Potter David. Henry VIII and Francis I
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20 introduction
Kings might decide policy but they still had to mobilise support
among populations with varying interests. We shall see how the man-
agement of news became a real preoccupation in 1545–1546, when
there were disputes over who had got the better of military encounters
around Boulogne. As early as May 1544, for some unknown reason,
the government was calling in and burning ‘certain books printed of
News’ about the invasion of Scotland.
80
Henry VIII’s victory at Boulogne
seems to have been registered in public consciousness in many dier-
ent ways. At the most humble level, the vicar of the Gloucestershire
church of Buckland recorded in his register, ‘in this yeare, the xxvth of
September, was Bullen won.’
81
On another level, at Norwich, there was
a procession to celebrate the fall of Boulogne.
82
In France, when there
were victories to celebrate, this was done in style. News of the French
semi-victory at Landrecies, for instance was communicated through
the governors to the whole country; the towns the bishops and clergy
were to oer prayers of thanks.
83
In London in May 1544, there were
bonres on Ascension Day for the victory in Scotland and the day
aer a sermon at St Paul’s, Te Deum and general procession.
84
Peace
treaties were celebrated as well. At York, the Aldermen and Sheris
were ordered to proclaim the Treaty of 1546 by the Council of the
North on 3 July and on 5th, though a drummer had to stand in for a
trumpet as ordered, the mayor, sheris and aldermen rode on proces-
sion in their scarlet robes from the Te Deum at the cathedral ‘and at
nyght to the lawde and prays of Almyghtie God to make bonfyers in
he strets . . . and to make merry and honest chere.’
85
In both countries, the scal apparatus provided, though in dier-
ent ways, a vehicle to disseminate royal propaganda. In France, the
mandements for the taille became by the 1520s a major vehicle for pro-
paganda in the form of real and persuasive manifestos. at for 1543
declared that everyone must know the heavy expenses incurred by the
King, ‘our good and just cause,’ the wrong done by the Emperor over
80
Procl. 18 May 1544, BL Harl. 442, 197.
81
Gloucestershire County Archives, Marriage registers of Buckland, P 65 IN/1/1.
82
Norfolk Record Oce, Norwich Murage Accounts, 1544, Y/C 45/6 (1545–
1564).
83
François de Bourbon-Estouteville to Matignon, 9 Nov. 1544, Correspondance de
Joachim de Matignon, lieutenant-général du roi en Normandie, 1513–1548, ed. L.-H.
Labande (Monaco, 1914), no. CXL, p. 91.
84
Wriothesley’s Chronicle, p. 147; Grey Friars Chronicle, p. 47.
85
A. Raine (ed.) York Civic Records: the House Books (Wakeeld, 1945), IV, pp. 146–
147.
introduction 21
the murder of Rincon and Fregoso, the unjust occupation of the duchy
of Milan, Francis’ eorts to maintain a good peace, the Emperor’s
attacks and ‘having persuaded the King of England to do the same
without our having given him any cause to so so.’ In July 1544, the
demand for the don gratuit from the clergy justied the extra décimes
of the year by the invasion of the Emperor and Henry VIII ‘in person
and with great and powerful armies.’ In February 1545, Francis justi-
ed his levy of the extraordinary solde des gens de guerre by reminding
his subjects of their successful resistance the previous year, which had
shown ‘the power and resistance of our realm, preserved by God our
Creator’s hand, by the unity, obedience and good will of all its estates
and subjects.’ Now, faced with Henry VIII’s occupation of Boulogne
(which would not have fallen but for the cowardice of its defenders) it
was necessary to ‘carry the war in which he has been so obstinate to
the enemies lands’
86
ere was nothing unusual in all this. e Regent
of the Netherlands, faced in 1543 with invasion on two fronts, assured
her subjects that the Emperor was on his way to help but that the stra-
tegic needs of the government required 25,000 carolus d’or per month
from the cities to avoid defeat.
