In Scotland, on the other hand, French received more recognition in the grammar schools, although it did not form part of the ordinary curriculum, which was based on Latin, as in England. Yet in several schools its use was distinctly encouraged on lines which, we may conclude, were followed at Southampton grammar school in Saravia's time. For instance, the boys of Aberdeen grammar school, in the middle of the sixteenth century, were enjoined to address each other in French, while the use of the vernacular was forbidden. In the famous grammar school of Perth, when John Rowe, the reformer, was master there, and many of the scholars boarded with him, we are informed that "as they spake nothing in the schoole and fields but Latine so nothing was spoken in his house but French." It is of interest to note that in this school French is put side by side with FRENCH IN THE SCHOOLS OF SCOTLANDthe ancient tongues, as Palsgrave had wished. After meals a selection from the Bible was read; if from the Old Testament, in Hebrew, if from the New Testament, in Latin, Greek, or French.[405]
Turning to the more elementary education, we find French holding a still larger place in some of the parish schools of Scotland, where it was taught as part of the regular course by the side of Latin. An interesting account of one of these schools has been left by James Melville, in his diary.[406] He records that in 1566, at the age of seven, he, together with his elder brother, was sent to a school kept by a kinsman, minister at Logie, a few miles from Montrose. This "guid, lerned, kind man" attended to the children's education, while his sister was "a verie loving mother" to them, and to a "guid number of gentle and honest mens berns of the country about," who also were at the school. "Ther we lerned," he continues, "to reid the catechisme, prayers and scripture, to rehers the catechisme and prayers par cœur.... We lerned ther the Rudiments of the Latin grammar, with the vocables in Latin and French, also divers speitches in Frenche, with the reading and right pronunciation of that toung." Melville also assures us that his master had "a verie guid and profitable form of resolving the authors," and that he treated them "grammaticallie, bothe according to etymologie and syntaxe"; but, unfortunately, he gives us no further details on the teaching of French. After spending five years at this school, where, he admits, he learnt but little, "for his understanding was yet dark," he went to the grammar school at Montrose. There, although he had a French Protestant refugee, Pierre de Marsilliers, to teach him Greek, he does not appear to have had occasion to continue his study of the French tongue.
In Scotland, as in England, there were also special schools for teaching French. For instance, the French schoolmaster Nicholas Langlois, or Inglishe, who came to England in 1569, and in 1571 was installed in Blackfriars, London, with his wife and two children,[407] moved to Scotland in about 1574. He opened a French school in Edinburgh, which was subsidized by the Town Council, and where he taught French, arithmetic and accounts until the time of his death in 1611. The Town Council of Aberdeen also showed itself favourable to French schools; in 1635 it granted to a certain Alexander Rolland a licence "to teach a French school," and allowed him "for that effect to put up one brod or signe befoir his schoole door."
Yet in spite of the fact that French received greater recognition in the schools of Scotland than it did in those of England, there is nothing to show that the same general interest was taken in the study of the language. While in England large numbers of grammars and other text-books were published, there is only one notice of the production of a similar work in Scotland during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This solitary work, which a certain William Nudrye received a licence to print in 1559,[408] was entitled Ane A B C for Scottes men to read the frenche toung, with an exhortation to the nobles of Scotland to favour their old friends. The plea that French was learnt by the help of French grammars imported from France, or on conversational methods, or yet again in France by direct intercourse with Frenchmen, may be applied with as much force to England as to Scotland, though it is not improbable that in Scotland such methods were relied on to a greater extent; the friendly relations which existed between Scotland and France from the thirteenth century onwards encouraged large numbers of Scots to seek instruction in France, just as it led some Frenchmen to the Scottish centres of learning.[409] French tutors were said to be as common in Scotland as in England; a Spanish ambassador reported to Ferdinand and Isabella as early as 1498 that "there is a good deal of French education in Scotland, and many speak the French language." Yet the fact remains that while one small French A B C appears to have been the only work on the language issued in Scotland, there was a whole series of such works published in England.
FOOTNOTES:
[289] Sources for the History of the Persecutions: L. Batiffol, The Century of the Renaissance, London, 1916; D. C. A. Agnew, Protestant Exiles from France, 3rd ed., 1886, vol. i.; J. S. Burn, The History of the French, Walloon, Dutch, and other Foreign Protestant Refugees settled in England, London, 1846; S. Smiles, The Huguenots, their Settlements, Churches, and Industries in England and Ireland, London, 1867.
[290] Early refugees also came in small numbers from Italy where the Inquisition was established in 1542; and a few others from Spain, where it was set up in 1588. Their arrival in England imparted some slight impetus to the study of their respective languages; cp. F. Watson, The Beginnings of the Teaching of Modern Subjects in England, London, 1909, chapters xii. and xiii.
[291] Huguenot Society Publications, xv., 1898; F. W. Cross, History of the Walloon and Huguenot Church at Canterbury (Introduction).
[292] L. Humphrey, The Nobles or of Nobilitye, London, 1563, 2nd book.
[293] See A. Rahlenbeck, "Les Réfugiés belges au 16me siècle en Angleterre," in the Revue Trimestrielle, Oct. 1865.