Roger Ascham (c. 1515 - December 23, 1568), English scholar and didactic writer, was born at Kirby Wiske, a village in the North Riding of Yorkshire, near Northallerton. 1515 was a common year starting on Friday (see link for calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... December 23 is the 357th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (358th in leap years). ... Events March 23 - Peace of Longjumeau ends the Second War of Religion in France. ... Royal motto (French): Dieu et mon droit (Translated: God and my right) Englands location (dark green) within the United Kingdom (light green), with the Republic of Ireland (blue) to its west Languages English Capital London Largest city London Area – Total Ranked 1st UK 130,395 km² Population –mid-2004... Kirby Wiske is a village and civil parish in the Hambleton district of North Yorkshire, England. ... The North Riding of Yorkshire is one of the three traditional subdivisions of the English county of Yorkshire. ... Northallerton is the county town of North Yorkshire, England. ...

His name would be more properly spelt Askham, being derived, doubtless, from Askharn in the West Riding. He was the third son of John Ascham, steward to Lord Scrope of Bolton. The family name of his mother Margaret is unknown, but she is said to have been well connected. The authority for this statement, as for most hers concerning Ascham's early life, is Edward Grant, headmaster of Westminster, who collected and edited his letters and livered a panegyrical oration on his life in 1576. Arms of Bolton Metropolitan Borough Council, the motto is Latin for Overcome Delays Bolton is a large town in the north-west of England. ... A Panegyric is a formal public speech delivered in high praise of a person or thing, a generally high studied and undiscriminating eulogy. ...

Ascham was educated not at school, but in the house of Sir Humphry 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 or London both bows and shafts and go with them himself to see them shoot". Hence Ascham's earliest English mark, 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. His guide and friend was Robert Pember, "a man of the greatest learning and with an admirable ability in the Greek tongue". In the United Kingdom, the Speaker of the House of Commons is the presiding officer of the House of Commons, and is seen historically as the First Commoner of the Land. ... Full name The College of Saint John the Evangelist of the University of Cambridge Motto Souvent me Souvient I Often Remember Named after The Hospital of Saint John the Evangelist, Cambridge, named after John the Evangelist Previous names Incorporates part of what was Merton Hall which no longer exists Established... Sir John Cheke (16 June 1514 - 13 September 1557) was an English classical scholar and statesman, notable as the first Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge. ... Sir Thomas Smith (December 23, 1513 - August 12, 1577), was an English scholar and diplomat. ...

He became B.A. on 18 February 1534/5. Dr Nicholas Metcalfe was then master of the college, "a papist, indeed, and he t 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 July 3 1537. He stayed for some time at Cambridge taking pupils, among whom was William Grindal, who in 1544 became tutor to Princess Elizabeth. February 18 is the 49th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... July 3 is the 184th day of the year (185th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar, with 181 days remaining. ... Elizabeth I (7 September 1533–24 March 1603) was Queen of England, Queen of France (in name only), and Queen of Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death. ...

Ascham's first work, Toxophilus, published in 1545, was dedicated to Henry VIII, and gained him the favour of the King, who bestowed a pension upon him. The objects of the book are twofold, to commend the practice of shooting with the long bow as a manly sport and an aid to national defence, and to set the example of a higher style of composition than had yet been attempted in English. Events February 27 - Battle of Ancrum Moor - Scots victory over superior English forces December 13 - Official opening of the Council of Trent (closed 1563) Battle of Kawagoe - between two branches of Uesugi families and the late Hojo clan in Japan. ... Henry VIII (28 June 1491 – 28 January 1547) was King of England and Lord of Ireland (later King of Ireland) from 22 April 1509 until his death. ...