87
ere was, of course, a limit to the
eectiveness of such blandishments. As early as 1543, William Paget
reported the reaction to a demand for a solde on top of two payments
already of the taille:
of whom He hath had great subsidie twyse alredy this yere, and is lyke
now to have the third, for the matter is prepared to his hande. And
bicause the minute people shall beare the burthen of the shock, the
request is not made for any subsydie of money, but that they shall graunt
to wage Him certayn men for certayn monethes; . . . Wherat I assure
Your Majestye his people murmureth mervelously.
88
86
Francis I, mandement for taille in Agenais, 31 August 1543, BL. Egerton Ch. 38:
‘ayant praticqué le Roy d’Angleterre de faire le semblable, sans que toutesfoys luy en
ayons donné aucune cause ny occasion.’; Francis I to Bishop of Gap, 31 July 1544, BL
Add.Ch. 165: Henry’s invasion ‘en personne avec grosses et puissantes armees.’; Fran-
cis I to Jean Morin, prévôt of Paris, Chambord, 22 February [1545]: F.A. Bonnardot,
A. Tuety, P. Guérin (eds.), Registres des délibérations du bureau de la ville de Paris, 13
vols. (Paris, 1883–1905) [hereaer Registres, Paris], III, op. cit., pp. 47–49: ‘la force et
resistance de nostre royaulme, conservé soubz la main de Dieu, nostre créateur, par
l’unyon, obeyssance et bonne volunté de tous les estatz et subgectz d’icelluy . . . . . gecter
en ses pays la guerre, à laquelle il est iniquement obstiné.’
87
Mary of Hungary, proposition to the Estates of Flanders, 11 July 1543, Diegerick,
Inventaire . . . Ypres, VII, p. 263, no. 2568. Mary to Ypres, 26 June 1543, ibid., V, no.
1667. e Emperor himself wrote from Pavia on 13 June to reassure his subjects of
his care for their safety, ibid., V, p. 256, no. 1666.
88
Paget to Henry VIII, 2 Feb. 1543, St.P., IX, p. 285.
22 introduction
e scal process in England did not allow for such a owering of
diverse means of communication through tax demands, though the
Subsidy Acts of the period took care to justify levies by the King’s need
to defend the realm. Demands for Benevolences and loans also pro-
vided an opportunity to spell out the King’s needs briey.
89
e King
spoke directly to the matter in his last speech to Parliament in 1545.
e links between England and France were deep and ancient but
of a dierent nature from those between England and the Netherlands.
e relationship between England and France since the 14th century
had been shaped by the acquisition and defence of territorial holdings
by English kings in France. ese had been justied largely in dynastic
terms but had to be defended, sometimes at great cost. e remnants
of Lancastrian France survived in the form of Calais, increasingly piv-
otal in English military and diplomatic calculations on the mainland
of Europe and a fortress through which the most recent ideas and
military techniques entered the country. e town was a listening-post
and crossroads for ideas.
90
Calais continued to allow England to deploy
military power on the European mainland and, for English diplomats,
soldiers and travellers, the crossing to Calais assured their entry into
Europe. en the Channel Islands remained as the remnant of the
duchy of Normandy, French speaking but close in culture neither to
France or England. Curiously, no serious attempt was made by France
to seize them in the period, possibly because then, as now, they were
too useful as a trading enclave.
91
Technically subject to the diocese of
Coutances in church matters, the English government in 1542 went as
far as to demand of Francis that he authorise the bishop to exercise his
jurisdiction in the name of Henry as Supreme Head.
92
Francis, gener-
ally easy-going about Henry’s religion, remained silent and in fact,
89
E.g. St. P., I, 766.
90
See above all D. Grummitt, e Calais Garrison: War and Military Service in
England, 1436–1558 (Woodbridge, 2008) and also S. Rose, Calais, an English Town in
France, 1347–1558 (Woodbridge, 2008).
91
A.J. Eagleston, e Channel Islands Under Tudor Government 1485–1642; A
Study in Administrative History (Cambridge, 1950). See the correspondence between
Henry Cornish and Hertford, the governor of Jersey, HMC, Manuscripts of the Mar-
quess of Bath Preserved at Longleat. IV Seymour papers, 1532–1686, ed. M. Blatcher
(London: HMC, 1968), pp. 79–94.
