“Early in the 16th century, it became a fashionable for upper0class girls to receive an education, something which benefitted Henry VIII’s two daughters, Princess Mary and Elizabeth (Henry VIII’s daughter with his second wife, Anne Boleyn), their kinswoman Lady Jane Grey, and other girls of the gentry and nobility.

One of Elizabeth’s tutors was Roger Ascham (1515-1568), who published a book called The Scholemaster on his revolutionary methods for ensuring that he got the best out of his pupils. Ascham believed that great care should be taken to ensure that the child learned in the correct way, since “these faults, taking once root in youth, be never or hardly, plucked away in age”. He was a benign schoolmaster, arguing that a child should be praised when they did well, since “I assure you, there is no whetstone, to sharpen a good wit and encourage a will to learning, as is praise.” He also felt that children who tried their best but made mistakes should not be punished, arguing that scholars should not be made to fear their tutor. As far as Ascham was concerned, it was essential to instill a love of learning into his pupils, something which he achieved with Princess Elizabeth, who continued throughout her lifetime. The future Elizabeth I was extremely well educated, speaking French, Spanish, Italian, as well as reading Latin and Greek. She was Ascham’s star pupil, with the tutor declaring that she put the young men of England to shame with her “excellent gifts of learning. Educational provision also improved for children lower down the social scale in Tudor England. A number of grammar schools were founded, with their curriculums based on humanist principles and focusing on Latin and Greek. These tended to cater to sons of the gentry and lower nobility and boys would start at the age of seven. The day at grammar school was a long one – of ten starting before sunrise and finishing after the sunset. For poorer children, there might be a parish school close to their home, where the vicar would teach them to read or write. Although some tutors, such as Roger Ascham, had enlightened views on punishments most Tudor schoolboys would expect to be beaten if they made an error or misbehaved. MAGDALEN COLLEGE SCHOOL, OXFORD

During the early Tudor period, Magdalen College School in Oxford offered young boys the best school education that they could get in England It opened at Easter 1480, moving into its permanent building just inside the gates of Magdalen College, that autumn. The school offered free tuition to its pupils, who sat at their lessons between 5 am and 5 pm every day, only breaking for breakfast and lunch. The schoolroom, on the ground floor of the two-story school house, had room for 100 scholars, who were instructed by two tutors. To keep order, the pair used a birch cane to chastise the boys. To be educated there was a great privilege, with the school the first in England to teach classical Latin in accordance with humanist principles, rather than the corrupted Latin of the medieval period. This allowed the scholars to read classical works in the original language. Many of the pupils went on to become bishops and great thinkers, with William Tyndale, who translated the Bible into English, one of the school’s alumni.”

You’re very much like your father. And you have something that he didn’t have. 

What’s that? 

Ascham was also well aware that he was writing for a society which was inclined to accept that the Platonic ideal of a philosopher-king had been realized in the person of a Protestant philosopher-queen.

“In January 1548 William Grindal, tutor to Princess Elizabeth and Ascham’s dear friend, died of plague. Ascham comforted Elizabeth in a letter of 22 January 1548 and recommended a kinsman of Grindal as replacement. Elizabeth, despite the opposition of her stepmother Katherine Parr and of Thomas Seymour, insisted that the vacant tutor’s place go to Ascham. She had her way and Ascham immediately joined the household at Chelsea. He contrived a classical and Christian curriculum for the princess that was designed to equip her for a leading role in the state. In the morning they studied Greek (the New Testament as well as classical authors, such as Sophocles, Isocrates, and Demosthenes), and in the afternoon Cicero and Livy and the early fathers such as St Cyprian. With her he pioneered his method of teaching languages by double translation, which he was to make famous in The Scholemaster. He also taught calligraphy to Elizabeth, her brother, Edward, and Henry and Charles Brandon; it is possible that Lady Jane Grey shared this instruction. A letter of this time to Kate Astley (or Ashley), Elizabeth’s governess, presages Ascham’s later views on the need to approach the education of the precocious with care: ‘The younger, the more tender; the quicker, the easier to break… and so her grace… by little and little, may be increased in learning’ (Ascham, Works, 1.86). (..)

Ascham maintained his connection with Elizabeth throughout her sister’s reign. (..) Ascham studied with her and, as he recounted to Sturm, was amazed by her erudition, linguistic skills, and political understanding.”

“There are many honourable ladies now who surpass Thomes More’s daughters in all kinds of learning; but among all of them the brightest star is my illustrious Lady Elizabeth, the king’s sister; so that I have no difficulty in finding subject for writing in her praise, but only in setting bounds to what I write. I will write nothing however which I have not myself witnessed. She had me for her tutor in Greek and Latin two years; but now I am released from the Court and restored to my old literary leisure here, where by her beneficence I hold an honest place in this University. It is difficult to say whether the gifts of nature or of fortune are most to be admired in that illustrious lady. The praise which Aristotle gives wholly centres in her – beauty, stature, prudence, and industry. She has just passed her sixteenth birthday, and shows such dignity and gentleness as are wonderful at her age and in her rank. Her study of true religion and learning is most energetic. Her mind has no womanly weakness, her perseverance is equal to that of a man, and her memory long keeps what it quickly picks up. She talks French and Italian as well as English; she has often talked to me readily and well in Latin, and moderately so in Greek. When she writes Greek and Latin, nothing is more beautiful than her hand-writing. She is as much delighted with music as is skillful in the art. In adornment she is elegant rather than showy, and by her contempt of gold and head-dresses, she reminds one of Hippolyte rather than of Phaedra. She read with me almost all Cicero, and great part of Titus Livius; for she drew all her knowledge of Latin from those two authors. She used to give the morning of the day to the Greek Testament, and afterwards read select orations of Isocrates and the tragedies of Sophocles. For I thought that from those sources she might gain purity of style, and her mind derive instruction that would be of value to her to meet every contingency of life. To these I added Saint Cyprian and Melanchthon’s Common Places, &c., as best suited, after the Holy Scriptures, to teach her the foundations of religion, together with elegant language and sound doctrine. Whatever she reads she at once perceives any word that has a doubtful or curious meaning. She cannot endure those foolish imitators of Erasmus, who have tied up the Latin tongue in those wretched fetters of proverbs. She likes a style that grows out of the subject; chaste because it is suitable, and beautiful because it is clear. She very much admires modest metaphors, and comparisons of contraries well put together and contrasting felicitously with one another. Her ears are so well practised in discriminating all these things, and her judgment is so good, that in all Greek, Latin, and English composition, there is nothing so loose on the one hand or so concise on the other, which she does not immediately attend to, and either reject with disgust or receive with pleasure, as the case may be. I am not inventing anything, my dear Sturm; it is all true: ut I only seek to give you an outline of her excellence, and whilst doing so, I have been pleased to recal to my mind the dear memory of my most illustrious lady… “ 

St John’s College, Cambridge. 4 April 1550. R. Ascham, The whole works of Roger Ascham, ed. J. A. Giles (1864).

“If you wish to know what I do at court, let me tell you that I never enjoyed more desirable leisure at the University than I do here. The Lady Elizabeth and I read together in Greek the orations of Aeschines and Demosthenes on the Crown. She reads it first to me, and at first sight understands everything, not only the peculiarity of the language and the meaning of the orator, but all the struggles of that contest, the decrees of the people, the customs and manners of the city, in a way to strike you with astonishment…”