Roger Ascham - Royal Service

Royal Service

In January 1548, Grindal, the princess Elizabeth's tutor, died. Ascham, one of the ablest Greek scholars in England, and public orator of the university, had already corresponded with the princess, and in one of his letters says that he returns her pen which he has mended. Through Cecil, and at the sixteen year old princess's own wish, he was selected as her tutor against another candidate pressed by Admiral Seymour and Queen Catherine. In 1548, Ascham began teaching the princess (afterwards Queen) Elizabeth in Greek and Latin chiefly at Cheshunt, which he did until 1550.

Of Elizabeth, he later wrote: "Yea, I believe, that beside her perfect readiness in Latin, Italian, French, and Spanish, she readeth here now at Windsor more Greek every day than some prebendary of this church doth read Latin in a whole week." His influence on Elizabeth is suggested by the fact that, for the remainder of her life, she remained an occasional writer of poems such as On Monsieur’s Departure.

In a letter to Johannes Sturm, the Strassburg schoolmaster, he praises her "beauty, stature, wisdom and industry. She talks French and Italian as well as English: she has often talked to me readily and well in Latin and moderately so in Greek. When she writes Greek and Latin nothing is more beautiful than her handwriting . . . she read with me almost all Cicero and great part of Titus Livius: for she drew all her knowledge of Latin from those two authors. She used to give the morning to the Greek Testament and afterwards read select orations of Isocrates and the tragedies of Sophocles. To these I added St Cyprian and Melanchthon's Commonplaces."

In 1550 Ascham quarrelled with Elizabeth's steward and returned to Cambridge. Cheke then procured him a position as secretary to Sir Richard Morrison (Moryson), appointed ambassador to Charles V. It was on his way to join Morrison that he paid his celebrated morning call on Lady Jane Grey at Bradgate, where he found her reading Plato's Phaedo, while every one else was out hunting.

He served in this position for several years, traveling widely on the European continent. The embassy went to Louvain, where he found the university very inferior to Cambridge, then to Innsbruck and Venice. Ascham read Greek with the ambassador four or five days a week. His letters during the embassy in 1553, which was recalled on Mary's accession, were later published as the Report and Discourse on Germany.

Ascham was appointed Latin Secretary to Edward VI. Through the efforts of Bishop Gardiner on his return to England, this office he likewise discharged to Queen Mary with a pension of £20 a year, and then to Elizabeth — a testimony to his tact and caution in those changeful times.

His Protestantism he must have quietly soft-pedaled, though he told Sturm that "some endeavoured to hinder the flow of Gardiner's benevolence on account of his religion". Probably his never having been in orders facilitated his safety.

On 1 June 1554 he married Margaret Howe, whom he described as niece of Sir R. (? J., certainly not, as has been said, Henry) Wallop. By her he had two sons. From his frequent complaints of his poverty then and later, he seems to have lived beyond his income, though, like most courtiers, he obtained divers lucrative leases of ecclesiastical and crown property.

In 1555 he resumed his studies with Princess Elizabeth, reading in Greek the orations of Aeschines and Demosthenes' De Corona. Soon after Elizabeth's accession, on 5 October 1559, he was given, though a layman, the canonry and prebend of Wetwang in York Minster.

In 1562 he was nominated by the Duchy of Lancaster as their MP for Preston but rejected by the townspeople in favour of a local worthy, James Hodgkinson.