92
NA SP1/170, fo. 137 (L&P, XVII, 328.3) Memorial for Francis I to instruct Philippe
de Cossé-Brissac to exercise his powers ‘secundum leges et constitutiones . . . promul-
gatas atque eisdem modo et forma quibus reliqui episcopi anglicani iurisdictione exer-
cent ecclesasticam et non aliter.’
introduction 23
the islands went their own way from the 1540s in terms of religious
reformation.
How did the English and the French view each other in the rst
half of the sixteenth century?
93
In a sense this depended on the level
of society, but views were not uniform. One French minister in 1542
claimed ‘we be undir one clime and of one complexion.’
94
How real
was this? Odet de Selve, French ambassador aer the peace of 1546,
lamented the ination which had been brought about by war and
taxes. His money would not stretch far enough and this would bring
him into contempt for living meanly among a people who by nature,
he thought, despised the French.
95
Such prevailing caricatures and cli-
chés as ‘ancient enemies’ were sketched out well before the end of the
15th century and, as their relations took on a dierent form aer the
end of the Hundred Years War, were simply rened.
96
is was reiter-
ated in many French towns where the liing of a siege by the English
decades or centuries before was to be commemorated by yearly pro-
cessions.
97
Characteristics of the people were to a degree stereotyped.
For the French, the English countryside was rich and fertile, populated
by sturdy fair people, their women exceptionally ne.
98
e people
were high spirited at times but they ‘take their rejoicing grimly’ and
were hard drinkers.
99
e term ‘Godons’ (Goddamns) for the English,
well established by 1400, is still in vogue at the time of the siege of
Tournai in 1513 by the ‘goddamn pigs full of beer’ and passed into
common usage by 1600 for a ‘lthy glutton.’
100
e English had analo-
gous caricatures of the French, oen pictured as cowards, boasters,
93
I have discussed this issue at more length in my ‘Anglo-French Relations 1500:
the Aermath of the Hundred Years War,’ Franco-British Studies, 28 (1999/2000),
41–66.
94
NA SP1/170, fo. 28 (L&P, XVII, 263).
95
Selve to Annebault, 30 Sept. 1546, Lefèvre-Pontalis, no. 38: ‘la nation où je suys
qui est fort subjecte naturellement à contempner la nostre.’
96
G. Ascoli, La Grande-Bretagne devant l’opinion française depuis la guerre de Cent
Ans jusqu’à la n du XVI
e
siècle (Paris, 1927), p. 48.
97
For example, the yearly processions at Dieppe on the Vigil of the Assumption
‘rendre graces à Dieu le createur que ced. jour les Angloys anciens ennemys de ce
Royaulme, wyderent le siege de devant cested. ville.’ (orders of 1 Sept. 1548, 16 April
1550, BnF fr. 26132, no. 187; 26133, no. 504).
98
Ascoli, pp. 27–28, 30.
99
Ascoli, p. 33: ‘se rejouissaient tristement.’
100
Dépucelage de la ville de Tournai (1513) qu. Ascoli, p. 36: ‘godons pourceaux
remplis de bière.’
24 introduction
tricksters and fops in their dealings and indelibly given to aggression
in their policy.
101
Many French continued to regard England as a semi-barbarous
country in the sixteenth century and even to maintain the fable that
the people of Kent had tails.
102
e most well-known view was that
the English were all too apt to depose and kill their Kings. Charles
d’Orléans asked around 1450, ‘haven’t the English oen betrayed their
kings?’
103
e Chancellor of France at the Estates-General of Tours
in January 1484 dwelled on the deplorable fate of Edward V and his
brother
104
and Gaguin in 1488 talked of their ‘their pitiful custom
of frequently changing kings.’
105
Around 1513 the rhétoriqueur Jean
Bouchet described a ‘proud nation who never could for long endure a
king over them without compulsion.’
