Paul Le Pipre retained the position he was so unwilling to share with a colleague, for many years after this. The last we hear of him is in September 1597, when he was censured by the consistory for holding school on Sunday.
French schools likewise arose in other provincial towns, where French Churches had been established. There were also, it appears, similar private schools, with the primary object of teaching French to the English, and unconnected with the churches. At any rate, French and Walloon schoolmasters arrived in some of these towns. At Rye in 1572, for instance, we come across Nicholas Curlew and Martin Martin, fugitives from Dieppe,[390] though probably, like Vincent Primont and John Robone, they did not settle in the town. At Norwich, in 1568, was a Pierre de Rieu of Lille who had arrived ten months before, and in 1622 Francis Boy and John Cokele.[391] At Dover, in the same year, Francis Rowland and Nicholas Rowsignoll, both French schoolmasters, had "come out of France by reason of the late troubles yet continuing."[392] And lastly, at Southampton, we hear in 1576 of Nicholas Chemin, who, in 1578, was refused communion at the church on account of his causing some disturbance in the congregation; of a M. Du Plantin, dit Antoine Ylot, in 1576, and of a Pierre de la Motte, 'mestre d'escolle,' in 1577.[393] No doubt most of these schoolmasters taught under the auspices of the French Churches.
M. Du Plantin was one of a large number of ministers who took refuge in England, and his school was probably a French Church school, for seven of his young scholars are mentioned as communicants. Many French pastors like him, no doubt, took to the teaching profession during their stay in England, their numbers being far in excess of the ministers needed in the churches. The famous reformer, John Utenhove of Ghent, was in 1549 tutor to the son of a London gentleman.[394] Valerand Poullain, a converted priest, who, after being pastor at Strasburg, came to England, for a time held a similar post in the household of the Earl of Derby;[395] he afterwards became minister of the French Church at Glastonbury on the recommendation of Utenhove. Another minister, Jean Louveau, Sieur de la Porte, spent the time of exile from his Church of Roche Bernard, after the massacre of St. Bartholomew, in teaching languages in London, and there were many others in like case.[396]
At Southampton there was a French school of special interest. Its teacher, like Du Plantin, was a pastor, though the school does not seem to have had any close connexion with the French Church. This schoolmaster and divine was the once famous Dr. Adrian Saravia, a learned refugee from Flanders. He became later Professor of Divinity at Leyden and an intimate friend of Casaubon; and when he took refuge in England for a second time in 1587, he enjoyed some ecclesiastical preferment, and was one of the translators of the Authorised Version of the Bible.[397] During his first sojourn in England, however, he was engaged on a more humble task. He first arrived at Southampton in about 1567,[398] after having been for some years headmaster of a grammar school in Guernsey. Saravia's school at Southampton was limited to sixteen or twenty youths of good family. It was a rule that all the scholars should speak French. Any one who used English, "though only a word," was obliged to wear a fool's cap at meals, and continue to wear it until he caught another in the same fault.[399] FRENCH SCHOOL AT SOUTHAMPTONTwo Englishmen, who later became well known as translators, acquired their knowledge of French in this school. One was Joshua Sylvester, famous for his translation of Du Bartas, and the other Robert Ashley, who turned Louis le Roy's De la Vicissitude ou Variété des choses de l'univers (1579) into English (1594). Sylvester informs us that he learnt his French at Saravia's school "in three poor years, at three times three years old"; "I have never been in France," he writes to his uncle, William Plumb, "whereby I might become so perfect." Elsewhere he expresses his affection for his master and his debt of gratitude to him:
My Saravia, to whose revered name
Mine owes the honour of Du Bartas' fame.
Sylvester did not put his knowledge of French into practice only by translations into English. He also wrote some original verses in French; the sonnet with which he offered to James I. his translation of the works of Du Bartas, a poet for whom the king had a great admiration, will show his skill in a difficult art:
Voy, sire, ton Saluste habillé en Anglois
(Anglois, encore plus de cœur que de langage:)
Qui, connaissant loyall ton Royale héritage,
En ces beaux Liz Dorez au sceptre des Gaulois
(Comme au vray souverain des vrays subjects françois),
Cy à tes pieds sacrez te fait ton sainct Hommage
(De ton Heur et Grandeur éternal temoinage).
Miroir de touts Heros, miracle de tous Roys,
Voy (sire) ton Saluste, ou (pour le moins) son ombre,
Ou l'ombre (pour le moins) de ses Traicts plus divins
Qui, ores trop noyrcis par mon pinceau trop sombre,
S'esclairciront aux Raiz de tes yeux plus benins.
Doncques d'œil benin et d'un accueil auguste,
Reçoy ton cher Bartas, et Voy, sire, Saluste.[400]
Another of Sylvester's contemporaries at Saravia's school was Sir Thomas Lake,[401] who became Secretary of State in the reign of James I., and is said to have read Latin and French to Queen Elizabeth towards the end of her reign. His French accent, unlike that of his schoolfellows, seems to have left much to be desired. In 1612 he incurred much ridicule by reading the French contract of marriage at the wedding of the Princess Elizabeth to the Elector with a very bad accent.
Saravia, it seems, encouraged his pupils to attend the French Church. Two of their names occur in the registers of the Church for the year 1576, viz. Nicholas Essard and Nicholas Carye, both probably Englishmen. Saravia himself and his wife were also regular attenders; in 1571 and again in 1576 he stood godfather at baptisms. The latest mention of him occurs in 1577. Usually the descriptive title "minister" is added after his name.[402] He is mentioned in the town records under the year 1576 as Master of the Grammar School, and in the following year the town paid 36s. "for four yardes of broade cloth for a gowne for Mr. Adrian Saravia the schoolmaster at 9s. the yarde."[403] Apparently he had abandoned his private school, although it is very likely that he continued to take private pupils into his house, and that the grammar school scholars had ample opportunity to learn French; but it is hardly probable that he introduced the language into the grammar school curriculum, where, no doubt, Latin retained its usual supremacy.[404]
Thus we see that in the England of the sixteenth century French had no footing in the ordinary schools, but was taught in a growing number of small private schools kept by Frenchmen, French-speaking refugees from the Netherlands, and sometimes by Englishmen.