An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Warburg Institute, London, in a symposium on “Renaissance Education” held in February 1978; I want to thank the participants there for many valuable suggestions. My colleague Katherine Park Dyer kindly read and commented on an early draft. I am also very grateful to the Department of Fine Arts, Harvard University, and to Wellesley College for funds which aided my research and writing.

1. Cressy's, David studies are brought together in his Literacy and the Social Order: Reading and Writing in Tudor and Stuart England, (Cambridge, 1980).Google Scholar

2. Cressy, , Literacy, Chapter 6; see also his “Literacy in Seventeenth-Century England: More Evidence.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 8 (1977):141–50, esp. 146–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3. Cressy, , Literacy, p. 41. These figures have been questioned: see Moran's, Jo Ann H. “Education and Literacy in Tudor England” The History of Education Quarterly, Vol. 24, 2 (Summer 1984):271–280. See also Wrightson, K., English Society 1580–1690 (London, 1982), Chapter 7.Google Scholar

4. See Maclean, I., The Renaissance Notion of Women (Cambridge, 1980), passim, for a detailed discussion of this point. For an introduction to humanism and its influence, see Woodward, W.H., Vittorino da Feltre and Other Humanist Educators (Cambridge, 1921); Garin, E., Italian Humanism (London, 1965); and Martines, L., The Social World of the Florentine Humanists 1390–1460 (Princeton, 1963). A useful summary is made by Charles Trinkaus in his entry on “Humanism” in The Encyclopedia of World Art. He also includes a full bibliography.Google Scholar

5. Caspari, Fritz, Humanism and the Social Order in Tudor England (Chicago, 1954), pp. 1–7.Google Scholar

6. Hexter, J.H., “The Education of the Aristocracy in the Renaissance,” Reappraisals in History, 2nd ed. (Chicago, 1979), pp 45–70, and Stone, L., The Crisis of the Aristocracy 1558–1641 (London, 1965), Chapter 12, take up the question of aristocratic responses to the new education. See also Stone, , “The Educational Revolution in England 1560–1640,” Past and Present, 28 (1964):40–80.Google Scholar

7. See Cressy, , Literacy, Chap. 1, esp. pp. 3–7 and Simon, Joan, Education and Society in Tudor England, (Cambridge University Press, 1966, reprinted 1979), Chaps. 8–11. Many useful documents are included in Cressy's Education in Tudor and Stuart England (Southampton, 1975). The education of women is covered briefly in Section VII.Google Scholar

8. Cressy, , Literacy, p. 41; Simon, , Education, pp. 368–83; Cressy, , “Educational Opportunity in Tudor and Stuart England,” History of Education Quarterly, 16 (No. 3, Fall 1976):301–20. Cressy's “Describing the Social Order of Elizabethan and Stuart England.” History and Literature, 3 (1976):29–44, is also very helpful in summarizing the difficulties involved in labeling social and economic strata in this period. Moran, Jo Ann H., Education and Learning in the City of York 1300–1560, Borthwick Institute of Historical Research, 55 (1979), presents evidence to suggest that in the towns, at least, there was more contact between school children of different social classes.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9. Stone, L., The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500–1800 (London, 1977), p. 195. Details are given in Pollock, F. and Maitland, W. The History of English Law, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, 1968), v. 2, 394–437, and by Hogrefe, Pearl, “Legal Rights of Tudor Women and Their Circumvention by Men and Women.” Sixteenth-Century Journal, 3 (1972):97–105. Jardine, L., Still Harping on Daughters: Women and Drama in the Age of Shakespeare (London and Totowa, N.J., 1983), Chapter 3, also considers this question in detail.Google Scholar

10. The point is clearly made by Alberti in Della Familia (1452) and often repeated by educational theorists. Gadol's, Joan Kelly “Did Women Have a Renaissance?” in Bridenthal, R. and Koonz, C., Becoming Visible: Women in European History (New York, 1977) pp. 137–164, shows that such attitudes made the “Renaissance” of the fifteenth century a giant step backwards for girls and women. David Herlihy's “Some Psychological and Social Roots of Violence in the Tuscan Cities,” in Martines, L., ed., Violence and Civil Disorder in Italian Cities (Berkeley, 1972) pp. 129–154, discusses the warnings by Renaissance educators against women's participation in the education of young men; following in the footsteps of his humanist predecessors, Professor Herlihy suggests that the roots of contemporary urban violence may be found in the prevalence of female-headed households. This of course is an arguable point, but the repetition of such notions in the twentieth century demonstrates the pervasiveness of the patriarchal and misogynist ideology promoted by the Renaissance of classical culture.Google Scholar

