CHAPTER V.

FIRST HALF OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY: PROSE-WRITERS.

1. Characters of the English Monarchs.-2. The New Learning and its Chief Promoters.-3. Sir Thomas More.-4. Henry VIII. as an Author.-5. Hugh Latimer.-6. William Tyndal.-7. Other English Translators of the Bible. -8. Chroniclers in Latin.-9. Chroniclers in English; John Bellenden; Robert Fabyan; Edward Hall; Lord Berners's Froissart.-10. John Leland. -11. Sir Thomas Elyot.

1. Ar the opening of the sixteenth century, Henry VII. was King of England. In 1509, he was succeeded by his son, Henry VIII., who reigned until 1547; in which year Edward VI. came to the throne, and reigned until 1553. The intellectual character of the time was affected by the personal characters of these monarchs. Henry VII., whose nature was cold, greedy, jealous, despotic, but essentially commonplace, "looked with dread and suspicion on the one movement which broke the apathy of his reign, the great intellectual revolution which bears the name of the Revival of Letters." Henry VIII., on the other hand, though equally despotic and far more violent and dangerous, was "from the first openly on the side of the new learning," and was not only a fair scholar and a wit, but a lover of scholars and of wits. Edward VI., who was but a boy of sixteen when he died, was of saintly disposition, in favor of the Protestant Reformation, and fond of learning, but was controlled by the two powerful noblemen, Somerset and Northumberland, who in succession were the real kings.

2. The most remarkable feature of this portion of the sixteenth century is the energy with which "the new learning was both cultivated and resisted in England. In the year 1500, there lived six Englishmen who were then the chief promoters of the new English scholarship: Grocyn, fifty-eight years old; Linacre, about forty; John Fisher, forty-one; John Colet, thirty

four; William Lily, about thirty-two; and Thomas More, twenty. Often at a distance from these men, but in full sympathy with them, and ready to help them at any moment by his learning, his eloquence, and his wit, was the renowned scholar Erasmus, who had taught Greek at Oxford. The eldest of these men, William Grocyn, was born in 1442; and after obtaining all the learning that England could give him, he went to Italy and learned Greek. In 1491, he settled at Exeter College, Oxford, as the first teacher of that language in England, having at one time Erasmus among his pupils. He died in 1522, being then master of All Hallow's College at Maidstone.

Next comes Thomas Linacre, a physician, about eighteen years younger than Grocyn, and fellow of All Souls' College, Oxford. Early in the reign of Henry VII., he was sent on a mission to the court of Rome, and staid by the way at Florence to learn Greek. On his return to Oxford, he gave lectures on medicine, and taught Greek and Latin. He was chief founder of the Royal College of Physicians; he did much for Latin scholarship in England; and died in 1524.

Next in this group of scholars is John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, of about the same age as Linacre. He invited Erasmus to Cambridge, and supported him in the endeavor to teach Greek there.

John Colet, born in 1466, was the son of Sir Henry Colet, a wealthy knight of London, and twice its Lord Mayor. After seven years at Oxford, he studied in Paris, and then went to Italy and learned Greek. In 1505, he became Dean of St. Paul's. In 1510, the death of his father gave him a large inheritance, with a part of which he founded St. Paul's School, - at once a flourishing seat of the new scholarship. He died, after a noble and most useful life, in 1519.

When John Colet founded St. Paul's School, he appointed as its head master his friend William Lily, an excellent Greek scholar, a man about two years younger than himself. His most famous book was the "Latin Grammar," which Henry VIII. sanctioned so vigorously, that he declared it penal publicly to teach any other, and which continued to be in use in England for many generations.