Shakespeare's environment

by C. C. Stopes

FOOTNOTES:

[104] Mr. Sinnet, the Editor of “Broad Views,” had in March 1904 written an article in that Review under the above title in support of Bacon’s authorship of Shakespeare’s Works, and had allowed me to reply the following month.

[105] I had published my volume called “The Bacon-Shakespere Question Answered” at a time when I was under the dominance of Dr. Furnivall in regard to the spelling of the name, 1889.

XXX
SIXTEENTH CENTURY WOMEN STUDENTS

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.

“That no man or woman, of whatsoever estate or condition they be, shall put their son or their daughter to serve as an apprentice, except he or she have land or rent to the value of 20 shillings by the year, and no man or woman shall receive an apprentice contrary to this ordinance, provided ... always that every man or woman of what estate or condition that he be, shall be free to set their son or daughter to take learning at any manner school that pleaseth them within the Realm.” (Statutes of the Realm.)

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:

First. Because it is the custom of my country.

Second. Because it is a duty which we owe to them, wherein we are charged in conscience not to leave them lame in that which is for them.

Third. Because of their own towardness, which God would never have given them had He meant them to remain idle.

Fourth. Because of the excellent effects in that sex when they have had the help of good bringing up.

Their natural towardness ought to be cultivated because we have it by commandment of the Lord, to train up, not only our own sex, but our females, and He makes an account of natural talents.

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:

We see young maidens taught to read and write, and can do both with praise. We heare them sing and playe, and both passing well; we knowe that they learne the best and finest of our learned languages to the admiration of all men.... Whoso shall denie that they may not compare even with our kind in the best degree.... Do we not see some of that sex in our countrie so excellently well trained as to be compared to the best Romaines or Greekish paragonnes—

to the German, the French, or the Italians?

If no storie did tell it, if no state did allow it, if no example did confirme it, that young maidens deserve trayning, this our own myrrour, the majestie of her sex, doth prove it in her own person, and commendes it to our reason. We have besides her Highness as undershining starres, many singuler ladies and gentlewymen so skilful in all cunning of the most laudable and loveworthy qualities of learning, as they may well be alledged as presidents to prayse.

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 covenanted with John Basset to teach the children the Latin tongue, and I to give him seven duckats by the quarter.

September 1st, 1596, Mary Goodwyn cam to my service to governe and teach Madinia and Margaret my young daughters.

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.

Every Christian heart seeketh to extoll

The glory of the Lord, our only Redeemer;

Wherefore Dame Fame must needs inroll

Paul Withypoll his childe, by Love and nature

Elizabeth, the wife of Emanuel Lucar

In whom was declared the goodness of the Lord,

With many high vertues which truely I will record.

She wrought all needleworks that women exercise,

With Pen, Frame, or Stoole, all pictures artificial,

Curious Knots, or Trailes which Fancy could devise,

Beasts, birds or Flowers, even as things natural.

Three maner handes could she write them faire all.

To speake of Algorism, or accounts in every fashion,

Of women, few like (I think) in all this nation.

Dame Cunning her gave a gift right excellent,

In goodly practice of her science musical,

In divers tongues to sing and play with Instrument

Both Vial and Lute and also Virginall;

Not only upon one, but excellent in all.

For all other vertues belonging to Nature

God her appointed a very perfect creature.

Latine and Spanish, and also Italian

She spake, writ and read, with perfect utterance

And for the English, she the garland won

In Dame Prudence Schoole, by graces purveyance

Which cloathed her with vertues, from naked Ignorance

Reading the Scriptures, to judge light from darke

Directing her faith to Christ, the only marke.

The said Elizabeth deceased the 29th day of October, An. Dom. 1537, of yeeres not fully 27. This stone and all hereon contained made at the cost of the said Emanuel, Merchant Taylor.

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:

The rich cause their sons and daughters to learn Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, for since this storm of heresy has invaded the land they hold it useful to read the Scriptures in the original tongue.

Erasmus, in his Epistles, says:

31. The scene of human things is changed: the monks, famed in past times for learning, are become ignorant, and women love books. It is beautiful that this sex should now betake itself to ancient examples.

