During the Elizabethan period the number of translations into the English language increased considerably in close relation to the emergence of England as a world power and the evolution of the English Renaissance. To a great extent, the translations of the Spanish picaresque novels contributed to this fact; actually these texts affected deeply the development of the English literature. However, it cannot be ignored that the Spanish picaresque genre came to England through the French language, which implies the relevance of the French literature on the English one. In order to back up this aim, this paper is intented to prove the influence of a previous French translation (1561) on the first English translation of El Lazarillo de Tormes, the one written by David Rowland (1586). An analysis of this target text is carried out in an attempt to establish the impact of the French translation. That is why the stress has been laid on commenting the points which resemble the French text, like the study of the structure of the novel (mainly, the number of treatises and the inclusion of footnotes), the handling of modulations and the translation of idiomatic structures.