106
Commynes on the other hand
had praised the way in which the Parliament of England raised taxes
for war and thus made the conduct of war more eective: ‘and so their
kings are the stronger.’ Never was there a country ‘where the public
weal was dealt with better or there is less violence done to the people.’
107
is was the complement to the well-known caricature by Fortescue in
the De Laudibus (written in exile in France c. 1468–1471), of the evils
that stemmed ‘ex regimine tantum regale’ (the merely kingly power)
that prevailed in France: an uncontrolled military, taxes by compul-
101
Hall (ed. H. Ellis) p. 520; as cowards see ed. C. Whibley, I, pp. 44, 71; as brag-
garts, I, pp. 87, 200, 257; ‘ruers and gallantes of the Frenche Courte,’ I, p. 197. Mer-
riman, e Life and Letters of omas Cromwell, I, p. 33: ‘want of trowth ys so depely
in the Frenche Nacion enrotid, and their insaciable apetite to exent their bondes.’
102
S. Lee, e French Renaissance in England (Oxford, 1910), p. 59. William Lam-
barde blamed Polydore Virgil for the story that ‘we be monsters and have tailes by
nature’ in Perambulation of Kent (1576) (Chatham, 1826), p. 358 but the most likely
explanation is that it stems from a joke or play on words back in the mists of time.
103
Ascoli, La Grande-Bretagne, p. 47: ‘N’ont pas Anglais souvent leurs rois tra-
his?’
104
Jean Masselin, Journal des états généraux de France tenus à Tours en 1484 ed.
A. Bernier, Coll. de Documents inédits (Paris, 1835), pp. 37–39.
105
Gaguin, Passe-temps d’oisiveté, quoted in Ascoli, p. 47: ‘piteux ménage / De
changer et rechanger rois’.
106
Epître du feu roi Henry VII à son ls Henry VIII in A. de Montaiglon, Recueil
de poésies françoises des XV
e
et XVI
e
siècles 13 vols. (Paris, 1855–1878) VI, p. 62: ‘ère
nation, Qui ne voulut sans force oncque endurer / Un roi sur eux pour un long tamps
durer.’
107
Mémoires de P. de Commynes, ed. Mlle. Dupont 3 vols. (Paris, 1840–1847), I,
pp. 314, 142: ‘et en sont les rois plus forts.’ ‘où la chose publique soit mieux traitée,
où règne moins de violence sur le peuple.’
introduction 25
sion and ultimately dire poverty for the people who, in contrast to the
sturdy English peasants, ate little meat.
108
Inherited from the past, too, was the idea of the great gulf that existed
between the manners of the gentry, described by Froissart as of ‘noble
and loyal condition’ and the brutish commons, ‘of fell, perilous, proud
and disloyal condition,’ though the nobles for that reason refrained
from burdening their subjects with dues.
109
e English nobility and
gentry were in many cases very familiar with France and members
of Henry’s entourage made frequent visits to the French court.
110
e
rabble, on the other hand, oen wallowed in a comforting and vocifer-
ous francophobia. When Admiral Chabot visited England with a lav-
ish following late in 1534, a proclamation was issued forbidding the
people to show unkindness to the French visitors. Eustace Chapuys
commented on this that it was only likely to increase the hatred of the
English for the French.
111
e reputation of the English lower classes
for violent xenophobia was well-established and conrmed by the
admittedly rather limited anti-alien riots of ‘Evil May-Day’ in 1517.
112
In the mid-sixteenth century a French visitor thought that ‘the people
of this nation hate the French mortally as their ancient enemies. ese
curs, when they are in their own country, spit in our faces while when
they are in France we honour and revere them like little gods.’
113
e
upper classes seldom expressed themselves so, though Lord Leonard
Grey had to be detained in 1520 for remarking at the Field of Cloth
108
Sir John Fortescue, De Laudibis Legum Angliae ed. S.B. Chrimes (Cambridge,
1949), ch.xxxv, pp. 81–85; e Governance of England ed. C. Plummer (London,
1885), pp. 114–115. Fortescue ignored, of course, the dire long-term crisis from which
the French countryside was only just beginning to emerge in the 1460s. F. Braudel,
Capitalism and Material Life, 1400–1800 (London, 1967), pp. 121–157, argues that the
period 1350–1550 was one of improved diet for the whole of western Europe.
