(John), a learned writer, who flourished in the reigns of Henry VII. and Henry VIII. He received his grammatical learning at London, his native place. He studied logic and philosophy at Cambridge, at which university he resided till he became bachelor of arts; after which he went to Paris, where he spent several years in the study of philosophy and other parts of learning, took the degree of master of arts, and acquired such excellence in the French tongue, that in 1514, when a treaty of marriage was negotiated between Louis XII. king of France, and the princess Mary, sister of Henry VIII. of England, Mr Palsgrave was appointed to be her tutor in that language. But Louis XII. dying soon after his marriage, Palsgrave attended his fair pupil back to England, where he taught the French language to many of the young nobility, obtained good preferment in the church, and was appointed by the king one of his chaplains in ordinary. In 1531 he settled at Oxford for some time, and the next year was incorporated master of arts there, as he had before been in Paris, and a few days after was admitted to the degree of bachelor of divinity. At this time he was much esteemed for his learning; and, what is very remarkable, though an Englishman, he was the first who ever reduced the French tongue to grammatical rules, or that had attempted to fix it to any kind of standard. This he undertook, and executed with great ingenuity and considerable success, in a large work which he published in that language at London, intitled L'Eclaircissement de la Langue Françoise, in three books in thick folio, 1530, to which he has prefixed a large English introduction; so that the French nation seems to stand originally indebted to England for that universality which their language at present possesses, and on which they so much pride themselves. He translated into English a Latin comedy called Acoulatius, written by one Will. Fullonius, an author then living at Hagen in Holland.

At what time Mr Palsgrave was born, or how long he lived, it is not easy to say; yet, from the concurrence of several facts, he appears to have been much less than 60 years of age at the time of his publishing the above-mentioned translation, which was in the year 1540.