(43) Grafton's Chronicle, p 930.

(44) I take this to mean the English language, for these reasons; he
had just before named the English nation, and the name of his master
was John Strewe, which seems to be an English appellation: but there
is a stronger reason for believing it means the English language,
which is, that a Flemish lad is not set to learn his own language;
though even this absurdity is advanced in this same pretended
confession, Perkin, affirming that his mother, after he had dwelled
some time in Tournay, sent him to Antwerp to learn Flemish. If I am
told by a very improbable supposition, that French was his native
language at Tournay, that he learned Flemish at Antwerp, and Dutch
at Middleburg, I will desire the objector to cast his eye on the
map, and consider the small distance between Tournay, Middleburg,
and Antwerp, and to reflect that the present United Provinces were
not then divided from the rest of Flanders; and then to decide
whether the dialects spoken at Tournay, Antwerp, and Middleburg were
so different in that age, that it was necessary to be set to learn
them all separately. If this cannot be answered satisfactorily, it
will remain, that Perkin learned Flemish or English twice over. I am
indifferent which, for still there will remain a contradiction in
the confession. And if English is not meant in the passage above, it
will only produce a greater difficulty, which is, that Perkin, at
the age of twenty learned to speak English in Ireland with so good
an accent, that all England could not discover the cheat. I must be
answered too, why lord Bacon rejects the youth's own confession and
substitutes another in its place, which makes Perkin born in
England, though in his pretended confession Perkin affirms the
contrary. Lord Bacon too confirms my interpretation of the passage