The Cooke sisters

Education, piety and politics in early modern England

Gemma Allen

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780719099779
• eBook ISBN: 9781526111944
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: African History
• Index: History

A study of five remarkable sixteenth-century women. Part of the select group of Tudor women allowed access to formal humanist education, the Cooke sisters were also well-connected through their marriages to influential Elizabethan politicians.

Chapter 1

‘Nouzeled and trained in the studie of letters’: reading and learning

In mid-sixteenth-century England, many figures celebrated the achievements of the nation’s few female humanists. ‘It is nowe a common thing to see young virgins so nouzeled and trained in the studie of letters, that they willingly set all other vayne pastimes at naught for learninge’s sake,’ wrote Nicholas Udall in 1548, praising those women ‘not onelye geven to the studie of the humaine sciences and of straunge tongues, but also so thoroughlye experte in holy scriptures’.¹ John Coke continued in a similar vein in 1551, writing ‘we have dyvers gentylwomen in Englande, which be not onely well estudied in holy Scrypture, but also in Greek and Latyn tonges as maystres More, mastryes Anne Coke, Maystres Clement, and others’.² The Cooke sisters were not only lauded alongside their learned female contemporaries, as in the above extract, but they also received their own praise. Walter Haddon described a visit he made to the Cooke household. ‘While I stayed there,’ he wrote, ‘I seemed to be living among the Tusculans, except that the studies of women were flourishing in this Tuscany.’³ The Cooke household was therefore acclaimed as a little academy, in which the female children were educated alongside their brothers. The sisters have been similarly celebrated in scholarly work, up to the present day; the eighteenth-century historian George Ballard argued that the education of the sisters made them ‘the wonders of the age’.⁴ Yet both contemporary panegyric and later research are vague as to the precise nature of the education of these women. This chapter will reconstruct the sisters’ education through the texts they owned and read, both during their youth and in their later lives.

Early modern humanist learning was bibliocentric; both model curricula compiled by pedagogues and the statutes of educational institutions in this period conceived the education they provided in terms of set texts to be read by the student.⁵ Beyond prescriptive discussions of texts, knowledge of the books read by Cooke sisters’ learned female contemporaries is, however, vague. Roger Ascham outlined Princess Elizabeth’s reading of religious and classical texts, as discussed later in this chapter, and there is evidence that Lady Jane Grey read Cicero, Demosthenes, Livy and Plato as well as Bullinger’s De matrimonii, but beyond these texts references to her reading are more imprecise.⁶ The inventory made on the death of her sister, Lady Mary Keys, reveals ownership of books in French and Italian, but the main body of her library was composed of religious works.⁷ The reconstruction of the Cooke sisters’ libraries therefore provides much-needed detailed evidence regarding the reading of sixteenth-century women. Whilst Mildred Cooke Cecil’s extant volumes have previously been collated, by looking at all the sisters we can say far more about their reading practices, revealing the continuities between their interests and developing a wider picture of their reading, particularly through analysis of their extant marginalia.⁸ Moreover, this chapter contextualises the evidence of the sisters’ reading; it evaluates it against the prescription for both their male and female contemporaries, as well as discussing the role of the sisters themselves in directing their reading. Finally, in reconstructing the reading of the sisters, the chapter relies upon a distinctive methodology. It draws not only upon the evidence of book inventories and ownership marks, but upon a diverse range of sources, including letters and portraits, which in turn allow the breadth and depth of the sisters’ studies as female humanists to be appreciated fully for the first time.

‘NOW WHAT BOOKS OUGHT TO BE READ’: THE PRESCRIPTION OF TEXTS

From the late medieval period through to the sixteenth century, reading was often perceived as a positive activity for gentlewomen within a household context, through which their thoughts could be kept occupied.⁹ ‘Not that I disapprove the ideas of those who plan to protect their daughters’ honour by teaching them the domestic arts,’ wrote Erasmus in 1521, ‘but nothing so occupies a girl’s whole heart as the love of reading.’¹⁰

Reading material was carefully prescribed and delineated through peda gogical treatises and conduct books, in a process which has been characterised as the ‘policing’ of women’s reading.¹¹ The most significant works of prescription for early sixteenth-century women are those of Juan Luis Vives. In his De institutione foeminae christianae (1523), he followed St Jerome in prescribing that nothing should be read by women except that which encourages the fear of God: ‘Now what books ought to be read, everybody knoweth, as the Gospels and the Acts and the Epistles of the Apostles and the Old Testament, St. Jerome, St. Cyprian, Augustine, Ambrose, Hilary, Gregory, Plato, Cicero, Seneca and such others.’¹²

