not particular whether they begin their serious study in their sixth or seventh year, but of the seriousness of the study there is no doubt—in science, philosophy, and languages. He knows hard work is not agreeable to all women, any more than it is to all men. He does not speak of Art: there was no Art-culture in his day beyond illuminations and embroidery; but, strange to say, he does consider hygiene, air, exercise, the amount of sleep necessary, the due hardness of the bed. He has a chapter on decoration, and says hard things of the face-painting of the period. “How can a woman weep for her sins, when her tears would stain her face?” She should not over-dress. (He blamed the painters who represented the Virgin Mary with robes of silk and ornaments.) She should have no affectation, she should be modest in society, but when she does talk she should be able to talk well. Her parents should choose her husband; affection will come after marriage. But he disapproved of precocious marriages, and thought seventeen or eighteen years the lowest age possible. There ought to be no rejoicings at a marriage, because the results are very uncertain. He gives advice regarding servants, showing that the domestic troubles of to-day existed even then. A woman should know a little medicine, so as not to call in the doctor and apothecary continually. Even a girl should set aside an hour daily for meditation and prayer. She should read the Gospels and the Fathers; for recreation, moral stories, such as stories from the Bible, from Papyrius in Aulus Gellius, of Lucretia in Livy, and of the patient Griselda, but no romances.

The “Index Expurgatorius” that he gives is interesting to the bibliographer:

He gives among examples of women good and learned: Portia, the wife of Brutus; Cleobula, daughter of Cleobulas; and the daughter of Pythagoras, who, after his death, became the ruler of his school.

Ludovico Vives was invited in 1523 to come to lecture at Oxford and to superintend the education of Princess Mary. This he did.

She went to live at Oxford to be near him, and therefore was the first woman student in that university town. His lessons to the Princess were so interesting that the King and Queen often came to Oxford to listen.

He says a girl ought to be taught to pronounce clearly, and every day commit something to memory and read over before retiring to rest. He allows the use of a Latin dictionary, recommends translation from English into Latin, and conversations in Latin with her preceptor. He advises the learning by heart of the “Distiches” of Cato, the “Sentences” of Publius Syrus, and the “Seven Sages of Greece,” lately collected and published by Erasmus. The course of reading drawn up included Cicero, Seneca, Plutarch; some dialogues of Plato, particularly those of a political turn; Jerome’s “Epistle”; part of St. Ambrose and St. Augustine; the “Enchiridion,” “Institutio Principis”; the “Paraphrases” of Erasmus; and the “Utopia” of Sir Thomas More; a portion of the New Testament to be read morning and evening, and of the Christian poets, Prudentius Sydonius, Paulinus, Arator, Prosper, and Juvencus, as well as Lucan, Seneca, and a part of Horace. Before selections such as these even a modern candidate for classical honours might feel nervous.

Poor little Princess! With these grave studies and serious maxims were her natural high spirits toned down to meet her melancholy fate. She proved an “apt” student and prospered in her work, being encouraged and guided by her loving mother, who delighted in revising her Latin exercises and criticizing her style. Many learned men watched her progress with interest. Lord Morley, one of the literary nobles of the day, dedicated a book to her at the time of her fallen fortunes, when men were little likely to overestimate her powers, in which he says:

And he refers with praise to one of her works she had given him.

The translation itself, preserved in a missal, is entitled, “The prayer of Saynt Thomas of Aquine, translatyd oute of Latin ynto Englyshe by ye moste exselent Prynses Mary daughter to the most hygh and myghtie Prynce and Prynces Kyng Henry the VIII and Quene Kateryn his wyfe. In the yere of oure Lorde God 1527, and the xi yere of her age.” (See Cott. MS., Vesp. E, xiii, f. 72.)

That her studies were not limited to Latin we see in the quaint verses of William Forrest, priest:

Anthonie Crispin, Lord of Milherbe, a French gentleman resident in London, wrote in 1536 some verses also about her:

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:

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:

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.

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,

Foxe says of her:

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:

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: