Ma Maitresse et amie, moy et mon cœur s'en remettent en vos mains, vous suppliant les avoir pour recommander a votre bonne grace, et que par absence votre affection ne leur soit diminué. Car pur augmenter leur peine ce seroit grande pitié, car l'absence leur fait assez, et plus que jamais je n'eusse pensé . . . vous asseurant que de ma part l'ennuye de l'absence deja m'est trop grande. Et quand je pense a l'augmentation d'iceluy que par force faut que je soufre il m'est presque intollerable, s'il n'estoit le ferme espoir que j'aye de votre indissoluble affection vers moi, et pour le vous rementevoir alcune fois cela, et voyant que personellement je ne puis estre en votre presence, chose la plus approchante a cela qui m'est possible au present, je vous envoye, c'est-a-dire ma picture mise en braisselettes a toute la devise que deja sçavez, me souhaitant en leur place quant il vous plairoit. C'est de la main de—Votre serviteur et amy,
H. R.
Of Henry's other queens, Jane Seymour and Katherine Howard were both ardent admirers of the French language. The former had, like Anne Boleyn, completed her education at the French Court. Henry's chief objection to Anne of Cleves was her lack of French refinements. We know from the French ambassador Marillac that Henry was ill pleased at Anne's German costume and made her dress in the French style,[174] which, according to the same authority, had been favoured by Queen Katherine Howard and all her ladies. Moreover, the new queen could speak neither French[175] nor English, and her own language was displeasing to the king's ears; consequently he refused to converse much with her by means of an interpreter.[176] As for Katharine Parr, she was one of the most distinguished linguists of her time, and did much to encourage the studies of the royal family.
French was one of the principal studies of Henry VIII.'s children. It appears to have been the only modern foreign language with which Edward VI. was acquainted; he is said to have been "in the French and Latin Tongues singularly perfect."[177] Mary, on the other hand, knew Spanish as well as she did French. This is, however, accounted for by the fact that she was early destined to become the wife of the Emperor Charles V. FRENCH STUDIED IN THE ROYAL FAMILYThe emperor had even tried to persuade Henry to allow his daughter to be brought up in Spain. His request was refused, but a promise was given that the princess should be educated in all points as a Spanish lady.[178] In addition to this, her mother, Katherine of Aragon, superintended her early education, and her attendants were all Spanish. Thus Spanish was for a time almost her native tongue. Yet French was by no means neglected, especially after the Spanish marriage was broken off. Fresh impetus was given to this study by the possibility of a French match, when in 1518 negotiations for a union with the Dauphin, son of Francis I., were set on foot. On the testimony of Marillac, Mary spoke and wrote French well; the ambassador had seen letters of hers written in French at the time of her mother's divorce.[179] The princess was also well acquainted with Latin, and understood Italian, though, like many others, she did not attempt to speak it.[180]
Elizabeth alone of the royal family spoke Italian with almost as much ease as she did French.[181] "French and Italian she speaks like English," wrote her tutor, Roger Ascham, "Latin with fluency, propriety, and judgment"; and in addition she had some knowledge of Greek. When queen, she retained her early fancy for Italian, and prided herself on using no other language in the presence of Italians.[182] The Scotch ambassador, Sir James Melville, a very competent judge, remarks that she spoke it "raisonable weill."[183] French, however, was her usual means of intercourse with other foreigners, even when, like Melville, they spoke English. The queen commended Melville's French. "She said my French was gud," he writes in his memoirs, where he likewise gives his own opinion of the queen's attainments in the language: "hir Maiestie culd speak as gud Frenche as any that had never bene out of the contrie, but yet she laiketh the use of the Frenche court language, quhilk was frank and schort and had oft tymes twa significations, quhilk discreit and famylier frendes tok always in the best part."[184] If not idiomatic, the queen's French is generally allowed to have been fluent. Her accent is reported to have been harsh and unpleasing; she spoke with a drawl, and, according to M. Drizanval, resident in London for the French king,[185] she constantly repeated the phrase "paar Dieu, paar maa foi" in a ridiculous tone. Another visitor, the Duke of Württemberg, records that he once heard her deliver an appropriate speech in French,[186] which, as usual, was the language in which he addressed her. Towards the end of her reign the queen still practised the use of French and Italian. In 1598 the German Hentzner, travelling in England, describes how he saw Elizabeth "as she went along in all her State and magnificence," and how "she spoke very graciously first to one then to another (whether foreign ministers or those who attend for different reasons) in English, French, and Italian."[187] She also wrote French with some ease. One of her earliest literary efforts was a translation from the French of Margaret of Navarre's Miroir de l'Ame pécheresse. She likewise composed devotions and prayers in French—a habit which she retained after she had been queen for many years. At the time when her marriage with the Duke of Alençon, her "little frog," as she calls him, was under discussion, the queen compiled a curious little volume, containing six prayers, written on vellum in a very neat hand; in addition to devotions in French and English there are others in Italian, Latin, and Greek. In the front of this work there is a miniature of the Duke, and at the end, one of Elizabeth.[188] Other examples of her compositions in French are found in her correspondence, where this language holds a considerable place.