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

The great number of noble women not only given to the study of human sciences and strange tongues, but also so thoroughly expert in Holy Scriptures that they were able to compare with the best writers, as well in enditing and penning of godly and fruitful treatises to the instruction and edifying of readers in the knowledge of God, as also in translating good books out of Latin or Greek into English, for the use and commodity of such as are rude and ignorant of the said tongues. It is now no news in England to see young damsels in noble houses, and in the Courts of princes, instead of cards and other instruments of idle trifling, to have continually in their hands either psalms, homilies, or other devout meditations, or else Paul’s Epistles or some book of Holy Scripture matters, and as familiarly both to read and reason thereof in Greek, Latin, French, or Italian, as in English.

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:

The laws ought to take heed of such ungratious books, such as be in my countrey of Spain, “Amadis,” “Florisande,” “Tirante,” “Tristram and Celestina,” “Le Prison d’Amour.” In France “Lancelot du Lac,” “Paris and Vienna,” “Pontus and Sidonia,” “Pierre de Provence,” and “Melusyne.” In Flanders “Flory and White Flower,” “Leonella and Canamour,” “Curias and Floreta,” “Pyramus and Thisbe.” In England “Parthenope,” “Genarides,” “Hippomadon,” Wylliam and Meliour, Livius, Arthur, Guye, Bevis and many other, and many translated out of Latin; the “Facetiæ Poggii,” “Euryalus and Lucretia,” and the “Hundred Tales of Boccaccio,” in Italy:

Of maids some be but little mete for lernyng lykewise as some men be unapte, agayne, some be even borne unto it, or at least not unfit for it. Therefore they that be dulle are not to be discouraged, and those that be apt should be harted and encouraged. She that hath learned in books hath furnished and fenced her mind with holy counsels.

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:

I do well remember that skant ye were come to twelve yeres of age, but that ye were so rype in the Latin tonge, that rathe dothe happen to the women-sex, that your grace not only coulde perfectly rede, wright, and constrewe Laten, but farthermore translate eny harde thinge of the Latin into ower Englyshe tonge.

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:

Shee had to her sorted men well expert,

In Latyne, Frenche, and Spaynische also

Of whome, before they from her did revert,

Shee gathered knowledge, with graces other mo,

The thing atchieved, departed her not fro,

For as shee had promptness the thynge to contryue

So had shee memory passing ententyue.

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

Souvent vaguant aux divines leçons

Souvent cherchoit des instruments des sons

Ou s’occupoit à faire quelque ouvrage

Ou apprenait quelqu’ estrange langage....

Puis à savoir raison des mouvements

Et le secret de tout le fermament

Du monde aussi la situation;

Des élémens l’association.

Puis sagement avec Mathématique

Mêloit raison, morale, politique....

Puis apprenoit Latine et Grecque lettre

Par oraison, par histoire, et par mêtre.

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.”

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:

She was that sister of Sir Philip Sidney’s to whom he addressed his “Arcadia,” and of whom he had no advantage but what he received from the partial benevolence of Fortune in making him a man.

Meres compares her to Octavia, Augustus’ sister and Virgil’s patroness; and describes her as being not only liberal to poets but a most delicate poet, worthy of the complimentary lines which Antipholus Sidonius addressed to Sappho.

Thomas Churchyard writes:

Pembroke a Pearl that orient is of kind,

A Sidney right shall not in silence sit,

A gem more worth than all the gold of Ind,

For she enjoys the wise Minerva’s wit,

And sets to school our poets everywhere

That do pretende the laurel crown to wear.

The muses nine and eke the graces three

In Pembroke’s books and verses you may see.

She died in 1621, and her family raised no monument to her, but Ben Jonson wrote the famous epitaph:

Underneath this sable hearse

Lies the subject of all Verse:

Sidney’s sister, Pembroke’s mother,

Death, ere thou hast slain another

Fair and wise and good as she,

Time shall throw a dart at thee![109]

Arabella Stewart, born 1577, the daughter of Charles Stewart Lennox, the youngest brother of Lord Darnley, was a very highly cultured woman, and was appointed by her cousin, James I, to be governess to his daughter the Princess Elizabeth, who loved her dearly. She wrote histories and had a great facility for poetical composition.

