One of the favourite methods of learning French was a sojourn in France. To speak the language well a visit there was considered imperative, and to speak it "as one who had never been out of England"[564] was synonymous with speaking it badly. Consequently a journey to France was common among the young gentry and nobility of the time. Moreover, those who pursued their travels further, and undertook the Grand Tour as many gentlemen did on leaving the university, invariably visited France first, and spent the greater part of their time there. Eighteen months in France, nine or ten in Italy, five in Germany and the Low Countries, was considered a suitable division of a three years' tour. Most young Englishmen of family and fortune spent some time on the Continent. Sir Francis Walsingham, said by one of his contemporaries to have been the most accomplished linguist of his day,[565] had acquired his proficiency abroad, as had also Lord Burghley, who wrote to Walsingham from France in 1583 to report on his progress in the language.[566] Both ministers in their turn were patrons to numerous young travellers in France. A certain Charles Danvers wrote to Walsingham from Paris, in French, to show his progress and thank him for his favours.[567] And Burghley gave one Andrew Bussy a monthly allowance of £5 to enable him to study French at Orleans, where, according to his own account, he took great pains to make good progress so as to serve his patron the better on his return.[568] It was generally held that travel was "useful to useful men,"[569] and that "peregrination" well used was "a very profitable school, a running Academy."[570]
Many young English gentlemen went to the French Court in the train of an ambassador,[571] or with a private tutor;[572] Henry VIII. sent his natural son, the Duke of Richmond, Palsgrave's pupil, to the French Court, in the care of Lord Surrey the poet. Richard Carew, the friend of Camden, was sent to France with Sir Henry Nevill, ambassador to Henri IV., and Bacon visited Paris in his early youth in the suite of the diplomat Lord Poulet. The last-mentioned ambassador had several young Englishmen in his charge. Of few, however, could he make so favourable a report as he did of the son of Sir George Speake: "I am not unacquainted with your son's doings in Parris," he wrote to Sir George, "and cannot comend him inoughe unto you aswell for his dilligence in study as for his honest and quiett behaviour." One of these young travellers, a Mr. Throckmorton, he was particularly glad to be rid of; the young man "got the French tongue in good perfection," we are informed, but he was of flippant humour, and before he left for England, Poulet told him his mind freely, and forbade him to travel to Italy, as he intended to do later, without the company of "an honest and wyse man." The ambassador had kept him and his man in food during the whole of his stay in Paris, and, besides, provided him with a horse, which he had also "kept att his chardges."[573]
Children too were often sent abroad for education. Thomas Morrice, in his Apology for Schoolmasters (1619), commends "the ancient and laudable custom of sending children abroad when they can understand Latin perfectly"; for then they learn the romance languages all the more easily, "because the Italian, French and Spanish borrow very many words of the said Latin, albeit they do chip, chop and change divers letters and syllables therein." ENGLISH GENTRY AT THE FRENCH COURTAnd Thomas Peacham[574] tells us in the early seventeenth century that as soon as a child shows any wildness or unruliness, he is sent either to the Court to act as a page or to France, and sometimes to Italy. The number of English children in France was, we may assume, considerable; and when the news of the terrible massacre of St. Bartholomew reached England, one of its most noticeable effects was to fill with concern and apprehension all parents who had children in France. "How fearfull and carefull the mothers and parents that be here be of such yong gentlemen as be there, you may easely ges," wrote Elizabeth's secretary of state to Sir Francis Walsingham, the English ambassador at Paris.[575] Among these "yong gentlemen" was Sir Philip Sidney, then newly arrived at the French Court, whom Walsingham himself sheltered in the ambassador's quarters during that awful night.
James Basset, the son of Lord Lisle, deputy at Calais for Henry VIII., was sent to Paris in the autumn of 1536 to complete his education, after having been for some time in the charge of a tutor in England. There he went to school with a French priest, whom he soon left for the College of Navarre. He appears to have attended the college daily, and boarded with one Guillaume le Gras, who, in June 1537, wrote to Lady Lisle that her son would soon be able to speak French better than English. "I think when he goes to see you," writes the Frenchman to her ladyship who did not understand French, "he will need an interpreter to speak to you." James himself wrote to tell his mother how he was progressing "at the large and beautiful college of Navarre, with Pierre du Val his Master and Preceptor."[576] The following letter[577] giving details on the course pursued by a young English gentleman studying French in Paris may no doubt be taken as fairly typical. "In the forenoone ... two hours he spends in French, one in reading, the other in rendryng to his teacher some part of a Latin author by word of mouth.... In the afternoon ... he retires himself into his chamber, and there employs two other hours in reading over some Latin author; which done, he translates some little part of it into French, leaving his faults to be corrected the morrow following by his teacher. After supper we take a brief survey of all.... M. Ballendine [apparently the teacher] hath commended unto us Paulus Aemilius in French, who writeth the history of the country. His counsell we mean to follow."
