The king's eldest son, Henry, made acquaintance with French at a very early age. In 1600, when only seven years old, he addressed a letter in French to the States-General of Holland. He calls this epistle "les primices de nostre main,"[717] and probably received some help in its composition. He also wrote in French to Henry IV., who had recommended to him his riding master, FRENCH STUDIES OF THE STUART FAMILYM. St. Antoine,[718] and to the Dauphin, offering him two bidets.[719] At this time many of the riding-masters in England were Italians, but almost all the dancing-masters were Frenchmen.[720] The young prince, however, had a French master for both these exercises.[721] One of his language masters was John Florio, best known by his translation of Montaigne's Essais, published in 1600, who taught both French and Italian and was the author of several books for teaching the latter. Florio had spent many of his earlier years at Oxford, and at the beginning of the seventeenth century was in London, teaching languages, and well acquainted with many of the chief men of the day. It is uncertain at what date he became tutor to Prince Henry,[722] but in 1603 he was appointed Reader in Italian to Queen Anne, and in the following year "Gentleman extraordinary and Groom of the Privy Chamber." His royal pupil was a great lover of Pibrac's Quatrains, popular among teachers of French. The prince wrote to his mother in 1604, sending her a copy of one of the quatrains, and telling her that if she likes he will undertake to learn the whole by heart before the end of the year; and, in reminding his father of a promise to give ecclesiastical preferment to his tutor, Mr. Adam Newton, he quotes one of them as appropriate:[723]
Tu ne saurois d'assez ample salaire
Recompenser celui qui t'a soigné
En ton enfance et qui t'a enseigné
A bien parler et sur tout a bien faire.
Prince Charles, afterwards Charles I., seems to have been the most accomplished of James's family in so far as French is concerned. He was able to carry on a conversation in it with his father and the Duke John Ernest of Saxe-Weimar when he was thirteen years old.[724] Evidence of his fluency is provided by the well-known episode of his visit to Spain to see the Infanta. The Queen of Spain, daughter of Henry IV. and sister of Henrietta Maria, was delighted when the English prince, on his arrival at the Spanish Court, addressed her in her native idiom. She warned him not to speak to her again without permission, as it was customary to poison all gentlemen suspected of gallantry towards the Queen of Spain. She managed to obtain leave to speak with Charles, however, and had a long conversation with him in her box at the theatre, in the course of which, it is said, she confided to him her desire for his marriage with her sister.[725] When Charles married Henrietta she was quite ignorant of English, and his knowledge of French was again put to the test. He was also called upon to employ French with his mother-in-law, Marie de Medecis, during her stay in England. His letters to her show how accomplished a writer of French he was. He possessed a more elegant style than his French wife, thanks largely to Guy Le Moyne,[726] who was also French tutor to the Duke of Buckingham[727] and other members of the nobility.
Among the French masters employed in the family of Charles I. was Peter Massonnet, a native of Geneva, who attended the princes, Charles (II.) and James (II.), in the capacity of sub-tutor, writing-master, and French teacher. We have no details as to how he taught them, nor do we know if Charles learnt from one or other of the French manuals which had been dedicated to him. Massonnet received a salary and pension from Charles I., in whose service he remained for thirty-two years, first as French tutor to his children and then, in the time of his adversity, as clerk to the Patents, and Foreign Secretary. During the Commonwealth he spent some time at Oxford, and was created D.Med. on the 9th of April 1648, being described as second or under tutor to James, Duke of York.[728] At the time of the Restoration Massonnet was in a very destitute condition. His pension had not been paid during the troubled period of the Civil Wars and the Commonwealth, and to crown all he was outlawed for debt. He had to petition Charles II., his former pupil, several times for the payment of his salary and arrears before his appeal had any real effect. From time to time he received instalments, but in 1668 he was still "the saddest FRENCH TUTORS AT COURTobject of pity of all the king's servants, and ready to perish."[729]
In 1633 Sir Robert le Grys, Groom of the Chamber to James I. and Charles I.,[730] offered his services as tutor to Prince Charles (II.), then three years old. He undertook to make Latin the prince's mother tongue by the age of seven, using an easy method, not "dogging his memory with pedantic rules, after the usual fashion." French was to be the language first studied, and Italian and Spanish also entered the programme.[731] What sort of reception these proposals met with is not known, but in May of the same year Sir Robert was granted the office of captain of the Castle of St. Mewes for life.[732] Another tutor, named Lovell, taught French and Latin to two of Charles I.'s children during the Civil War. He was employed at Penhurst by the Countess of Leicester, to whose care the children had been committed.[733]
Ladies were among the most eager lovers of the French language at the Court of the early Stuarts, and were noted for their proficiency in that tongue. We hear that wealthy ladies go to Court, "and there learn to be at charge to teach the paraquetoes French."[734] Not only was he that could not parlee not considered a gentleman, but the ladies had to talk French if they wished to play a part at Court. French had entirely supplanted Euphuism, the high-flown, bombastic speech which had held sway in polite circles after the appearance of Lyly's Euphues in 1579. "Now a lady at Court who speaks no French," wrote Th. Blount in 1623,[735] "is as little regarded as she who did not parley euphuisme" in the earlier days. Girls, to be considered well brought up, had to "speak French naturally at fifteen, and be turned to Spanish and Italian half a year later."[736] It is improbable that Spanish was learnt in any but a few exceptional cases. Italian, however, was fairly widely learnt for purposes of reading as we may conclude from the title of a book printed at London in 1598 by Adam Islip—The Necessary, Fit and Convenient Education of a young Gentlewoman, Italian, French, and English.[737] John Evelyn's favourite daughter, Mary, was as familiarly acquainted with French as with English. Her knowledge of Italian was limited and characteristic of the general attitude taken up towards that language; she understood it, and was able "to render a laudable account of what she read and observed." His other daughter, Susanna, was also a good French scholar, but apparently knew no Italian, though she had read most of the Greek and Roman authors. Sir Ralph Verney, who dissuaded women from deep study, recognised that French was indispensable, and encouraged them to read French romances especially.
