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for searching only. CHAPTER XII
EDUCATING THE "PRINCE"; PRINCESS ELIZABETH OUR INFORMATION on Cheke's ideas of education is somewhat enlarged by his voluble pupil and junior colleague, Roger Ascham, who
has managed to get the education of Elizabeth accredited to him-self. We have no concrete statements concerning the training of Princess Elizabeth in classics until Ascham admires his handiwork after he began "reading" with her in her fifteenth year. Her first known tutor was William Grindal, who, as we have seen, had been recommended by Ascham to Cheke in September 1344, and began his training of Elizabeth not long after.1
It would seem clear, however, that EIizabeth had made a fair amount of progress with her Latin before Grindal began his labors about 1544. For Leland, the antiquary, records how at Cheke's direction Elizabeth at Ampthill addressed him in Latin and French, and played for him. As Nichols very shrewdly remarks,
Another Latin poet, the antiquary John Leland, has also left a memorial of a visit paid to the Prince: but, as it is unaccompanied by any praise of Edward's acquirements, we may conclude that Leland saw him in his early childhood, shortly after the first appointment of Cheke to his tuition, and which is the more probable, as the only other notice that has occurred of Edward's being at the honour of Ampthill, is before he had attained his eighth year.2
Since Edward was too young, Elizabeth was permitted to put on the exhibition for Leland. To make even a royal effort at doing what Leland attributes to her in 1544 or 154,5 she must already have had some two or three years at least of Latin. Presumably, therefore, she
had begun her Latin about the usual age, but under whom is apparently unknown.
Since Elizabeth was about eleven when Grindal began his endeavors, she ought already to have had considerable training under some other tutor before Grindal undertook the task, following upon the recommendation by Ascham to Cheke. This first tutorshould have
given Elizabeth at least the equivalent of the lower half of grammar school in the four years from seven to eleven. Then Grindal should
1 Giles, Ascham, Vol. I, p, 272.
Nichols, Edward, Vol. I, pp. Ixxx-ixxxi.
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