Girls also were occasionally sent to France for purposes of education. Two of James Basset's young sisters, Anne and Mary, spent some time in that country. To prevent their hindering each other's progress, Anne was committed to the care of a M. and Mme. de Ryon, at Pont de Remy, while Mary was sent to Abbeville to a M. and Mme. de Bours. Both girls wrote letters in French to their mother, Lady Lisle, and it appears that they had almost forgotten their mother tongue. When Anne returned to England, where she became maid of honour to Jane Seymour, she had to apologize to her mother for not being able to write in English, "for surely where your Ladyship doth think that I can write English, in very deed I cannot, but that little that I can write is French,"[578] and Mary wrote to her sister Philippa in French expressing her wish to spend an hour with her every day in order to teach her to speak French. In France the two sisters acquired, besides French, the usual accomplishments befitting their sex—needlework, and playing on the lute and virginals.[579]
The traveller Fynes Moryson did not unreservedly approve of the custom of sending children "of unripe yeeres" to France; "howsoever they are more to be excused who send them with discreet Tutors to guide them with whose eyes and judgments they may see and observe.... Children like Parrots soone learne forraigne languages and sooner forget the same, yea, and their mother tongue also." He relates how a familiar friend of his "lately sent his sonne to Paris, who, after two yeeres returning home, refused to aske his father's blessing after the manner of England, saying ce n'est pas la mode de France."[580] Milton in the same vein deplores the fact that his compatriots have "need of the monsieurs of Paris to take their hopeful youth into their slight and prodigal custodies and send them over back again transformed into mimics, apes and kickshows."[581] ENGLISH CHILDREN IN FRANCE"My countrymen in England," wrote Sir Amias Poulet from Paris in 1577, "would doe God and theire countreye good service if either they woulde provide scolemasters for theire children at home, or else they woulde take better order of their educacion here, where they are infected with all sortes [of] pollucions bothe ghostly and bodylie and find manie willinge scolemasters to teache theme to be badd subiects."[582]
Nor were such sentiments confined to individual cases. Queen Elizabeth was constantly making inquiries concerning her subjects beyond the seas generally, often for political reasons or on account of her Protestant fears of popery. She found "noe small inconvenience to growe into the realm" by the number of children living abroad "under colour of learning the languages." In 1595 she ordered a list of such "children" to be sent to her with the names of their parents or guardians and tutors,[583] and there were frequent examinations of subjects suspected of desiring to go abroad; in 1595 the Mayor of Chester writes to Burghley to know what he is to do with two boys, aged fifteen and seventeen, who have been brought before him on suspicion of intending to travel into France to learn the language, and thence into Spain.
The objections raised against the journey to France were few, however, in comparison with those alleged as regards Italy. Italy held a place second only to France in the Grand Tour on the Continent, and in the early sixteenth century the first enthusiasm awakened by the Renaissance attracted many Englishmen there. Scholars, such as Linacre and Colet, set the example. Then others, including most literary men of the time, made their way as pilgrims to the centre of the revived learning, passing through France on their way.[584] Soon the journey became largely a matter of fashion. This rapid development of the custom of continental travel was looked upon as a danger in matters political and religious; popish plots were suspected and foreign intrigues of all kinds feared. In Elizabeth's time leave "to resort beyond seas for his better increase in learning, and his knowledge of foreign languages"[585] was not freely granted to any who might apply. Lord Burghley would often summon before him applicants for licences to travel, and look carefully into their knowledge of their own country,[586] and if this proved insufficient, would advise them to improve it before attempting to study other countries.[587]
Voluble were the protests against foreign travel which were made in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. France and above all Italy were made responsible for all the vices of the English. It was urged that trade and state negotiations were the only adequate reasons for travel abroad. "We are moted in an Island, because Providence intended us to be shut off from other regions," Bishop Joseph Hall affirms, in his Quo Vadis: a juste censure of travel as it is commonly undertaken by gentlemen of our own nation (1617). So strong were the prejudices of some of these critics that the grandfather of the royalist Sir Arthur Capell wrote—in 1622—a pamphlet containing Reasons against the travellinge of my grandchylde Arthur Capell into the parts beyond the sea, in which he draws an alarming picture of the dangers of infection from popery, and seeks to prove that the time could be much better spent at home.[588] The chronicler Harrison went so far as to assert that the custom would prove the ruin of England.[589] And even the courtly Lyly could write: "Let not your mindes be carried away with vaine delights, as travailing into farre and straunge countries, wher you shall see more wickednesse then learn virtue and wit."[590]
But it was Italy much more than France that excited the fears of these alarmists. There was a common saying at the time that an Englishman Italianate was a devil incarnate. "I was once in Italy myself," wrote Roger Ascham,[591] "but I thank God my abode there was but nine dayes"—in which he saw more wickedness than he had beheld during nine years in London. "Suffer not thy sons to pass the Alpes, for they shall learn nothing there but Pride, Blasphemy and Atheism; PROTESTS AGAINST FOREIGN TRAVELand if by travelling they get a few broken Languages, that will profit them no more than to have the same meat served in divers dishes," was the advice of Lord Burghley.[592] Many were the precautions taken to prevent English subjects from travelling to Rome of all places. Travellers who were suspected of such intentions or who had travelled abroad without permission were rigorously examined. One such traveller confessed that he went to Brittany and France to see the countries and learn the language, but swore he had never been to Rome or spoken to the papist Cardinal Allen.[593] Many passports issued for the Grand Tour stipulated specifically that the traveller should not repair to Rome.[594]