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.