In his De officio mariti (1529), Vives argued that certain classical authors were an important supplement to the religious texts, for ‘A woman hath very great need of this moral part of philosophy’.¹³ Aristotle and Xenophon were recommended, as they wrote on ‘how men should rule and govern their house and family, and of the education and bringing up of children’.¹⁴ Plutarch was also set, alongside more recent works, such as the De ingenius moribus by Paolo Vergerio (c.1392) and Francesc0 Filelfo’s De educatione liberorum (1493). These works would teach the precepts of daily life and simple medical treatment. Such a list of authors was thought to be sufficient for most women ‘to live commodiously and religiously’.¹⁵ However, Vives recognised that some women might want to read poetry, in which case he suggested the Christian poets, either in Latin or in translation. He also praised the Greek poets, such as Callimachus and Sappho, asking ‘What can be told more pleasant, more sweet, more quick, more profitable, with all manner of learning than these poets?’¹⁶

For the Princess Mary, destined to be a governor, Vives went beyond these texts. In De ratione studii puerilis (1523), Vives argued that Mary would need to learn grammar, aided by Antonio Mancinelli’s Thesaurus, Thomas Linacre’s Grammatical Compendium, Melanchthon’s De constructione and Erasmus’s Colloquies.¹⁷ The latter was also helpful for providing vocabulary.¹⁸ A Latin and an English dictionary should accompany all her reading.¹⁹ In order to be able to converse in Latin, the distichs of Dionysius Cato, the sentences of Publilius Syrus and of the Seven Wise Men, early Greek philosophers, should be learnt from Erasmus’s Colloquies.²⁰ Vives also stipulated authors whose works ‘inculcate not only knowledge, but living well’. Many of these authors are the same as those prescribed in Vives’s other works, yet for the Princess he included some dialogues by Plato, ‘especially those which concern the government of the State’. Erasmus’s other works were also recommended, in the form of his Institutio principis christiani, the Enchiridion and his biblical Paraphrases. Thomas More’s Utopia was also a set text. History was prescribed as a subject for the Princess, in contrast to Vives’s prescriptions for other women: ‘With no great trouble she can learn history from Justinus, Florus and Valerius Maximus’. Alongside those Christian authors recommended for women in De institutione, Vives also suggested that the Princess should read the ‘heathen’ poets, particularly Lucan, Seneca and some parts of Horace.²¹

The breadth of Vives’s list of acceptable reading for women was in some ways revolutionary; even for non-royal women, he went beyond religious works to include classical verse and works of moral philosophy. Yet for female readers other than the Princess Mary, he provided some limits. Firstly, he laid out a schedule for women’s reading. A woman might read continually on holy days, but both then and especially on working days, she should read only after her household responsibilities had been discharged.²² Secondly, even for women following his prescriptions, Vives offered a warning: women might need to ask the guidance of men in understanding the texts he had recommended, for otherwise women would misrepresent the ‘profit’ of their reading.²³ He was clear on what texts should not be read by non-royal women: ‘as for the knowledge of grammar, logic, histories, the rule of governance of the commonwealth, and the art mathematical, they shall leave it unto men’. Eloquence was also noted as ‘not convenient nor fit’ for such women.²⁴ A particular area of exclusion was tales of romance. He argued that his native stories such as Amadis of Gaul, Tristan and Isolde and the Celestina should be prohibited, as well as romances from other countries. Unsuitable translations, such as Boccaccio’s Decameron, should also be excluded, ‘which books but idle men wrote unlearned, and set all upon filth and viciousness, in whom I wonder what should delight men but that vice pleaseth them so much’.²⁵ Particular disapproval was reserved for Ovid: ‘Plato casteth out of the commonwealth of wise men which he made, Homer and Hesiod the poets, and yet have they none ill thing in comparision with Ovid’s books of Love ... Therefore a woman should beware of these books, like as of serpents or snakes.’ Such texts would lead a woman into sin like Eve. If a woman desired to read such romantic material, or indeed read approved texts ‘with an ill will’, she should be kept from any reading at all ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of figures
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• Note on conventions
• Introduction
• 1 ‘Nouzeled and trained in the studie of letters’: reading and learning
• 2 ‘Quod licuit feci’: the power of the word
• 3 ‘Haud inane est quod dico’: female counsellors
• 4 ‘Cecil’s wife tells me’: political networks
• 5 ‘Building up of the bodie of the fellowship of Saincts’: religious networks
• 6 ‘Of more learning than is necessary for that sex’: responses to learned women
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index