From Sir Thomas Elyot’s, The Book Named Governor, 1531:
“…it shall be expedient that a nobleman’s son, in his infancy, have with him continually only such as may accustom him by little and little to speak pure and elegant Latin. Semblably the nurses and other women about him, if it be possible, to do the same; or at the leastways, that they speak none English but that which is clean, polite, perfectly and articulately pronounced, omitting no letter or syllable, as foolish women often times do of a wantonness, whereby divers noblemen and gentleman’s children (as I do at this day know) have attained corrupt and foul pronunciation.”
Some things about the English class system don’t seem to change…
Interesting, though, that he’s expecting, or at least setting out as an ideal, that the female attendants in the nursery who are – except perhaps in the case of royalty – unlikely to be of high status or class, are being expected to know Latin, and indeed presumably know it quite well.
(Quote page 18, Everyman 1962 edition)
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