109
Baron Kervyn de Lettenhove (ed.), Les oeuvres de Froissart, 29 vols. (Brussels,
1870), II, p. 17: ‘de noble et loyale condition’ ‘de fele, périlleuse, orgueilleuse et déloyale
condition.’
110
D. Potter, ‘e private face of Anglo-French relations in the sixteenth century;
the Lisles and their French friends’ in D. Grummit (ed.), e English Experience in
France, c. 1450–1588 (Aldershot, 2002), pp. 200–222.
111
Proclamation, 7 Nov. 1534 Hughes and Larkin, I, no. 150, pp. 220–221; Chapuys
to Charles V, 17 Nov. 1534 L&P, VII, 1437.
112
M. Holmes, ‘Evil May Day, 1517: the story of a riot,’ History Today 15 (1965),
642–650.
113
Estienne Perlin, Description des royaulmes d’Angleterre et d’Escosse (Paris, 1558),
reprint London, 1775, pp. 11–12: ‘Les gens de ceste nation hayent à mort les Francoys,
comme leurs vielz ennemis . . . ces vilains, estans en leur pays, nous crachent à la face,
et eulx, estans à la France, on les honore et revere comme petis dieux.’
26 introduction
of Gold that, if he had a drop of French blood in his veins he would
cut himself open to get rid of it. Clearly too much familiarity did not
always encourage a spirit of entente.
114
Sometimes, though, nobles had
their ospring educated by Frenchmen, as did Henry VII himself in
appointing Bernard André of Toulouse as tutor to his sons.
115
Henry
VIII was to take great pleasure in the company of French seigneurs
who impressed him, such as the father of Pierre de Bourdeille de
Brantôme, a distinguised jouster who was entertained by Henry at his
court for a month in 1520.
116
As the reign of Henry VIII went on, a new ingredient was added to
the copious pot of French clichés about the English. Henry, aer all,
rejected both his rst wife and the Pope and seemed from the early
1530s to be favouring the cause of religious reform. is could not fail
to nd a reverberation in France, where the question of reformation
of the Church was all too apparent in the 1530s and evoked sharp
divisions of opinion. Unsurprisingly, conservative theological opinion,
led by gures such as Noel Beda, was highly critical of Henry VIII.
e English ambassador, Edmund Bonner, complained in 1538 about
the sermons of the Franciscan preacher Pierre de Cornibus (old
enemy of Erasmus and of Henry’s divorce) on Saint omas’s day, in
the presence of Cardinal Jean du Bellay among others. e preacher
claimed that he was simply aiming to exalt the name of Saint omas
the martyr on his day as was usual on saints’ days in the Church. He
claimed to have no intention of criticising the king of England and had
said the same the year before. It should, though, be obvious that the
question of Becket was a highly sensitive one in the aermath of his
shrine’s destruction.
117
Bonner also complained about the prevention
of the printing of English Bibles in France in an aair which illus-
trates exactly the problems of linguistic communication. Paris, as a
great printing capital, was the city where many of the Bibles in English
favoured by the new English establishment were being printed, most
114
Suriano to Signory, 18 July 1520, Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts
Relating to English Aairs in Venice, ed. Rawdon Brown, C. Bentinck and others, 38
vols. (1864–1940) [CSP Venice], III, no. 108.
115
Lee, French Renaissance, p. 44.
116
Pierre de Bourdeille de Brantôme, Oeuvres complètes, ed. L. Lalanne, 11 vols.
(Paris, 1864–1882), X, p. 54–.
117
‘Responce du Roy aux plainctes de l’ambassadeur d’Angleterre’ AN J 976,
fo. 32.
introduction 27
notably Coverdale’s Great Bible that was promoted by Cromwell.
