[216] Clement Jugé, Nicolas Denisot du Mans, 1515-1559, Paris and Le Mans, 1907.
[217] He also began his work as a secret agent in the service of France, and it is said that Calais was recovered by the French in 1558, from a plan which Denisot submitted to the Duc de Guise.
[218] There was a MS. copy of Latin poems by Denisot in the Library of Edward VI. (Nichols, Literary Remains, 1857.)
[219] J. Bonnet, Récits du seizième siècle, 1864, p. 348.
[220] Le Tombeau de Marguerite de Navarre faict premierement en Distiques latins par les trois sœurs, Princesses en Angleterre: Depuis Traduits, en Grec, Italien et François par plusieurs des excellentz Poetes de la France. Avecques plusieurs Odes, Hymnes, Cantiques, Epitaphes sur le mesme subiect. Paris, 1551.
CHAPTER II
FRENCH TUTORS AT COURT—GILES DUWES—JOHN PALSGRAVE—JEAN BELLEMAIN
The two most popular French tutors at the Court of Henry VIII. were undoubtedly Giles Duwes and John Palsgrave. Palsgrave is the only one of these early French tutors who is well known to-day as a writer on the French tongue. He was a Londoner, and received his education at Cambridge and Paris. Giles Duwes was a Frenchman and seems to have enjoyed a greater popularity in his own day. He had been teaching French at the English Court for over ten years when Palsgrave received his first appointment there, as French tutor to the king's "most dere and entierly beloved" sister Mary, afterwards Queen of France. Both teachers were protégés of Henry VIII., and taught in the royal family—Duwes was tutor to the king himself; and both were authors of grammars of the French language. That of Palsgrave has been mentioned already. It appeared in 1530 under the title of L'Esclarcissement de la langue françoyse. Duwes's was not published till three years later approximately, at the request of his pupil, Princess Mary, afterwards Queen of England. It was called An Introductorie for to learne to rede, to prononce and to speke French trewly, compyled for the rigid high excellent and most vertuous Lady Mary of Englande, daughter to our most gracious soveraign, Lorde Kyng Henry the Eight.[221] His treatise is a small quarto of 102 leaves, forming a striking contrast to Palsgrave's enormous folio[222] of over 1000 pages.