Education -- Early works to 1800; England -- Social life and customs -- Early works to 1800; Etiquette; Home economics -- Early works to 1800; Table
“But forcause somer was spente in the servyce of the wylde goddes,
it is so moche to be regarded after what fashion yeouth is educate
and browght upp, in whiche tyme that that is lerned (for the moste
parte) will nott all holelie be forgotten in the older yeres,
I thinke it my dutie to asserteyne yo^r Maistershippe how he
spendith his tyme.... And firste, after he hath herde Masse he
taketh a lecture of a Diologe of Erasmus Colloquium, called Pietas
Puerilis, whereinne is described a veray picture of oone that
sholde be vertuouselie brought upp; and forcause it is so
necessary for hime, I do not onelie cause him to rede it over, but
also to practise the preceptes of the same, and I have also
translated it into Englishe, so that he may conferre theime both
to-githers, whereof (as lerned men affirme) cometh no smalle
profecte[32] ... after that, he exerciseth his hande in writing
one or two houres, and redith uppon Fabian’s Chronicle as longe;
the residue of the day he doth spende uppon the lute and
virginalls. When he rideth (as he doth very ofte) I tell hime by
the way some historie of the Romanes or the Greekes, whiche I
cause him to reherse agayn in a tale. For his recreation he useth
to hawke and hunte, and shote in his long bowe, which frameth and
succedeth so well with hime that he semeth to be therunto given by
nature.”
Ellis, i. 343-4.
[Headnote: STUDIES OF YOUTHS, TEMP. HEN. VIII. AND ELIZABETH.]
Of the course of study of ‘well-bred youths’ in the early years of
Elizabeth’s reign we have an interesting account by Sir Nicholas Bacon,
Lord Keeper, father of the great Bacon, in a Paper by Mr J. Payne
Collier in the _Archæologia_, vol. 36, Part 2, p. 339, Article xxxi.[33]
“Before he became Lord Keeper, Sir Nicholas Bacon had been Attorney of
that Court” [the Court of Wards and Liveries] “a most lucrative
appointment; and on the 27th May, 1561, he addressed a letter to Sir
William Cecil, then recently (Jan., 1561) made Master of the Wards,
followed by a paper thus entitled:--’Articles devised for the bringing
up in vertue and learning of the Queenes Majesties Wardes, being heires
males, and whose landes, descending in possession and coming to the
Queenes Majestie, shall amount to the cleere yearly value of c. markes,
or above.’” Sir Nicholas asks the new Master of Wards to reform what he
justly calls most “preposterous” abuses in the department:--“That the
proceeding hath bin preposterous, appeareth by this: the chiefe thinge,
and most of price, in wardeship, is the wardes mynde; the next to that,
his bodie; the last and meanest, his land. Nowe, hitherto the chiefe
care of governaunce hath bin to the land, being the meaneste; and to the
bodie, being the better, very small; but to the mynde, being the best,
none at all, which methinkes is playnely to sett the carte before the
horse” (p. 343). Mr Collier then summarises Bacon’s Articles for the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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