CHAPTER I
THE FRENCH LANGUAGE AT COURT AND AMONG THE NOBILITY
At the beginning of the sixteenth century the gradual changes which brought about the extinction of Anglo-French were complete to all intents and purposes; this corrupt form of the language lingered only in a few religious houses and the law courts. The French spoken at the English Court in the Middle Ages had remained purer than elsewhere; for centuries the kings of England were as much attached to France as to England; they had spent much of their time in France and fought for the French crown as their natural right, not as Englishmen in strife with Frenchmen. From the thirteenth century, however, English was understood, though not widely spoken, at Court. It progressed gradually until, two centuries later, in the reign of Henry VI., it was used more frequently than French. By the sixteenth century French was an entirely foreign language at the English Court, and it was round the Court circles that developed the new and more serious study of the language which then arose—a study which led to the production of so important a work as John Palsgrave's L'Esclarcissement de la langue françoyse. It will therefore be well to consider the extent to which French was used among the nobility and gentry of the time.
The personal ascendancy of the Tudors and the pomp of their Court began to attract the attention of foreigners, and to excite their curiosity. Consequently numerous travellers made their way to the English capital; and later in the same period religious persecution, raging on the Continent, drove many Protestants, frequently men of distinction, to seek refuge in England. What language would these visitors employ in their intercourse with their hosts? English is excluded from the purview, because at this time, and indeed for some time after, our language received no recognition, and certainly no homage from any foreigner, and but scant deference from English scholars themselves.[132] Several foreign visitors in London have left an account of their impressions on hearing this entirely unknown and strange language spoken. Thus Nicander Nucius, the Greek Envoy at the Court of Henry VIII., says of the English that "they possess a peculiar language, differing in some measure from all others"; although it is "barbarous," he finds in it a certain charm and attraction, and judges it "sweeter" than German or Flemish.[133] Others formed a less favourable opinion.[134] The physician Girolamo Cordano, for instance, when he first heard Englishmen speaking, thought they were Italians gone mad and raving, "for they inflect the tongue upon the palate, twist words in the mouth, and maintain a sort of gnashing with the teeth." The Dutchman, Immanuel von Meteren, gathered the impression that English is broken German, "not spoken from the heart as the latter, but only prattling with the tongue."
We have, however, to recollect that, among the learned, Latin was in general use as a spoken language; it was the ideal of the Humanists to make Latin the universal language of the educated world. Erasmus was able to live several years in England, and in familiar intercourse with Englishmen, without feeling the necessity for learning English or using any other modern language; but he mingled almost entirely with scholars, such as Grocyn, Linacre, Latimer, Colet, and More—men with whom Henry VIII. loved to surround himself. Still, the great Dutchman was an exception even amongst Humanists, who nearly all, at some period in their lives, forsook Latin for their native tongue. Moreover, Latin was not fluently or colloquially spoken by the majority of the English nobility and gentry. The poet, Alexander Barclay, tells us that "the understandyne of Latyn," in the early years of the sixteenth century, was "almost contemned by Gentylmen."[135] "I have not these twenty years used any THE SPEAKING OF LATINLatin tongue,"[136] said Latimer at his trial for heresy in 1554—a striking testimony on the lips of one whose natural sympathies were towards Humanism. Some years later the great Huguenot scholar, Hubert Languet, wrote to his young English friend, Sir Philip Sidney—then newly returned from continental travel—to express his apprehension lest the young man should forget all his Latin at the English Court and entirely give up the practice of it; he urges him to do his best to prevent this, and maintain his Latin along with his French. Languet affirms that he has never heard Sidney pronounce a syllable of French incorrectly, and wishes his pronunciation of Latin were as perfect.[137] Sidney, however, does not appear to have considered Latin of as much importance to a courtier as French: "So you can speake and write Latine not barbarously," he wrote to his brother Robert in 1580,[138] "I never require great study ordinarily in Ciceronianisme, the cheife abuse of Oxford." No doubt Sidney voices a general sentiment in this verdict. It is increasingly clear that the supremacy of Latin was beginning to be questioned on all sides, and, while Latin remained to a large extent the language of scholars, it was not generally employed in society.
Further, when the English did speak Latin, foreigners had considerable difficulty in understanding them, on account of their notoriously bad pronunciation. The great scholar Scaliger, who was in England in 1590, tells that he once listened to an Englishman talking Latin for a quarter of an hour, and at last excused himself, saying that he did not understand English![139] To the same effect is the observation of Tom Coryat, the traveller, who, on his journey on the Continent,[140] found his Latin so little understood, that he had to modify his pronunciation. At a later date, when the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Cosmo III., visited the two English Universities,[141] he was unable to understand the Latin speeches and orations with which he was greeted. A Latin comedy which the Cambridge students performed in his honour was equally unintelligible to him. "To smatter Latin with an English mouth," wrote Milton in a well-known passage, "is as ill a hearing as Law French."