In 1548, Ascham, as one of the ablest Greek scholars in England, and public orator of the university, was called to court as tutor to princess (afterwards Queen) Elizabeth in Greek and Latin, 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." He then went abroad in various positions of trust, returning on being appointed Latin Secretary to Edward VI. This office he likewise discharged to Mary and then to Elizabeth—a testimony to his tact and caution in these changeful times. Events Mary I of Scotland sent to France Births September 2 - Vincenzo Scamozzi, Italian architect (died 1616) September 29 - William V, Duke of Bavaria (died 1626) Francesco Andreini, Italian actor (died 1624) Giordano Bruno, Italian philosopher, astronomer, and occultist (burned at the stake) 1600 (died 1600) Honda Tadakatsu, Japanese general... Events February 7 - Julius III becomes Pope. ... A prebendary is a post connected to a cathedral or collegiate church and is a type of canon. ... Edward VI King of England and Ireland Edward VI (12 October 1537–6 July 1553) was King of England and King of Ireland from 28 January 1547 until his death. ...

Ascham himself cultivated music, acquired fame and a beautiful handwriting, and lectured on mathematics. Before 1540, when the Regius professorship of Greek was established, Ascham "was paid a handsome salary to profess the Greek tongue in public," and held also lectures in St John's College. He obtained from Edward Lee, then archbishop of York, a pension of £2 a year, in return for which Ascham translated Oecumenius' Commentaries on the Pauline Epistles. But the archbishop, scenting heresy in some passage relating to the marriage of the clergy, sent it back to him, with a present indeed, but with something like a reprimand, to which Ascham answered with an assurance that he was "no seeker after novelties", as his lectures showed. He was on safer ground in writing in 1542-1543 a book, which he told Sir William Paget in the summer of 1544 was in the press, "on the art of Shooting". This was no doubt suggested partly by the act of parliament 33 Henry VIII. c. q, "an acte for mayntenaunce of Artyllarie and debarringe of unlawful games", requiring every one under sixty, of good health, the clergy, judges, &c., excepted", to use shooting in the long bow", and fixing the price at which bows were to be sold. Under the title of Toxophilus he presented it to Henry VIII. at Greenwich soon after his triumphant return from the capture of Boulogne, and promptly received a grant of a pension of £10 a year. Full name The College of Saint John the Evangelist of the University of Cambridge Motto Souvent me Souvient I Often Remember Named after The Hospital of Saint John the Evangelist, Cambridge, named after John the Evangelist Previous names Incorporates part of what was Merton Hall which no longer exists Established... Edward Lee (c. ... Arms of the Archbishop of York The Archbishop of York, Primate of England, is the metropolitan bishop of the Province of York, and is the junior of the two archbishops of the Church of England, after the Archbishop of Canterbury. ... William Paget, 1st Baron Paget of Beaudesert (1506 - June 9, 1563), English statesman, son of William Paget, one of the serjeants-at-mace of the city of London, was born in London in 1506, and was educated at St Pauls School, and at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, proceeding afterwards to... Greenwich (pronounced grenn-itch , or by the locals) is a town, now part of the south eastern urban sprawl of London, on the south bank of the River Thames in the London Borough of Greenwich. ... Boulogne is the name of several communes in France: Boulogne in the Vendée département Boulogne-Billancourt, in the Hauts-de-Seine département Boulogne-sur-Mer, in the Pas_de_Calais département This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ...

A novelty of the book was that the author had "written this Englishe matter in the Englishe tongue for Englishe men", though he thought it necessary to defend himself by the argument that what "the best of the realm think it honest to use" he "ought not to suppose it vile for him to write". It is a Platonic dialogue between Toxophilus and Philologus, and nowadays its chief interest lies in its incidental remarks. It may probably claim to have been the model for Izaak Walton's Compleat Angler. From 1541, or earlier, Ascham acted as letter-writer to the university and also to his college. Perhaps the best specimen of his skill was the letter written to the protector Somerset in 1548 on behalf of Sedbergh School, which was attached to St John's College by the founder, Dr Lupton, in 1525, and the endowment of which had been confiscated under the Chantries Acts. In 1546 Ascham was elected public orator by the university on Sir John Cheke's retirement. Shortly after the beginning of the reign of Edward VI, Ascham made public profession of Protestant opinions in a disputation on the doctrine of the Mass, begun in his own college and then removed for greater publicity to the public schools of the university, where it was stopped by the vice-chancellor. Thereon Ascham wrote a letter of complaint to Sir William Cecil. This stood him in good stead. In January 1548, Grindal, the princess Elizabeth's tutor, died. Ascham 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 princess's own wish he was selected as her tutor against another candidate pressed by Admiral Seymour and Queen Katherine. Ascham taught Elizabeth—then sixteen years old—for two years, chiefly at Cheshunt. Izaak Walton (August 9, 1593 - December 15, 1683) was an English writer, author of The Compleat Angler. ... Sedbergh school is a co-educational boarding school in Sedbergh, Cumbria for ages 13-18, which is renowed for sport especially rugby union. ... Chantry is a term for the English establishment of a shrine or chapel on private land where monks or priests would say (or chant) prayers on a fixed schedule, usually for someone who had died. ... William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley (13 September 1521–4 August 1598), was an English politician, the chief advisor of Queen Elizabeth I for most of her reign. ... Edward Seymour Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset (c. ... The dignified Catherine Parr, the last of King Henry VIIIs wives, was married more than any other queen, four times. ... Cheshunt is a town in the Broxbourne district of Hertfordshire in the East of England with a population of around 50,000 according to the UKs 2001 Census [1]. It is a dormitory town and part of the London commuter belt served by Cheshunt railway station. ...