It thus appears that the majority of the English nobility and gentry spoke and understood French at least tolerably well. FRENCH TUTORS AND FRENCH GRAMMARSWe are led to ask how they came by their knowledge, and what facilities there were in England for learning French, seeing that many of them never visited France. In the sixteenth century private tuition played a large part in the education of the gentry; and the professional tutor was, in many cases, a Frenchman, who would naturally further the study of his native tongue. The Court itself encouraged the custom of employing French tutors by engaging several in its midst; and as, at this time, the Court became a powerful factor in English social life, and the chief means of entering the service of the State, noblemen and gentlemen wishing to figure on the social stage endeavoured to adapt themselves to Court requirements. French tutors were to be found in all the chief families of the time. Étienne Pasquier remarks that there was no noble family in England without its French tutor to instruct the children in the French language.[189] This condition of things was still further developed a few years later when religious persecution in France and the Netherlands drove increasingly large numbers of Protestant refugees to take asylum in England. All traces of the majority of these tutors have been lost; those of whom anything is known were, for the most part, either the authors of manuals for teaching French, or had won repute as writers or Humanists before leaving their native land.
One of these Humanists was Bernard André, familiarly called "Master Barnard," the blind poet—an infirmity to which he frequently refers. He was a native of Toulouse, and probably came to England with Henry VII., his patron.[190] It is a curious fact that soon after his accession Henry appointed this Frenchman, author of verses in French and Latin but never a line in English, Poet Laureate of England. In addition to this he bestowed on him repeated marks of favour. For a time André was engaged as a tutor at Oxford, and in 1496 was chosen as governor to Prince Arthur, and probably had much to do with the education of his brother, afterwards Henry VIII. Appointed Historiographer Royal, he began in this capacity to write his patron's life. Like so many other men of education, André was in Holy Orders; he received preferment from time to time, and was finally presented to the living of Guisnes near Calais, which he resigned in 1521, having attained an "extreme old age."
In the early sixteenth century, as in the Middle Ages, England took the initiative in the production of French grammars.[191] The numbers which appeared are so many testimonies to Englishmen's interest in the French language. The chief and best known of these grammars is the great work of John Palsgrave (1530), already mentioned, which stands out in contrast with the slight treatises which had previously appeared on the subject in England. Considering the time when it was written and the irregular and unsettled condition of the language with which it deals, it is truly remarkable for its fulness and comprehensiveness. Almost alone of its predecessors and its immediate successors, it answered more than a merely temporary and professional purpose, and is still of very great value to the student of the English and French languages at that time, and a great storehouse of obsolete words in both languages. Perhaps the very reason which makes it so valuable to the student of to-day hindered its success in the sixteenth century; most students of French then preferred the shorter and more practical manuals. Palsgrave had a very exalted idea of the French tongue; he desired to place it on a level with the "three perfect tonges"—Latin, Greek, and Hebrew—and to make it a fourth and classical tongue, by drawing up "absolute" rules for its use.
Palsgrave's grammar acquires additional importance from the fact that no similar work had been produced in France. It is the first systematized attempt to formulate rules for the French language, or indeed for any modern tongue. Only one year later, however, Sylvius or Dubois published his In Linguam Gallicam Eisagoge (1531). In the address to Henry VIII., which precedes his work, Palsgrave speaks of the "great nombre of clerkes, whiche before season of this mater have written nowe sithe the beginnyng of your most fortunate and most prosperous raigne." All these "clerkes," he says, have treated chiefly of two things, which they judged specially useful to the English—the pronunciation of French, and "wherein the true analogie of the two tongues did rest." BARCLAY'S "INTRODUCTORY"No doubt many of these treatises were in manuscript and are among the lost treasures of the sixteenth century. Yet some have come down to us. Palsgrave mentions three writers by name, Alexander Barclay, Petrus Vallensys, and Giles Duwes, copies of whose works are still in existence.
The earliest of these grammars—so far as is known the first French grammar ever printed—was the work of Alexander Barclay, well known as a prolific writer and poet, who devoted much of his time to translation and did much to make contemporary French literature known in England. Barclay had spent a time "full of foly and unprofytable stody" at some university, possibly Paris; he had travelled, and was well acquainted with French; from his youth upwards, he says, he had been exercised in the two languages of French and English. It was late in his literary career, when he had "withdrawen" his pen from its "olde dylygence," that he undertook to compose a grammar of the French language, at the request of the Duke of Norfolk, Lord Treasurer of England, and of "certain other gentlemen." The work appeared in 1521[192] under the title of Here begynneth the introductory to wryte and to pronounce frenche compyled by Alexander Barclay, compendiously at the commandement of the right hye excellent and myghty prynce, Th. duke of Northfolke. The printer, Robert Coplande, himself a good French scholar, composed some lines on the coat of arms of the Duke in French, and printed them at the beginning of the book; at the end he placed a translation of Lambert Danneau's Traité des Danses, also from his own pen.[193]