Two other names I would like to mention of ladies born in the sixteenth century, who carried into the next its culture with a difference, as the new spirit of science and mathematics, history, and political economy absorbed some of the time hitherto devoted to classics.

Elizabeth Stewart, mentioned above, was born in 1596, at Falkland Palace. When her father came to England she was sent to the charge of Lord Harington at Coombe Abbey, Warwickshire. That nobleman followed the plan of Sir David Lindsay, of the Mount, surrounded her by cultured companions, explained to her the meaning of everything, and taught her the foundations of the Christian religion. Mr. Beauchamp was her writing master, and the famous Dr. Bull, the composer, her teacher in music. Lord Harington himself taught her much in history, literature, and geography. She was very fond of animals and of natural history, and she had a little corner of the park, with a lake in it, to preserve her treasures. She built a little cottage for a widow and her children to attend to her animals, and designed it herself. Near it was her fairy farm, with the smallest kind of cattle that could be bought. She studied the changes of insects through the microscope, then newly invented. When ten years old a portrait was painted of her, inexplicable without knowing all this. She has a monkey and a dog at her feet, a love-bird in her hand, a macaw on one shoulder and a parrot on the other. She was familiar also with the use of the telescope, and studied mathematics and astronomy. Her home at Coombe Abbey suggested to Dr. Johnson “The Happy Valley of Rasselas.” She was devoted to her brother Henry, and inconsolable at his death, in 1612. In the following year she married the Count Palatine, and great festivities took place in London. The poets Donne and Daniel call her “the pearl of Britain,” and Sir Henry Wotton wrote verses in her praise:

Tell me, if she were not designed

Th’ Eclipse and glory of her kind.

Her chief fault was extravagance, which increased her pecuniary troubles with her unfortunate husband. But they were happy together and had many children, one of whom was that Elizabeth who became the pupil and friend of the philosophic Descartes.[110]

Anne Clifford, born 1589, daughter and heir of the Earl of Cumberland, had been forbidden by her father to learn Latin, much to her chagrin. She made up for it by studying all that she could find to read in English, and by that time through translations she found a good deal. Her diary still remains at the British Museum. She gives a beautiful description of her mother’s character, and of her moral virtues, prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance. She was not a linguist, but a reader, a thinker, and a chemist, and possessed “many excellent knowledges, human and divine.”

Her tutor was Samuel Daniel, “that religious and honest poet who composed the Civil Wars of England in verse,” and he led her to the study of history, old archives, armorial bearings, and the laws regarding inheritance, whereby she was able to sustain the noble fight against her King and her husband concerning the right of heiresses to transmit property undiverted to their heirs. What she had received from her father she wished to leave to her daughters. In this she succeeded, though the laws drifted after her date to the exclusions and disabilities from which modern women have so much suffered.

She was capable in land estate management and architecture, in which Cromwell gave her practical lessons by demolishing her castles for her fidelity to the King. Each time he destroyed them she rebuilt them stronger, until, fired with admiration at her courage, he bade his officers desist from further molestation.

Her funeral sermon, preached by Bishop Rainbow, was an eloquent oration, in which he said that the life of this great, good woman was fitter for a history than a sermon. He alluded to her studies and her conversation with admiration. “She could speak well on anything, from predestination to slea-silk.”

Thus, I think the women of the sixteenth century proved to their successors that they were fit, in the words of the little Marie Stuart, to study anything, if so be they were granted opportunity.

The lives of these illustrative individuals, who became illustrious because they excelled many others, suggest the probability of a much more general culture, and that of a higher standard, than has been hitherto realized. It is to be hoped that more research may yield more information, and account for the tidal backdraw in the position of women between these times and our own. Men grow great, and poets become inspired in proportion to the influence of the other sex, and it is only reasonable to add to the causes of the special glory of the sixteenth century, the greatness of its women.

Lecture delivered before the Royal Society of Literature, 1904. See Proceedings R.S.L., vol. xxv.