Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-m6dg7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-14T07:20:44.022Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A Switch of Language: Elizabeth I's Use of the Vernacular as a Key to her Early Protestantism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 September 2012

Ted W. Booth
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

From childhood Elizabeth was trained in the ‘New Learning’ and brought up under Protestant influences. Her juvenilia attest to this immersion in Protestant and humanist education. The youthful Elizabeth often wrote formal Latin letters in the style of the mediaeval ars dictaminis replete with humanist and Protestant imagery. She continued this style of writing throughout her brother's reign. However, after Parliament passed the Act of Uniformity of 1549, Elizabeth stopped writing formal Latin letters to her brother and switched to formal English ones instead. This essay will argue that this switch was intentional on the part of Elizabeth; and set within the context of the time gives an early clue to Elizabeth's solidarity with her brother's Protestant efforts in England.

Keywords

Elizabeth IvernacularLatinProtestantEdward VIReformation
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Anglican Studies , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , May 2013 , pp. 100 - 113
Copyright
Copyright © The Journal of Anglican Studies Trust 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

1.

Dr Booth is Adjunct Instructor of Church History, Emmanuel Christian Seminary, Johnson City, Tennessee, USA.

References

2. Haigh, Christopher, Elizabeth I: Profiles in Power (London: Longman, 2nd edn, 2005), p. 31.Google Scholar

3. See Doran, Susan, ‘Elizabeth I's Religion: The Evidence of her Letters’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 51.4 (October 2000), pp. 699–717.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4. Doran, ‘Elizabeth I's Religion’, p. 717.Google Scholar

5. For a good discussion of how the printing press affected European society see Eisenstein, Elizabeth, The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe (Canto edn; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).Google Scholar

6. Ozment, Steven, The Age of Reform, 1250–1550: An Intellectual and Religious History of Late Medieval and Reformation Europe (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1980), p. 202.Google Scholar

7. Ozment, The Age of Reform.Google Scholar

8. Cameron, Euan, The European Reformation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), p. 142.Google Scholar

9. Cameron, The European Reformation.Google Scholar

10. Gregory, Brad, Salvation at Stake: Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), p. 344.Google Scholar

11. ‘Wycliffe, John’, in The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (ed. E.A. Livingstone; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 1769–70.Google Scholar

12. ‘Tyndale, or Tindale, William’, in The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, p. 1648.Google Scholar

13. See A booke called in latyn Enchiridion militis christiani, and in englysshe the manuell of the christen knyght replenysshed with moste holsome preceptes, made by the famous clerke Erasmus of Roterdame, to the whiche is added a newe and meruaylous profytable preface. (London: By wynkyn de worde, for Iohan Byddell, otherwyse Salisbury, 1533).Google Scholar

14. Syndics of Cambridge University, CUL MS Gg. III.34, p. 208.Google Scholar

15. BL, MS Lansdowne 94, art. 35B, ff. 86r–88r.Google Scholar

16. In this particular letter Ascham details the parts of the disputation to Cecil after the fact. Ascham, Roger, ‘Letter to Sir W. Cecil’, in J.A. Giles (ed.), The Whole Works of Roger Ascham, Now First Collected and Revised with a Life of the Author (London: John Russell Smith, 1865), Vol. I, Part I, pp. 156–158.Google Scholar

17. Ascham, ‘Letter to Sir W. Cecil’, pp. cxvii–cxviii.Google Scholar

18. Roger Ascham, ‘Ascham to Sturm’ [4 April 1550], in Giles, The Whole Works of Roger Ascham, pp. lxii–lxiii.Google Scholar

19. For more on Ascham's Protestant views see Stark, Ryan J., ‘Protestant Theology and Apocalyptic Rhetoric in the Roger Ascham's The Schoolmaster’, Journal of the History of Ideas 69.4 (October 2008), pp. 517–532.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20. Ascham, ‘Ascham to Sturm’, pp. lxii–lxiii.

21. Roger Ascham, The Schoolmaster (ed. Lawrence Ryan; Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, [1570] 1967), p. 87.Google Scholar

22. ‘Third Act of Succession’ (1543) 35 Henry VIII, c. 1, in Alexander Luder et al. (eds.), The Statutes of the Realm (London, 1810–28), III, pp. 955–58.Google Scholar

23. Shell, Marc, Elizabeth's Glass with ‘The Glass of the Sinful Soul’ (1554) and ‘Epistle Dedicatory and Conclusion’ (1548) by John Bale (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993), p. 3.Google Scholar

24. Shell, Elizabeth's Glass, see especially ch. 6. See also Prescott, Anne Lake, ‘The Pearl of the Valois and Elizabeth I: Marguerite de Navarre's Miroir and Tudor England, in Margaret Hannay (ed.), Silent But for the Word: Tudor Women as Patrons, Translators, and Writers of Religious Works (Kent: Kent State University Press, 1985), pp. 61–76.Google Scholar

