was therefore one of the original students to benefit from the new life and understanding which they breathed into the study of the texts. Ascham had at first resisted the innovations, but soon followed the example of Smith's pupil John Poynet, and was converted. King Henry created Cheke his first Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge in 1540. It was in 1542 that Bishop Stephen Gardiner, as Vice-Chancellor of the University, issued a strict prohibition against their new methods, resulting in a copious private exchange of views with Cheke in which Gardiner became somewhat menacing. Over the next two years - the years of Grindal's Fellowship at St John's - Cheke, who was then also incorporated at the University of Oxford, was preparing for the King his translation into Latin (from Greek) of the De Apparatu Bellico of the Byzantine Emperor Leo VI, work which Ascham often talked over with his master. Ascham writes of "the great comoditie that we toke in hearyng hym [i.e., Cheke] reade privately in his chambre all Homer, Sophocles and Euripides, Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Isocrates and Plato." Grindal was immediately within the sphere of Cheke's teaching and influence. Royal teacher In July 1544 John Cheke was summoned by the King to become preceptor to Prince Edward (to teach him "of toungues, of the scripture, of philosophie and all liberal sciences"), at first at Hampton Court, where he assisted or succeeded to Dr Richard Cox in that office. A few weeks later Ascham attempted to put Grindal forward for a Readership, with the approval of Dr William Bill and of Dr. John Madew, but shortly before this was settled a furore broke out in the College. Others, in Cheke's absence, attempted to defeat Ascham's proposal, objecting, as it seems, to his favouritism towards his pupil. About 13 September 1544 Ascham wrote to Cheke, "I knew for certain that my friend Grindal, next to you and Smith, was second to none in Greek, and so poor that he had neither heart for study nor a sufficiency to live on, and that he was so attached to me that all our interests are in common. Could I then forgive his being separated from the learning in which he excelled, from the studies to which he was devoted, and from me his most familiar friend?" But as he was sealing his letter Bill and Madew came to inform him