11. Gadol, , “Women,” passim, and Power, Eileen, Medieval Women (Cambridge, 1975), Chapter 1. Trafton, Dain A., “Politics and the Praise of Women: Political Doctrine in the Courtier's Third Book.” in Castiglione: The Ideal and the Real in Renaissance Culture, ed. Hanning, R.W. and Rosand, D. (New Haven, 1983). pp. 29–44, esp. 33, offers a defense of Castiglione's feminism as well as an explanation of his courtier's pragmatism.Google Scholar

12. Orme, Nicholas, English Schools in the Middle Ages (London, 1973), passim. Yet it is notable that with the growth of cities like London and York, merchants and other citizens founded new schools and upgraded old ones. This process continued even during periods of economic decline; see Moran, , esp. 5 and 14. For background, see McMahon, Clara P., Education in Fifteenth-Century England (Baltimore, 1947), Leach, A.F., “The Ancient Schools in the City of London.” in London the City , ed. Besant, W. (London, 1910), Clanchy, Michael. From Memory to Written Record: England 1066–1307 (Cambridge, 1979) and Turner, Ralph V., “The Miles Literatus in Twelfth—and Thirteenth-Century England: How Rare a Phenomenon?; American Historical Review 83, 4 (1978):928–945. The last two references were kindly brought to my attention by Moran, Jo Ann Hoeppner.Google Scholar

13. See Power, , Medieval Women, Chapter 4. “The Education of Women,” and Simon, . Education, pp. 63–4. Orme, , pp. 52–56, points out that both within religious orders and among the laity, women's knowledge of letters was much more limited than men's during the Middle Ages.Google Scholar

14. Simon, , Education, Chapter 1.Google Scholar

15. The English practice of educating children outside of their own homes is discussed by Muriel St. Clair Byrne in The Lisle Letters, v. 3, pp. 15–17; see also Laslett, Peter. The World We Have Lost: England Before the Industrial Age, 2nd ed. (London, 1971), esp. Chapters 1 and 8. Furnivall, F.J., ed., The Babees Book (London, 1868), gives examples of simple courtesy books for children.Google Scholar

16. Byrne, , Lisle Letters, v. 3, pp. 98–105.Google Scholar

17. Ibid., pp. 32, 98–99, 121–3.Google Scholar

18. Ibid., p. 75; v. 4, pp. 17–25, and Chapter 7, passim .Google Scholar

19. Ibid., pp. 78–9, 92–3, 133 ff., 164–176. Bridget studied at St. Mary's, Winchester. Letters from the Abess, Elizabeth Shelly, to her mother, Honor Lisle, list purchases made for the child including two “matins books” but no others (p. 93). Simon, , Education, p. 180, quotes a record of 1536 listing 26 girl students there.Google Scholar

20. Byrne, , Lisle Letters, v. 4, Chapter 8. passim .Google Scholar

21. Elyot, Thomas. The Book named The Governor, ed., Lehmberg, S.E. (London and New York, 1962), p. 19.Google Scholar

22. Elyot, , Governor, pp. 28–40. Elyot's educational theory is discussed in detail by Caspari, , Humanism and the Social Order, Chapter 5.Google Scholar

23. Elyot, , Governor, pp. 77–78.Google Scholar

24. Elyot, , Governor, pp. 78–88. See Davies, K.M., “The Sacred Condition of Equality: How Original Were Puritan Doctrines of Marriage?” Social History, 5 (May 1977):563–80.Google Scholar

25. Maclean, , Renaissance, passim; See also Greaves, R., Society and Religion in Elizabethan England (Minneapolis, 1981).Google Scholar

26. The text is discussed fully by Jordan, Constance, “Feminism and the Humanists: the Case of Sir Thomas Elyot's The Defense of Good Women ,” Renaissance Quarterly, v. 36, 2 (Summer, 1983):181–201.Google Scholar

