Roger Ascham - Education

Education

Ascham was educated not at school, but in the house of Sir Humphrey Wingfield, a barrister and in 1533 Speaker of the House of Commons, as Ascham himself tells us, in the Toxophilus where they were under a tutor named R. Bond. Their sport was archery, and Sir Humphry "himself would at term times bring down from London both bows and shafts and go with them himself to see them shoot". Hence Ascham's earliest English work, the Toxophilus, the importance which he attributed to archery in educational establishments, and probably the reason for archery in the statutes of St Albans, Harrow and other Elizabethan schools.

From this private tuition Ascham was sent "about 1530," at the age, it is said, of fifteen, to St John's College, Cambridge, then the largest and most learned college in either university, where he devoted himself specially to the study of Greek, then newly revived. Here he fell under the influence of Sir John Cheke, who was admitted a fellow in Ascham's first year, and Sir Thomas Smith. John Cheke in turn was friendly with Anthony Denny, who was brother-in-law to Kat Ashley, governess to the Lady Elizabeth. His guide and friend was Robert Pember, "a man of the greatest learning and with an admirable ability in the Greek tongue".

He became B.A. in 1533/4, and was nominated to a fellowship at St John's. Dr Nicholas Metcalfe was then master of the college, "a papist, indeed, and if any young man given to the new learning as they termed or went beyond his fellows," he "lacked neither open praise, nor private exhibition." He procured Ascham's election to a fellowship, "though being a new bachelor of arts, I chanced among my companions to speak against the Pope ... after serious rebuke and some punishment, open warning was given to all the fellows, none to be so hardy, as to give me his voice at election." The day of election Ascham regarded as his birthday," and "the whole foundation of the poor learning I have and of all the furtherance that hitherto elsewhere I have been tamed." He took his M.A. degree on 3 July 1537. He stayed for some time at Cambridge taking pupils, among whom was William Grindal, who in 1544 became tutor to Princess Elizabeth.