Tea at Trianon: Beatings, Bible and Latin: Life as a 17th Century Grammar Schoolboy

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Saturday, May 30, 2026

Beatings, Bible and Latin: Life as a 17th Century Grammar Schoolboy

From BBC:

Beatings, Latin translations and Bible studies - a 17th Century grammar schoolboy received a very different style of education from today's students. An exhibition at Huntingdon's former grammar school explores how teaching and learning have changed over the centuries in the Cambridgeshire town.
Curator Stuart Orme said: "Birching (beating with birch twigs) was quite common in the 17th Century and the birch was the symbol of the schoolmaster." The tiny medieval building is now the Cromwell Museum. Its former pupils included the statesman Oliver Cromwell, diarist Samuel Pepys and wartime evacuees.
Most 17th Century school teachers were priests at a time when it was seen as a part-time job, requiring only preaching on Sundays and performing wedding or funeral services, said Orme. Cromwell (1599 to 1658) attended the school between 1610 and 1616, and the local priest Thomas Beard was the future Parliamentarian leader's teacher. Beard found the duties too much, said Orme, and asked to be released in 1614, saying he was "tired with my painful occupation of teaching and would gladly now be set free" - but was not allowed to stand down. (Read more.)