Richard Hyrde

Who is Richard Hyrde?

Richard Hyrde or Hirt was an English humanist scholar, translator and tutor. He was closely associated with the household of Thomas More, and with the contemporary discussion of female education.

He graduated at the University of Oxford in 1518, possibly having been supported in his education by More. He worked in the 1520s on the English translation of the Latin work De institutione foeminae Christianae by Juan Luis Vives, commissioned by Catherine of Aragon. Hyrde's translation was printed later as The Instruction of a Christen Woman [sic]. It became a popular conduct book. One aspect of the teaching of Vives was the restriction of women's reading of romances. To the list of texts Vives supplied, none in English, Hyrde added others: "Parthenope, Genarides, Hippomadon, William and Melyour, Libius and Arthur, Guye, Beuis and others".

He also contributed an introduction to the translation Treatise upon the Pater Noster by Margaret Roper of a Latin work Precatio Dominica of Erasmus. There he argues for the entitlement of women to a scholarly education.