25. BL, MS Royal D.X., ff. 2r–5r. For Elizabeth's complete translation see BL, MS Royal D.X., ff. 6r–117v.Google Scholar

26. Mueller, Janel, ‘Devotion as Difference: Intertextuality in Queen Katherine Parr's “Prayers or Meditations”(1545)’, The Huntington Library Quarterly 53.3 (Summer 1990), p. 175.Google Scholar

27. Mueller, ‘Devotion as Difference’, p. 180.Google Scholar

28. NAS, MS RH 13/78, ff. 1r–180v.Google Scholar

29. Elizabeth, I, ‘Princess Elizabeth to Queen Katherine, Prefacing her English translation of Chapter 1 of John Calvin's Institution de la Religion Chrestienne’, in Leah Marcus, Janel Mueller and Mary Beth Rose (eds.), Collected Works, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), p. 11.Google Scholar

30. This was a very notable chapter for Protestant reformers, especially Martin Luther.Google Scholar

31. Calvin, John, Institutes of the Christian Religion, vol. 1 (trans. John Allen; (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Christian Education, 1930), p. 48.Google Scholar

32. Marcus et al., Collected Works, p. 12.Google Scholar

33. Doran, ‘Elizabeth I's Religion’, p. 716.Google Scholar

34. BL, MS Harley 6986, art. 11, f. 19r.Google Scholar

35. Skidmore, Chris, Edward VI: the lost King of England (New York: St Martin's Press, 2007), p. 61.Google Scholar

36. Fincham, KennethTyacke, Nicholas, Altars Restored: The Changing Face of English Religious Worship, 1547–c.1700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 163.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

37. See Martin Camargo, ‘The Waning of the Medieval Ars Dictaminis’, Rhetorica 19.2 (Spring 1991), pp. 135–40; and Malcolm Richardson, ‘The Fading Influence of the Medieval ars dictaminisin England after 1400’, Rhetorica 19.2 (Spring 1991), pp. 225–48.Google Scholar

38. BL, MS Harley 6986, art. 11, f. 19r.Google Scholar

39. Bodleian Library, MS Smith 19, art. 1, f. 1.Google Scholar

40. Bodleian Library, MS Smith 19, art. 1, f. 1.Google Scholar

41. BL, MS Cotton Vespasian, F.III, f. 48.Google Scholar

42. BL, MS Cotton Vespasian, F.III, f. 48.Google Scholar

43. ‘The Act of Uniformity, 1549’, 2 and 3 Edward VI c. 1, in Gerald Bray (ed.), Documents of the English Reformation (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994), pp. 266–71.Google Scholar

44. BL, MS Lansdowne 1236, f. 39.Google Scholar

45. BL, MS Harley 6986, art. 16, f. 23r.Google Scholar

46. TNA, SP Scotland, Elizabeth 52/9/48, f. 113r.Google Scholar

47. See BL, MS Additional 23240. This MS volume is entitled Autograph Correspondence of Q. Elizabeth with James VI, of Scotland, 1582–1596.Google Scholar

48. Edward, VI, Literary Remains of King Edward the Sixth. Edited from his autograph manuscripts, with historical notes and a biographical memoir, by John Gough Nichols (2 vols.; New York: B. Franklin, 1964).Google Scholar

49. Edward VI, Literary Remains, pp. 63–66.Google Scholar

50. Cranmer, Thomas, The Works of Thomas Cranmer Edited for the Parker Society, vol. 2 (ed. Revd John Edmund Cox; (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1844–1846).Google Scholar

51. For a discussion of Mary's early education see David Loades, Mary Tudor: A Life (Cambridge and Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 1992), p. 32. Mary Ann Everett Wood (ed.), Letters of Royal and Illustrious Ladies of Great Britain, vol. I (London: Henry Coburn, 1848).Google Scholar

52. Giles (ed.), The Whole Works of Roger Ascham, pp. 179–80.Google Scholar

53. Elizabeth, I, ‘The Laws or Statutes of the University of Cambridge’ [1570] in Collection of Statutes for the University and the Colleges of Cambridge, (London: William Clowes and Sons, 1840), p. 5.Google Scholar

54. See, for example, Elizabeth I, ‘The Laws or Statutes’, pp. 8, 9 and 25.Google Scholar

55. Doran, Susan, Elizabeth I and Foreign Policy: 1558–1603 (London: Routledge, 2000), p. 52.Google Scholar

56. I, Elizabeth, ‘Elizabeth I to Henry IV, July 1593’, translated from French, in G.B. Harrison (ed.), The Letters of Queen Elizabeth I (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1968), p. 225.Google Scholar

57. See Pemberton, Caroline, (ed.), Queen Elizabeth's Englishings of Boethius, Plutarch and Horace (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co., 1899), p. vii.Google Scholar