While Italian was sometimes read, French was almost always spoken in polite circles. Milton's avowed preference for Italian forms a noticeable exception to the general rule, and even he acquired some knowledge of French at an early age.[738] There were also many more facilities for learning French than there were for Italian. It is certain—some of the dialogues of the French text-books prove it—that many ladies picked up a conversational knowledge of the language from their French maids. This was how the young daughters of Lord Strafford acquired their knowledge, as we see from the following account of their progress which he sent to their grandmother: "Nan, I think, speaks French prettily ... the other (Arabella) also speaks, but her maid, being of Guernsey, her accent is not good."[739]
Women, however, had had at all times no small influence on the production of French text-books. One of the first written in England, the Treatyz of Walter de Bibbesworth, was composed in the first place for the use of Lady Dionysia de Mounchensy. The two chief grammars of the early sixteenth century, the Introductorie of Duwes and the Esclarcissement of Palsgrave, both owed their origin to royal princesses, and early in the seventeenth century there appeared a grammar written specifically to enable women to "match old Holliband" and "parlee out their part" with men—The French Garden for English Ladyes and gentlewomen to walke in, or a Summer dayes labour, by Peter Erondell or Arundell, LADIES STUDY FRENCHa native of Normandy, and one of the group of refugee Huguenots, who taught the French language in London. Erondell informs us he had long felt the urgent need of such a book in his own teaching experience. "It is to be wondered," he writes, "that among so many which (and some very sufficiently) have written principles concerning our French Tongue (making the dialogues of divers kinds), not one hath set forth any respecting or belonging properly to women, except in the French Alphabet,[740] but as good never a whit as never the better; not that I finde faulte with it, but it is so little, as not to contayne scarce a whole page, so that it is to be esteemed almost as nothing. I knowe not where to attribute the cause, unles it be to forgetfulnes in them that have written of it. For seeing that our tongue is called Lingua Mulierum, and that the English ladyes and gentlewomen are studious and of a pregnant spirits, quicke concertes and ingeniositie, as any other country whatsoever, me thinketh it had been a verie worthie and specious subject for a good writer to employ his Pen." Accordingly Erondell undertook "to break the yce first," as he puts it.
He opens his Garden with some rules of pronunciation in English, "as a gate through the which wee must (and without the which we cannot) enter into our French Garden." He acknowledges that he has selected these rules "out of them which have written thereof." Many are taken from De la Mothe's French Alphabet, and Holyband, as well as Bellot, are also reckoned amongst those "which have written best of it." On one point, however, Erondell claims to make an observation "never noted before in any book." This had to do with the change in pronunciation of the diphthong oi.[741] "Whereas our countrymen were wonte to pronounce these words connoistre ... as it is written by oi or oy; now since fewe yeeres they pronounce it as if it were written thus, conètre."
Erondell reduces the grammar rules to the smallest possible number. "He wishes the student to learn by heart" the first two verbs avoir and estre, and for the rest to "help him selfe by the treatise that M. Holliband made thereof,[742] as being the best (French and English) that I have yet seen, notwithstanding it is not amisse to make you knowe our persons and the number of our conjugations, which M. Bellot, in his French Guide,[743] saith to be sixe, and I can number no more." In dealing with grammar, Erondell claims to correct a gross error common in England—the use of de for the preposition from before a masculine noun preceded by le; "because that in English it is said ... I come from the country, so the English students do commonly say, insteade of Je viens du pays, ... Je viens de le pays.... But why should I finde faulte in the English students," says Erondell, "whereas I my selfe have heard the French teachers (I mean of our language) commit commonly that error?"