27. Elyot, Thomas, The Defense of Good Women, ed., Howard, Edwin Johnston, (Oxford, Ohio, 1940), pp. 26–39.Google Scholar

28. Ibid., pp. 55–6.Google Scholar

29. Ibid., p. 57.Google Scholar

30. Ibid., p. 59.Google Scholar

31. The increasing professionalization of estate management in the next generation limited women's participation in such activities. The exclusion of working and non-working women from political life is documented and discussed by Davis, Natalie Zemon in “City Women and Religious Change,” Society and Culture in Early Modern France (Stanford, 1975), pp. 65–95. See also Clark, Alice B., The Working Life of Women in the Seventeenth Century (London, 1919). For an example of the literature generated by the “woman question,” see Aylmer's, John Concerning the Government of Women … with a brief exhortation to Obedience (London, 1559).Google Scholar

32. Vives' educational program is discussed in Simon, , Education, Chapter 3. De Tradendis Disciplinis is translated, with an introduction by Watson, Foster, in Vives: On Education, (Cambridge, 1913). The treatises on women are discussed, along with other relevant works, in Watson's Vives and the Renaissance Education of Women (London, 1912).Google Scholar

33. Reprinted in Watson, , Vives and … Women, 166 ff. Google Scholar

34. Vives, J.L., Instruction of a Christian Woman, trans. Hyrde, Richard, 1540, pp. 43–7. Kamm, Josephine, Hope Deferred: Girls Education in English History (London, 1965), p. 36, points out that none of the reformers suggested training women for careers “other than wifehood or motherhood.” Google Scholar

35. Vives, , Instruction, p. 48.Google Scholar

36. Ibid., pp. 54, 55. Natalie Davis found evidence of only five schoolmistresses as opposed to male schoolmasters in Lyon in a period from the 1490s to the 1560s: see “City Women,” 72–3. In The Reformation and English Education (London, 1931), pp. 77–8 Norman Wood writes that evidence from licenses issued under Elizabeth I suggests that schoolmistresses did indeed exist, but their schools were intended for children well below the age (12 or 14) when rhetoric and logic were studied.Google Scholar

37. Vives, , Institution, p. 56.Google Scholar

38. Ibid., pp. 55, 57. They did, of course, read romances in great numbers as did both men and women of the middle class. See Wright, Louis B., Middle Class Culture in Elizabethan England, (Chapel Hill, 1935).Google Scholar

39. Vives, , Instruction, Chapter 11–15, especially pp. 107–8. Such notions derive from Italian writings of the fifteenth century, especially those of Alberti. See Watkins, R.N., The Family in Renaissance Italy (Columbia, S.C., 1969), for a translation and commentary on Alberti's Della Familia. Book 2 is particularly relevant. That these theories were largely prescriptive rather than descriptive is suggested by the statistics brought together by Herlihy, David, “The Family in Renaissance Italy,” The Forum Series (St. Charles, , Missouri, 1974).Google Scholar

40. See Jardine, , pp. 51–54, and King, M.L., “Book-Lined Cells: Women and Humanism in the Early Italian Renaissance” in Beyond Their Sex: Learned Women of the European Past, ed. Labalme, P., (New York, 1980), pp. 66–90.Google Scholar

41. Stopes, Charlotte Carmichael, “Sixteenth Century Women Students” in Shakespeare's Environment (London, 1914), pp. 295–336.Google Scholar

42. See Note 40 above. Ong, Walter J., “Latin Language Study as a Renaissance Puberty Rite,” Studies in Philology, 55, (April 1959):103–124, shows how Jane Grey's study of Latin removed her from women's sphere without enabling her to enter the restricted male world—described by Ong as a “marginal environment”—of Latin language, rigorous study and physical courage.Google Scholar

43. Ascham, Roger, Schoolmaster (1570), ed. Ryan, Lawrence V. (Ithaca, 1967), pp. 35–6.Google Scholar

44. Wood, , Reformation, pp. 135–6. Some of the simple prayers were recited in English before the Reformation (I am grateful to Jo Ann Hoeppner Moran for pointing this out). For pre-school study, see Charlton, Kenneth, Education in Renaissance England (London, 1965), p. 89 ff.Google Scholar

45. Mulcaster, Richard, though supporting the education of women, makes it clear that the program of education should be different for women and men and should vary according to social class (The Educational Writings of Richard Mulcaster, ed. Oliphant, J., [Glasgow, 1903]).Google Scholar