118
Bonner was at rst told that if the Bibles were so good they could be
printed in England and that since ‘the English language is not fully
understood’ in France, there was no way of authorising it. All the
same, in October 1538, the ambassador’s complaints were passed to
President Louis Gailland of the Parlement of Paris. Gailland investi-
gated a Bible in English found in the workshop of the printer François
Regnault, given him for printing by an English merchant. Regnault
was a friend of Coverdale and Richard Graon who had been sell-
ing primers in English and missals in England for forty years but was
currently being impeded by the London Stationers.
119
Graon and his
colleague Whitchurch had earlier asked Cromwell to control the print-
ing of English texts by Dutchmen who knew no English and to ensure
that Regnault’s printings were only carried out in conjunction with
an English speaker, which suggests that Regnault himself knew little
English.
120
e printing in Paris had been prevented by certain other
envious printers who had taken passages of the text to the lieutenant
criminal. On protests by Bonner, the text had been examined ‘by per-
sons understanding the language of that country.’
121
Gailland’s readers
found that the translation was in accord with the Vulgate except for
a few words where the English translator had followed the Hebrew
text. He found that some of the English wording conformed to neither
text and that occasionally Hebrew words had been le untranslated.
He thought that this contradicted the idea that the translator was a
learned scholar and gave a close critical reading of certain texts which
might be thought to call in question the immortality of the soul. is
could, he reported ‘spread dierent interpretations where unity and
concord are most necessary.’
122
However, he was reluctant to com-
municate his ndings with theologians and lawyers who, he thought,
simply opposed the printing on the argument that sacred texts should
118
See A.J. Slavin, ‘e Rochepot aair,’ Sixteenth Century Journal, 10 (1979). See
also the correspondence of Coverdale and others, L&P, XIII, ii, 972, 1043, St.P., II,
no. CXV.
119
AN J 976, fo. 32: ‘l’on n’a point de commune intelligence en la dicte langue
francoyse’ A.C. Erler, ‘e Maner to Lyue Well and the coming of English in Fran-
çois Regnault’s primers of the 1520s and 1530s,’ e Library 6 (1984), 229–243. For
an example of his work, An exposicyon aer the maner of a contemplyon upon the lj
Psalme called Miserere mei dues (N. Le Roux for François Regnault, Paris, 1538).
120
F.R. Amos, Early eories of Translation, (Ithaca, NY, 1998), p. 52.
121
‘par quelques personnaiges, ayant la langue dudict pays.’
122
‘engendrer diversité de intelligences, là où unité et concorde sont tresrequis.’
28 introduction
never be available in the vernacular. He argued that any translation could
be read wisely by a wise man or poorly by a stupid one.
123
e end result
of all this was that many of Regnault’s proof sheets were conscated,
though Coverdale and Graon rescued others as well as the type, with
which they were able to complete the printing in April 1539.
e cultural relations between the two countries – so all-embracing
in the early Middle Ages, as Frédérique Lachaud has shown
124
– were
shaped fundamentally by the fact the French language, current of
course in England throughout the late middle ages was increasingly
emphasised as a language of culture and discourse in the sixteenth
century, indeed was almost the international vernacular language. In
1492, the peers appointed to accompany French lords aer the treaty
of Etaples were given gentlemen to interpret for them.
125
Wolsey’s edu-
cation had not equipped him to speak French and he habitually used
interpreters with those who could not speak Latin; in 1527 he advised
his sta: ‘If they speak to you in the French tongue, speak you to them
in the English tongue; for if you understand not them, they shall no
more understand you.’ Indeed his remarks in 1518 to an envoy who
sought to compare Francis I favourably with Louis XII that ‘omnes
sunt Galli’ and that gallic perdy was notorious, testies to a degree
of francophobia which is not apparent later in his life.
126
A genera-
tion later, France was a channel through which much humanist inu-
ence entered England.
127
One French visitor observed: ‘In England, at
least among princes and at their courts, they speak French in all their
business.’
128
123
Louis Gailland to Chancellor of France, 27 Oct. [1538], AN J 966, no. 13/5.
