A linguistic pioneer

In a series of reprints of French historical documents comes L'éclaircissement de la langue française, by Jean Palsgrave, published in Paris in 1852. That's interesting, I thought - a Frenchman with what looks like an English surname. Then I came to a facsimile of the title page of the original (published in 1530), where he is described as "maistre Jehan Palsgraue Angloys natyf de Londres" and to the main text, which is in English (albeit Tudor English - "The true soundynge of the french tonge resteth in gyvyng to every frenche worde by hymselfe his naturall frenche sounde, and in soundynge frenche wordes, as they come to gether in sentences, lyke as the frenchmen use to do" - and some of it somewhat technical - "In the thyrde accident, that is to say, circumlocutynge of the preter tenses they differ moche from verbes actives"). So I looked up Palsgrave in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and found John Palsgrave, died 1554 - an interesting man, who was tutor to Henry VIII's sister Mary prior to her marriage to King Louis XII of France, and later to Henry's illegitimate son Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond. His great work on the French language was a pioneering endeavour to enable speakers of English to converse fluently in French as it was spoken at the time, which he did by means of in-depth linguistic analysis of the vernacular of both languages, making him a fascinating source for the history of both languages.