In a letter to 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 the secretaryship 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. 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, which was recalled on Mary's accession, were published in English in 1553, as a "Report" on Germany. Through Bishop Gardiner he was appointed Latin secretary to Queen Mary with a pension of £20 a year. Strasbourg townscape Strasbourg (German Straßburg, road to castle, Alsatian Strossburi) is the capital and principal city of the Alsace région of northeastern France. ... Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Aragon and Castile. ... Lady Jane Grey (October 12, 1537 – February 12, 1554), a great-granddaughter of Henry VII of England, was proclaimed Queen regnant of the Kingdom of England for nine days in 1553. ... For other uses, see Plato (disambiguation). ... The Phaedo (pronounced FEE-doh) is the fourth and last dialogue detailing the final days of Socrates and contains the death scene. ... Leuven in 2004 Leuven (Louvain in French, Löwen in German) is a municipality located in the Belgian province of Flemish Brabant, of which it is the capital. ... Innsbruck is a city in western Austria, and the capital of the federal state of Tyrol. ... Venice (Italian: Venezia, Venetian: Venexia), nicknamed the city of canals, is the capital of the region of Veneto and of the province of Venice in Italy. ... Stephen Gardiner (c. ... Mary Tudor is the name of both Mary I of England and her fathers sister, Mary Tudor (queen consort of France). ...

His Protestantism he must have quietly sunk, 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 tended to his safety. On the 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 the 5 October, 1559, he was given, though a layman, the canonry and prebend of Wetwang in York Minster. In 1563 he began the work which has made him famous, The Scholemaster. The occasion of it was, he tells us (though he is perhaps merely imitating Boccaccio), that during the "great plague" at London in 1563 the court was at Windsor, and there on the 10 December he was dining with Sir William Cecil, secretary of state, and other ministers. Cecil said he had "strange news; that divers scholars of Eaton be run away from the schole for fear of beating"; and expressed his wish that "more discretion was used by schoolmasters in correction than commonly is". A debate took place, the party being pretty evenly divided between floggers and anti-floggers, with Ascham as the champion of the latter. Afterwards Sir Richard Sackville, the treasurer, came up to Ascham and told him that "a fond schoolmaster" had, by his brutality, made him hate learning, much to his loss, and as he had now a young son, whom he wished to be learned, he offered, if Ascham would name a tutor, to pay for the education of their respective sons under Ascham's orders, and invited Ascham to write a treatise on "the right order of teaching". The Scholemaster was the result. Aeschines (389 - 314 BC), Greek statesman and one of the ten Attic orators, was born at Athens. ... Demosthenes (384–322 BC, Greek: Δημοσθένης) was a prominent Greek statesman and orator of ancient Athens. ... Map sources for Wetwang at grid reference SE932590 Wetwang is the name of a village in the Yorkshire Wolds in England. ... York Minster Close The southwest tower of York Minster Inside York Minster The interior of the tower York Minster is an imposing Gothic cathedral in York, northern England. ... Giovanni Boccaccio (June 16, 1313 - December 21, 1375) was a Florentine author and poet, the greatest of Petrarchs disciples, an important Renaissance humanist in his own right and author of a number of notable works including On Famous Women, the Decameron and his poems in the vernacular. ... Richard Sackville, Esquire (1472 - July 18, 1524) was a descendant of John Fitzalan, and a grandson of Sir Thomas Browne of Beechworth Castle. ...