124
F. Lachaud, ‘Les relations entre la France et les îles Britanniques vers 1250,’
Franco-British Studies, 38 (Autumn, 1999), Special issue: Franco-British Relations dur-
ing the Second Millenium, pp. 23–39.
125
Letters and Papers illustrative of the Reigns of Richard III and Henry VII, ed.
J. Gairdner, 2 vols. (1861–1863) II, p. 291.
126
K. Lambley, e Teaching and Cultivation of the French Language in England
during Tudor and Stuart Times (Manchester, 1920), p. 70. George Cavendish, e
Life of Cardinal Wolsey ed. H. Morley (London, 1887), pp. 43–44, 72. Giustiniani to
Signory, 12 Apr. 1518, CSP Venice II, no. 1022; Rawdon Brown, Four Years at the
Court of Henry VIII 2 vols. (London, 1854), II, p. 180.
127
Estienne Pasquier certainly thought French the international vernacular of his
time, see Les Lettres d’Estienne Pasquier (1723) Book I, p. 5, though of course in the
16th century Italian was a close competitor. On humanism, see Lee, French Renais-
sance, pp. 44–45.
128
Jacques Peletier du Mans, Dialogues d’Ortografe (1550), p. 60: ‘En Angleterre,
amoins entre les Princes et en leurs cours, ilz parlent François en tous leurs propos.’
introduction 29
On the other hand, knowledge of English in France was, other than
for phrases gathered by merchants for practical purposes and by the
legal and theological authorities (as we have seen), virtually non-exis-
tent, conned to a few burlesques and terms of abuse
129
and even the
ambassadors from France had little knowledge of the language beyond
a few phrases. ey negotiated formal treaties in Latin but it is clear
that they spoke French to the English Kings and their leading minis-
ters.
130
Rabelais’s Panurge had no word of English in his multi-lingual
harangues in the rst edition of Pantagruel 1532; when it appeared in
1533 it was as garbled lowland Scots.
131
In a rare French treatise on
learning English of 1553 Gabriel Meurier admits that ‘since French
is spoken at the English court and all learned people write in Latin,
English is held of little account by foreigners and few take trouble to
learn it.’
132
No printed English work translated into French seems to
have appeared before the Navigation du capitaine Frobisher of 1577.
One curious consequence was the extraordinary energy shown by
English scholars in the eld of French grammar. Aer Caxton’s French-
English Dialogues of 1483 and the Pynson-Wynkyn de Worde, Lytell
treatyse for to lerne Englisshe and Frensshe of 1498 came Alexander
Barclay’s Introductorie to Write and Pronounce French in the pho-
netic manner in 1521. John Palsgrave, who went to France as chap-
lain to princess Mary when she married Louis XII in 1514, became
French tutor to Henry VIII’s bastard son Richmond and others and
for their use compiled the enormous L’Esclaircissement de la langue
françoyse (1530, 1110 pp) printed by Richard Pynson, a Norman from
Rouen who had settled in London in the late eenth century and
was appointed the rst royal printer in England in 1509. Palsgrave’s
exhaustive systematic grammar, phonetic guide and dictionary was in
every respect far in advance of anything available in France and could
be called the rst systematic printed French grammar though, oddly, it
was printed in small numbers since Palsgrave wished to control access
129
Eg. Estienne Perlin, op. cit., pp. 11–12: ‘France chenesve,’ ‘France dogue’ ‘orson.’
For burlesques of English see Ballade en forme de déploration que fait un Anglais sur
la mort de Milort Havart (June 1513) in Montaiglon, Recueil, VI, p. 95.
130
Ascoli, p. 180.
131
W.P. Kerr, Panurge’s English (Oxford, 1901) Oeuvres de François Rabelais ed.
A. Lefranc, 6 vols. (Paris, 1922–1955), III, pp. 114–115.
132
Ascoli, Grande-Bretagne, p. 176: ‘puisque’on parle français à la cour d’Angleterre
et que tous les lettrés écrivent en latin, l’anglais étant d’ailleurs peu estimé des étrangers
et peu de personnes s’empressant de l’apprendre.’