Lady Jane Grey’s short and troublous life was lightened and cheered by study. Roger Ascham commended her facility in Greek composition. Her studies were very extensive, for Sir Thomas Chaloner said of her that she was well versed in Hebrew, Chaldee, Arabic, French, and Italian.
None of these royal ladies were destitute of lighter accomplishments. Elizabeth, as is well known, was a very graceful dancer, and could sing and play exceedingly well; Lady Jane Grey was a musician, and clever at needlework.
But it was not royal ladies alone who were celebrated for their learning in the sixteenth century. The three daughters of Sir Anthony Coke, preceptor to Edward VI., were as accomplished as Queen Elizabeth and Lady Jane Grey, and attracted the attention of the great men of the age. The eldest married Lord Burleigh, the Treasurer; the second, Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, and became the mother of the celebrated Francis Bacon; the third became wife to Lord John Russell, after the death of her first husband, Sir Philip Hoby. Sir Anthony was a father much in advance of his time. He considered that women should be educated on the same lines as men, and that they were quite as capable of acquiring knowledge. So he imparted to his clever daughters the lessons he gave to the precocious boy-king, Edward VI.
“It is,” says Lloyd,[39] “the happiness of foreigners that their vocations are suited to their natures, and that their education seconds their inclination, and both byass and ground do wonders. It is to the unhappiness of Englishmen that they are bred rather according to their estates than their temper; and great parts have been lost, while their calling drew one away and their genius another.”
Sir Anthony seems to have known how to suit his children’s education to their “temper,” which was keenly studious. He was excessively careful to set them a good example. “My example is your inheritance, and my life is your portion,” he wrote to his eldest daughter. All his daughters were good classical scholars, could correspond in Greek, and were excellent translators.
Sir Thomas More’s daughters were educated in a similar way. Margaret, wife of William Roper and her father’s favourite, is the most celebrated; but all were clever, studious women, not content with light and easy studies, but attaining great proficiency in abstruse subjects.
Jane Countess of Westmoreland, whose father was the famous Fox the martyrologist, was said to be able to bear comparison with the greatest scholars of the age. The three daughters of Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, were much distinguished for their Latin distichs, and it was said of them that if Orpheus could have heard them he would have become their scholar.
Mary Sidney, afterwards Countess of Pembroke, sister of the famous Sir Philip Sidney, was one of the most intellectual women of her age. In the retirement of the fine old family mansion at Penshurst Place, Kent, she passed a studious, happy girlhood. The companionship of her gifted brother, and association with such men as the poet Spenser, no doubt fostered her innate love of learning. By the great poet she has been celebrated as—
“The gentlest shepherdess that liv’d that day,
And most resembling in shape and spirit
Her brother dear.”