It is not, as might be supposed, a general treatise on educational method, but "a plaine and perfite way of teachyng children to understand, write and speake in Latin tong"; and it was not re tended for schools, but "specially prepared for the private brynging up of youth in gentlemen and noblemens houses.” The perfect way simply consisted in "the double translation of a model book"; the book recommended by this professional letter-writer being "Sturmius' Select Letters of Cicero." As a method of learning a language by a single pupil, this method might be useful; as a method of education in school nothing more deadening could be conceived. The method itself seems a have been taken from Cicero. Nor was the famous plea for the substitution of gentleness and persuasion for coercion in schools, which has been one of the main attractions of the book. It was being practised and preached at that very time by Christopher Jonson (c. 1536-1597) at Winchester; of had been enforced at length by Wolsey in his statutes for his Ipswich College in 1528, following Robert Sherborne, bishop of Chichester, in founding Rolleston school; and had been repeatedly urged by Erasmus and others, to say nothing of William of Wykeham himself in the statutes of Winchester College. But Ascham's was the first definite demonstration of humanity in the vulgar tongue and in an easy style and a well-known "educationist," though not one who had any experience as a schoolmaster. What largely contributed to its fame was its picture of Lady Jane Grey, whose love of learning was due to her finding her tutor a refuge from pinching, ear-boxing and bullying parents; some exceedingly good as criticisms of various authors, and a spirited defence of English as a vehicle of thought and literature, of which it was itself an excellent example. The book was not published till after Ascham's death, which took place on the 23rd of December of 1568, owing to a chill caught by sitting up all night to finish a New Year's poem to the queen. Cardinal Thomas Wolsey (c. ... Desiderius Erasmus in 1523 Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus (also Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam) (October 27, probably 1466 – July 12, 1536) was a Dutch humanist and theologian. ... William of Wykeham (1320 – September 27, 1404), Bishop of Winchester, Chancellor of England, founder of Winchester College and of New College, Oxford, and builder of a large part of Windsor Castle, was born in Wickham, Hampshire. ... Winchester College is a public school in the city of Winchester in Hampshire, in the south of England. ... Lady Jane Grey (October 12, 1537 – February 12, 1554), a great-granddaughter of Henry VII of England, was proclaimed Queen regnant of the Kingdom of England for nine days in 1553. ...

His letters were collected and published in 1576, and went through several editions, the latest at Nuremberg in 1611; they were re-titled by William Elstob in 1703. His English works were edited James Bennett with a life by Dr Johnson in 1771, reprinted in 1815. Dr Giles in 1864-1865 published in 4 vols. select letters from the Toxophilus and Scholemaster and the life by Edward Grant. The Scholemaster was reprinted in 1571 and 1589. It was edited st the Rev. J Upton in 1711 and in 1743, by Prof. JEB Mayor 1863, and by Prof. Edward Arber in 1870. The Toxophilus was published in 1571, 1589 and 1788, and by Prof. Edward Arber in 1868 and 1902. John Eyton Bickersteth Mayor (January 28, 1825 - 19?) was an English classical scholar. ... Edward Arber (December 4, 1836 - 1912), was an English academic and writer. ...

References

• This article incorporates public domain text from: Cousin, John William (1910). A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London, J.M. Dent & sons; New York, E.P. Dutton.
• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

The public domain comprises the body of all creative works and other knowledge—writing, artwork, music, science, inventions, and others—in which no person or organization has any proprietary interest. ... A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature is a collection of biographies of writers by John W. Cousin, published around 1910. ... Encyclopædia Britannica, the 11th edition The Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition (1910–1911) is perhaps the most famous edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. ... The public domain comprises the body of all creative works and other knowledge—writing, artwork, music, science, inventions, and others—in which no person or organization has any proprietary interest. ...

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Roger Ascham

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