46. University of Nottingham, Middleton Collection, Mi A 32.Google Scholar

47. See Orme, , esp. Chapters 3, 4, 10. The grammar school at Walden, like many others connected with the church, had been relicensed after the Dissolution; Victoria County History, Essex, pp. 518–28; Leach, Arthur F., English Schools at the Reformation 1546–8 (New York, 1896), pp. 62–3. See also Watson, Foster, The English Grammar Schools to 1660, Their Curriculum and Practice (London, 1908); and Simon, , Education, p. 179 ff.Google Scholar

48. The evidence from schoolbooks (Orme, Nicholas, “An Early Tudor Oxford Schoolbook,” Renaissance Quarterly, 34, 1, (Spring 1981):11–39) and lists of books owned by university students (see Jardine, Lisa, “Humanism and the Sixteenth Century Cambridge Arts Course,” History of Education, 4, 1, (1975): 16–31) suggests that neither the substance nor the level of difficulty was very challenging at most schools and at university, but the study of even basic Latin grammar and rhetoric served to separate men from women and ruling-class men from those without education. When the Willoughbys' uncle and guardian, Medley, George, made out his will in 1562, he left his English books to his wife and his Latin books to his two sons (Middleton Collection, 7/183/12).Google Scholar

49. Weigall, Rachel, “An Elizabethan Gentlewoman: The Journal of Lady Mildmay, circa 1570–1617,” Quarterly Review, 215, (1911):119–38, esp. 120–1.Google Scholar

50. For a biography of Bess of Hardwick, see Durant, David, Bess of Hardwick: Portrait of an Elizabethan Dynast (London, 1977). Her activity as a patron is described by Girouard, Mark, Robert Smythson and the Architecture of the Elizabethan Era (London, 1966), Chap. 4.Google Scholar

51. Hoby's translation of 1561 was reprinted in an Everyman Library edition. See also Gadol, , “Did Women Have a Renaissance?”; Stone, , Family, p. 203, also comments on the influence of this work.Google Scholar

52. In “City Women,” Natalie Davis argues that the men of the Reformed Church kept women from positions of power and frowned on female participation in theological debate. Like Gadol in “Did Women Have a Renaissance?” she concludes that women lost more than they gained by the transition from pluralistic to assimilationist systems of social or religious organization. Didactic literature for women is described in Kelso, Ruth, Doctrine for the Lady of the Renaissance (Urbana, 1956), and Hull, S.K., Chaste, Silent, and Obedient: English Books for Women 1485–1640 (San Marino, Calif., 1982).Google Scholar

53. Kamm, , Hope Deferred, p. 53; Stone, , Family, pp. 204–5, Pearson, Lu Emily, Elizabethans at Home (Stanford, 1957), pp. 217–18; Davis, , “City Women,” 73, finds similar evidence for France.Google Scholar

54. See Yates, Frances A., “Elizabethan Chivalry: The Romance of the Accession Day Tilts,” in Astraea: The Imperial Theme in the Sixteenth Century (London, 1975), pp. 88–111.Google Scholar

55. Markham, Gervase, Countrey Contentments (including The English Housewife) (London, 1615), p. 3.Google Scholar

56. See Davies, , “Sacred” for a fuller discussion of this point, and note 52 above.Google Scholar

57. In many families, physical violence was often threatened and not always checked. Three of Sir Francis Willoughby's six daughters complained of severe physical punishment. See Historical Manuscripts Commission, Report on the Manuscripts of Lord Middleton, (Hereford, 1911), pp. 585–610. In his advice to this son, written in 1609, Henry Percy counsels him on how to deal with a wife's violent suicide threats; see Markland, James Heywood, “Instructions of Henry Percy, ninth Earl of Northumberland, to his son Algernon Percy,” Archaeologia, 28 (1838):334–5. He also counseled parents to educate women to “kepe them from idelnes” but not so that they might otherwise profit (331).Google Scholar

58. See Thomas, Keith, “Women and the Civil War Sects,” Past and Present, 13 (April 1958):42–62. Cressy, , Literacy, p. 145, points out that it was only in the late seventeenth century, and only in the limited area of London, that literacy rates for women showed significant improvement.Google Scholar