Edwardus. Prince.
a ma treschere et bien
aymée sœur Elizabeth.[273]
We see from the date of this letter that Edward had been learning French nearly three months when it was written.
Bellemain's salary as French tutor to the king was £6:12:4 per quarter. In 1546 he received an annuity of fifty marks for life; in 1550 a lease for twenty-one years of the parsonages of Minehead and Cotcombe, county Somerset; in 1553 a lease of the manor of Winchfield in Hampshire;[274] and in 1551 a grant of letters of denization.[275] He stayed in England until the king's death in 1553, and was present at his funeral. No doubt, with his religious sympathies, he would find the England of Mary's time an uncongenial home, and leave it at as early a date as possible.
Bellemain did not compose any treatise on the French language. He says that he had long nourished the hope of writing some rules for French pronunciation and orthography; but he changed his mind, thinking it mere folly to attempt to give rules for that which was not yet fixed and certain. In a translation into French of the Greek Epistle of Basil the Great to St. Gregory upon solitary life, which he dedicated to the Princess Elizabeth,[276] he expresses his opinion upon the new style of French orthography, then promoted by certain writers, with whom he did not agree on most points. These writers[277] wished to make the orthography tally with the pronunciation and to discard the letters which are not pronounced; they would thus change the spelling still used for the most part by scholars and courtiers, and which in Bellemain's opinion is preferable to that proposed by the so-called reformers. He argues that an alteration of the spelling of French would necessitate a corresponding change in Latin, where the letters have the same sound and meaning, a thing which appears ridiculous to the merest observer. Besides, the derivative consonants are useful, as they serve to distinguish words of identical sound but different meaning and derivation, and to indicate the length of the preceding vowel. On the other hand, letters have been added by versifiers merely to suit their rimes, and these writers have done more than any others to corrupt French orthography. Of what avail is it, asks Bellemain, to compose rules on a subject so much in dispute? For these reasons he abstained from increasing the number of works on the French language produced in England.
In the dedication to Elizabeth of his translation of Basil the Great's Epistle to St. Gregory, Bellemain shows that he was familiar with the books which the princess read, and also expresses his desire that she will not let her French be corrupted by the so-called reformed orthography she may meet in some of these books.[278] Thus Bellemain took an interest in Elizabeth's French, and it is highly probable that he was her tutor in that language.[279] QUEEN ELIZABETH'S KNOWLEDGE OF FRENCHIn the year 1546, when he began to teach Edward French, the Princess Elizabeth shared for some time her brother's studies. It is said that they began with religious instruction in the morning, and the rest of the forenoon, breakfast alone excepted, was devoted to the languages, science, and moral learning. Edward then went to his outdoor exercises and Elizabeth to her lute or viol.[280] No doubt, then, she received lessons from the French tutor until she left her brother in December. Elizabeth, however, had made considerable progress in the language some years before this date, and before 1544, so that it is extremely likely that Bellemain had been teaching her for several years before he was appointed French tutor to Edward, perhaps owing to his success with Elizabeth. At any rate there does not seem to be any trace of any other French tutor to the princess, and the fact that he received an annuity of £50 for life suggests that he had already rendered some service in the royal family.
The scholar Leland praised Elizabeth's skill in French and Latin when he saw her at Ampthill with her brother, and already in 1544 she had completed the first composition in which she exerted her early activity in the French language. This was a translation of Margaret of Navarre's Miroir de l'ame pecheresse,[281] which she called The Miroir or Glasse of the Synneful Soul, and dedicated to Queen Katharine Parr.[282] It was published in 1564 under the title, A godly meditacyon of the Christian soule concerning a love towards God and Hys Christe, compyled in Frenche by Lady Margarete, Quene of Naver, and aptly translated into Englysh by the right vertuous lady Elizabeth, daughter of our late Soverayne Kynge Henri the VIII.[283] The translation itself is not very good, and the style is awkward. But Elizabeth was only eleven years old when she undertook it, and observes apologetically that she "joyned the sentences together as well as the capacite of (her) symple witte and small lerning coulde expende themselves." In the following year (1545) she translated some prayers and meditations written in English by the queen, Katharine Parr, into Latin, French, and Italian, and dedicated them to her father.[284] Of greater interest is a little book the princess wrote in French, and also offered to the king—a translation into French of the Dialogus Fidei of Erasmus, thus inscribed: "A Treshaut Trespuissant et Redoubté Prince Henry VIII de ce nom, Roy d'Angleterre, de France et d'Irlande, défenseur de la foy, Elizabeth sa Treshumble fille rend salut et obedience." This treatise, composed before the death of the king in 1547,[285] was preserved in the Library at Whitehall, and often attracted the attention of foreign visitors in London.[286]
Thus Elizabeth was well accomplished in French before the reign of Edward VI. It was while her brother was king that the great Hebrew scholar, Antony Rudolph Chevallier, commonly called Monsieur Antony, was for a short time her tutor in French. Chevallier was a Norman who had studied Hebrew under Vatable at Paris, and had been forced to take refuge in England on account of his religious opinions. He studied at Cambridge and lived for a year in the house of Archbishop Cranmer,[287] who brought him to the notice of the young king (then famous for his patronage of foreign scholars of the Reform) and of Protector Somerset, who appointed him tutor to the Princess Elizabeth.[288]
On the death of Edward VI., Chevallier, like Bellemain, left England. He taught Hebrew at Strasburg and Geneva, where he came into contact with English student refugees under the reign of Mary I., and made the acquaintance of Calvin. He returned to England in the reign of Elizabeth (1568) to solicit the queen's help for the French Protestants. He received a good welcome, and in 1569 was made a lecturer in Hebrew at Cambridge, where "he was accounted second to none in the realme." He returned to France before the Massacre of St. Bartholomew (1570), and died as a result of the hardships he suffered in making his escape.
RELIGIOUS OPINIONS OF FRENCH TUTORSIt is a curious fact that the religious opinions of the French tutors in Henry VIII.'s family were reflected in the reigns of their pupils—the Protestant Edward VI., the Roman Catholic Mary, and the Protestant Elizabeth. Both Duwes and Bellemain allowed the subject of religion to make its way into their lessons, and they probably exercised some influence, differing in degree, on the religious convictions of their pupils.