When the princess Elizabeth studied languages and rhetoric with William Grindal and Roger Ascham, she acquired more than practical skills. She earned the right to depict herself as a learned prince. Throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the image of the educated monarch had gained particular political currency when humanist thinkers marketed the schoolroom as the necessary training ground for both king and counselor. Learned status served as proof that one was sufficiently wise and virtuous to hold political office.