We have seen that these teachers of French did not always look upon each other as rivals. Bellot wrote verses in honour of Holyband, who was a friend of Fontaine, another of the group of French teachers in St. Paul's Churchyard. But such friendly relations were not general. The teachers just mentioned belonged to what formed, no doubt, the highest rank of the profession. Bellot calls himself a "gentilhomme," and so does Holyband; and both refer to criticism and attacks upon them by other French teachers.[431] Holyband calls attention to the unscrupulousness of many of them, who take money in advance and do nothing to earn it; and expresses his contempt for his critics—Frenchmen ignorant of English, Burgundians, or Englishmen who do not know French thoroughly. FRIENDSHIPS AND RIVALRIESThe many French-speaking schoolmasters from the Netherlands—chiefly Walloons and Burgundians—and the English teachers of French formed separate groups apart from the Huguenots. Yet another group was recruited from the ranks of the Roman Catholics.
The Burgundians, who did not come from Burgundy, but from that portion of the Netherlands which had been under the rule of the House of Burgundy, formed a very considerable proportion of the foreign population of London. In 1567 there were only forty-four of them in London, but by 1571 their number had risen to four hundred and twenty-four—almost as many as the total number of French in the city.[432] The Walloons were still more numerous, and no doubt outnumbered the French. Such instructors were an obstacle in the way of those desirous of raising the standard of the French taught in England. Against the peculiarities of the French spoken in the Netherlands, Holyband is constantly warning his pupils. "You shall know them," he says, "at the pronunciation of c, as the proper mark of their language," for they sound it as the English sh or the French ch, saying shela for cela.[433] Warnings were also given against the barbarisms of the Picard dialect.
Of the many "Dutch" teachers in London—an epithet which usually includes the Flemings and Walloons—it is impossible to say which actually taught French.[434] Apparently those who attended the French Church taught that language; a certain Gouvert Hawmells, for example, a native of Antwerp, who came to England in 1568—"for religion"—is specially mentioned as a teacher of the French language; in 1571 he was living with his family in the house of one Thomas Grimes in St. Margaret's parish. He attended the French Church and was not a denizen.[435] Apparently his case was not an exceptional one. What is more, there were in London French schoolmistresses from the Low Countries. Marry Lemaire, "by trade a French schoolmistress," was a native of Antwerp and came to England in 1578; for over forty years she kept school in Southwick. Another French schoolmistress, Anness Deger, born in Tournay, came to England some ten years earlier, and in 1618 was still practising her "trade" in Tenter Abbey. Her qualifications were not of the first order; in the Register of Aliens she was unable to sign her name, for which she substituted a cross. There was also a "goodwife Frances schoolmistress, in Popinjay Alley," mentioned in 1598 and 1599, but whether she taught French or not is not specified.
Although the chief French teachers who were responsible for the manuals of the second half of the sixteenth century were Huguenots, it is extremely probable that Roman Catholic teachers were in the majority. When a census of the foreigners dwelling in London was taken in 1563, only 712 out of a total of 4534 had come to England on religious grounds.[436] Naturally the proportion of Protestants greatly increased as the persecutions grew more severe, until the passing of the Edict of Nantes in their favour in 1598. Then it probably again decreased; in the time of Charles I. there were at least five French papists to one French Protestant.[437] These Roman Catholic teachers were as a matter of course regarded as suspect by those in authority, and Jesuit priests teaching in noble English families, or those conversant with them, were carefully watched.[438] The suspicions aroused by the John Love who had a French school in St. Paul's Churchyard have already been noticed. This feeling became particularly strong after the Gunpowder Plot (1605). In the "Constitutions, Laws, Statutes, Decrees and Ordinances" of the Bury St. Edmunds Town Council of 1607 an article was inserted "to prevent the infectinge of youth in Poperie by Schoolmasters."[439] CLASSES OF FRENCH TEACHERSThe constables of every ward in the borough had to certify the Aldermen, Recorder, and Justices of the Peace, of the names of all persons "that do keep any school for the teaching of youth to write, read, or understand the English, Latin, French, Italian and Spanish Tongues, upon pain to forfeit for every default 6s. 8d." This notification had to be made quarterly. Others than the master or usher of the free grammar school, wishing to teach any of these languages, had to obtain special licence; and any one sending his children to a school kept by a teacher who had no licence was liable to forfeit for every week the sum of 6s. 8d.