At the same time a quickened interest in modern languages generally was felt in England as in other countries. Two of these, Italian and Spanish, entered the arena to challenge the supremacy of French in the world of fashion and intellect. The real issue of the contest, however, was never in doubt. The Renaissance and the new Humanism appeared for a time to favour the Italian rival,[142] but the inherent merits of French, with its particular genius for precision and clarity, easily won the day. Those circles—often very brilliant circles—of distinguished men and women for whom the Renaissance was as the dawn of a new day, often made Italian a more serious object of study than French; but though it was widely learned for the sake of its literature, it was never so widely spoken or so universally popular as French. Italian, and to a minor degree Spanish, were indeed seriously cultivated by the Tudor group of distinguished linguists,[143] and so became a sort of fashion, which, spreading to more frivolous circles, soon degenerated into mere affectation. These dilettanti had been at a great feast of languages and stolen the scraps, to use Shakespeare's words. Such affectation was naturally felt to be dangerous. While Roger Ascham renders due homage to the linguistic attainments of his queen,[144] he finds it necessary to reproach INTEREST IN MODERN LANGUAGESthe young gentlemen of the day with their deficiency in this respect. Professional teachers of modern languages likewise complain of the lack of seriousness on the part of many of their pupils. John Florio,[145] for example, bewails the fact that when they have learned two words of Spanish, three words of French, and four words of Italian, they think they have enough, and will study no more; and a French teacher[146] expresses the same thought in almost identical terms; according to him they learn a little French one day, then a bit of Italian and a snatch of Spanish, and think themselves qualified for an embassy to the Grand Turk. Shakespeare's Falconbridge, the young baron of England, may be taken as a fair example of such dilettantism.[147]
Thus Italian was never a really dangerous rival to French, which had struck its roots deep into the English soil long before Italian influence reached our shores. Not only was this the case, but French was also widely known throughout Europe. Even in the early years of this period, the poet Alexander Barclay, himself the author of a French grammar, affirms that French was spoken even by the Turks and Saracens. The French themselves are said to have been in love with their own language, and, as a result, to have neglected Latin;[148] when the English ambassador at Paris, Sir Amias Poulet, sent to England for a chaplain for his household, he wrote: "Yt were to be wished that he had at the least some understandinge in the French tongue for his better conference with the Frenche ministers, whereof many are not best able to utter there mynde in Lattyn."[149]
We may therefore safely conclude that French was the language commonly spoken by Englishmen in their intercourse with foreigners, although Latin was sometimes used in conversation, and Italians were occasionally addressed in their own tongue. English was so little used in the Court and its circles that foreigners were apt to forget that England had a language of her own; one of them considers it a merit in Henry VIII. that he was able to speak English! In London, indeed, the use of French was so common that several foreign observers deemed the fact worthy of note. Nicander Nucius, the Greek envoy who visited London in 1545, remarks[150] that, for the most part, the English use the French language, besides having a great admiration for everything else French—an observation which cannot safely be taken as referring to any other class than the nobility, as his relations would be almost wholly restricted to that class. When the Duke of Württemberg visited the court of Elizabeth, where he found ample occasion to exercise his own admirable knowledge of French, he left on record the fact that many English courtiers understood and spoke French very well. The spread of French at the English Court attracted the attention of Frenchmen also, and several years after Nicander's account, Peletier du Mans states that in England, at least among the princes and their courts, French is spoken on all occasions.[151]
French was also not infrequently used in correspondence. Apart from such diplomatic correspondence as exists, numerous examples of the interchange of private letters in French among the English nobility have come down to us. Even among scholars Latin was by no means the only medium of communication. In the sixteenth century the chief scholars of the two countries corresponded with each other, and, though Englishmen never wrote in their native tongue, Frenchmen did occasionally use their own language rather than Latin. Bacon wrote in French to the Marquis of Effiat, and Hotman, on the other hand, in French to Camden: "Me sentant detraqué de l'usage de la langue latine, je vous escris cette lettre en françois pour renouveller avec vous notre amitié ancienne et correspondance."[152] John Calvin corresponded with Edward VI. and Protector Somerset in French, and Henry IV. of France carried on a voluminous correspondence in his own language with his "tres chere et tres aimée bonne FRENCH REGARDED WITH SPECIAL FAVOURsœur," Elizabeth, as well as with her chief ministers.[153] French was thus more than a mere accomplishment for the English gentleman, and soon became an absolute necessity for all those who desired employment under the Crown. It is true that an interpreter might be had, but the practice was looked upon with great disfavour as very unsuitable where private negotiations had to be conducted. The necessity for a knowledge of French on the part of a minister of state may be gathered from the large number of petitions and other documents addressed to them in that language and preserved among the State Papers.[154] A rather curious instance of the favour with which the use of French was regarded in official circles is supplied by the case of a Scotch prisoner in London, who, when he desired leave on parole, on the ground of ill-health, was advised to make his application in French, "to shew his scholarship."[155] Copies of proclamations, issued in foreign countries, were frequently translated into French before being sent to the English Government; and time after time we find a lack of knowledge of French regarded as a serious disqualification for diplomatic or other public service. One young gentleman regrets that he "cannot be engaged on any work of importance as he does not know French." The drawbacks arising from an inadequate knowledge of the language appear from the case of a certain Thomas Thyrleby who writes from Valance to Wriothesly in 1538 telling him how much discouraged he is concerning his knowledge of French. He says he went with the Bishop of Winchester and Brian to the Constable that morning at eight o'clock, and that he could understand them, but not the Grand Master's answer, except by conjecture, guessing at a word here and there; after dinner he had audience of the French king and bore away never one word but "l'empereur, l'empereur" often rehearsed; and he feels he must diligently apply himself to learn the language or the king will be ill served when he is left alone.[156]