Fear of proselytism was not the only incentive which aroused the animosity of certain sections of the English public. Many young Englishmen received much of their education from French tutors, frequently refugees, who taught them the usual subjects as well as French. One objection raised against them was that they corrupted their pupils' English if they spoke and wrote English themselves, as they did almost without exception. Thus they "pul downe with one hand more than they can build with the other," wrote Th. Morrice in 1619.[440] Such complaints, however, cannot have been very general or have had much effect on the lot of French teachers.
A further attack was to come from another quarter. In the early years of the sixteenth century, as in the Middle Ages, Englishmen had held an important place in the French teaching profession. They had been called to important positions as tutors, and had written grammars of the language. After the appearance of Palsgrave's Grammar, however, we hear no more of these English teachers of French, driven into the background, no doubt, by the great invasion of French teachers. Probably Duwes's earlier attack had helped either to turn public favour from the native teachers or to discourage them. Holyband, too, had endorsed the opinion of Duwes somewhat later, and expressed the little importance he attached to their criticisms. To acquire the true French pronunciation and idiom, he declares, it is necessary to learn from a Frenchman.
Towards the end of the sixteenth century, however, an English teacher of French came forward, and energetically took up the defence of his fellow-teachers of English birth. This was John Eliote, a man of boisterous spirits and a lover of good wine—a taste which he had acquired in France, where he had lived many years. There, if the dialogue he wrote for the help of students of French may be taken as autobiographical, he had spent three years in the College of Montagu at Paris, taught for a year in the Collège des Africains at Orleans, lived for ten months at Lyons, and spent a year amongst the Benedictine monks. On the murder of Henri III. in 1589, Eliote returned to England, strongly imbued with a love for the country in which he had lived so long.
"Surely for my part," he writes, "France I love well, Frenchmen I hate not, and unto you I sweare by S. Scobe cap de Gascongne, that I love a cup of new Gascon or old Orleans wine, as well as the best French of you all. Which love, you must know, was engendered in the sweet soile of Fraunce, where I paissed like a bon companion, with a steele at my girdle, till the Friars (a canker of the cursed Convent) fell to drawing of naked knives, and kild indeed the good King Henrie of France, the more the pitye. Since which time I retired myself among the merrie muses, and by the worke of my pen and inke, have dezinkhornifistibulated a fantasticall Rapsody of dialoguisme, to the end that I would not be found an idle drone among so many famous teachers and professors of noble languages, who are very busy daily in devising and setting forth new bookes & instructing our English gentry in this honourable citie of London."
This "fantasticall rapsody" was published in 1593, and entitled the Ortho-Epia Gallica. Eliot's Fruits for the French enriched with a double new invention, which teacheth to speake truly, speedily, voluably the French tongue. Pend for the practice, pleasure and profit of all English gentlemen, who will endevour by their owne paine, study, and diligence, to attain the naturall accent, the true pronunciation and swift and glib Grace of this noble, famous and courtly Language.[441]
It was dedicated to the young Sir Robert Dudley,[442] son of the famous Earl of Leicester, whom Eliote possibly instructed in the French tongue. Eliote had taken up the teaching of French, "that most ticklish of all tongues," on his return to England, and in his book he speaks of his long practice in learning and teaching the language. He proceeds, in the first place, to make fun of the "learned Professors of the French Tongue in the city of London." He burlesques the dedicatory epistles of his predecessors, especially that of Bellot,[443] and declares he is fully aware that, to be in the fashion, ENGLISH TEACHERS OF FRENCHhe ought to "dilate in some good speeches of the dignitie of the French tongue, and then show what ease this book of mine shall bring to the learning of the French, more than other bookes have done heretofore." But he must first ask pardon for his presumption in writing on this subject.