Modern opinion, which is happily in favour of falling in love, and of adult marriages, is often shocked by the air of business which pervades matchmaking in the days of chivalry, and by the many cases of grown men married to little girls not yet out of their teens. In those days it was held that a boy came of age at fourteen and a girl at twelve (a discrepancy which the great canon lawyer, Lyndwood, the son of a stapler,[[11]] attributed to the fact that ill weeds grow apace!). For reasons of property, or to settle family feuds, or simply to assure their own future, babies in cradles were sometimes betrothed and even married; all that the Church required was that children should be free when they came of age (at the ages of fourteen and twelve!) to repudiate the contract if they so desired. Nothing seems to separate modern England from the good old days so plainly as the case of little Grace de Saleby, aged four, who for the sake of her broad acres was married to a great noble, and on his death two years later to another, and yet again, when she was eleven, to a third, who paid three hundred marks down for her.[[12]] There is an odd mixture of humour and pathos in the story of some of these marriages. John Rigmarden, aged three, was carried to church in the arms of a priest, who coaxed him to repeat the words of matrimony, but half-way through the service the child declared that he would learn no more that day, and the priest answered, 'You must speak a little more, and then go play you.' James Ballard, aged ten, was married to Jane his wife 'at x of the clocke in the night without the consent of any of his frendes, bie one Sir Roger Blakey, then curate of Colne, and the morowe after, the same James declarid vnto his Vnckle that the said Jane [beyinge a bigge damsell and mariageable at the same tyme] had intised him with two Apples, to go with her to Colne and to marry her.' Elizabeth Bridge née Ramsbotham, says that after her marriage to John Bridge, when he was eleven and she thirteen, he never used her 'lovinglie, insomoche that the first night they were maried, the said John wold Eate no meate at supper, and whan hit was bed tyme, the said John did wepe to go home with his father, he beynge at that tyme at her brother's house.'[[13]]
Sometimes, however, medieval records throw a pleasanter light on these child marriages. Such was the light thrown by the Ménagier de Paris's book for his young wife, so kindly, so affectionate, so full of indulgence for her youth; and such also is the light thrown by the charming letter which Thomas Betson wrote to little Katherine Riche on the first day of June in 1476. It is a veritable gem, and it is strange that it has not attracted more notice, for certainly no anthology of English letters should be without it. I set it down here at length, for it brings to warm life again both Thomas Betson and Katherine Riche:
Mine own heartily beloved Cousin Katherine, I recommend me unto you with all the inwardness of my heart. And now lately ye shall understand that I received a token from you, the which was and is to me right heartily welcome, and with glad will I received it; and over that I had a letter from Holake, your gentle squire, by the which I understand right well that ye be in good health of body, and merry at heart. And I pray God heartily in his pleasure to continue the same: for it is to me very great comfort that he so be, so help me Jesu. And if ye would be a good eater of your meat alway, that ye might wax and grow fast to be a woman ye should make me the gladdest man of the world, by my troth; for when I remember your favour and your sad loving dealing to me wards, for sooth ye make me even very glad and joyous in my heart; and on the tother side again, when I remember your young youth, and see well that ye be none eater of your meat, the which should help you greatly in waxing, for sooth then ye make me very heavy again. And therefore I pray you, mine own sweet Cousin, even as you love me, to be merry and eat your meat like a woman. And if ye will so do for my love, look what ye will desire of me, whatsoever it be, and by my troth, I promise you by the help of our Lord to perform it to my power. I can no more say now, but on my coming home I will tell you much more between you and me and God before. And whereas ye, full womanly and like a lover, remember me with manifold recommendation in divers manners, remitting the same to my discretion to depart them there as I love best, for sooth, mine own sweet Cousin, ye shall understand that with good heart and good will I receive and take to myself the one half of them and them will I keep by me; and the tother half with hearty love and favour I send them to you, mine own sweet Cousin, again, for to keep by you; and over that I send you the blessing that our Lady gave her dear son, and ever well to fare. I pray you greet well my horse and pray him to give you four of his years to help you withal; and I will at my coming home give him four of my years and four horse loaves till amends. Tell him that I prayed him so. And Cousin Katherine, I thank you for him, and my wife shall thank you for him hereafter; for ye do great cost upon him, as is told me. Mine own sweet Cousin, it was told me but late that ye were at Calais[J] to seek me, but could not see me nor find me; forsooth ye might have comen to my counter, and there ye should both find me and see me, and not have faulted of me; but ye sought me in a wrong Calais, and that ye should well know if ye were here and saw this Calais, as would God ye were and some of them with you that were with you at your gentle Calais. I pray you, gentle Cousin, commend me to the clock, and pray him to amend his unthrifty manners; for he strikes ever in undue time, and he will be ever afore, and that is a shrewd condition. Tell him without he amend his condition that he will cause strangers to avoid and come no more there. I trust to you that he shall amend against mine coming, the which shall be shortly, with all hands and all feet, with God's grace. My very faithful Cousin, I trust to you that though all I have not remembered my right worshipful mistress your mother afore in this letter, that ye will of your gentleness recommend me to her mistresship as many times as it shall please you: and ye may say, if it please you, that in Whitsun week next I intend to the mart ward. And I trust you will pray for me; for I shall pray for you and, so it may be, none so well. And Almighty Jesu make you a good woman and send you many good years and long to live in health and virtue to his pleasure. At great Calais, on this side on the sea, the first day of June, when every man was gone to his dinner, and the clock smote nine, and all your household cried after me and bade me 'Come down, come down to dinner at once!'--and what answer I gave them, ye know it of old.
[J] Possibly an inn with that name (?).
By your faithful Cousin and lover Thomas Betson. I send you this ring for a token.
So ending, Thomas Betson smiled, dropped a kiss on the seal and inscribed his letter, 'To my faithful and heartily beloved cousin Katherine Riche at Stonor, this letter be delivered in haste.'[[14]]
Henceforth there begins a charming triangular correspondence between Betson and Stonor and Dame Elizabeth Stonor, in which family news and business negotiations are pleasantly mingled. Dame Elizabeth and Betson were on the best of terms, for they had been old friends before her second marriage. A special chamber was kept for him at Stonor, and by an affectionate anticipation she often refers to him as 'My son Stonor'. Almost all her letters to her husband contain news of him--how he took his barge at 8 a.m. in the morning and God speed him, how no writing has come from him these eight days, how he has now written about the price to be paid for forty sacks of Cotswold wool, how he recommends him to Sir William and came home last Monday. Sometimes he is entrusted with the delicate business of interviewing Dame Elizabeth's mother, a difficult old lady with a tongue; 'God send her,' says Thomas, mopping his brow, after one of these interviews, 'once a merry countenance or shortly to the Minories[K]!' After another he writes to Dame Elizabeth: 'Sith I came home to London I met with my lady your mother and God wot she made me right sullen cheer with her countenance whiles I was with her; methought it long till I was departed. She break out to me of her old "ffernyeres" and specially she brake to me of the tale I told her between the vicar that was and her; she said the vicar never fared well sith, he took it so much to heart. I told her a light answer again and so I departed from her. I had no joy to tarry with her. She is a fine merry woman, but ye shall not know it nor yet find it, nor none of yours by that I see in her.'[[15]] It was the faithful Betson, too, who was chosen to look after his Katherine's little sister Anne when she was ill in London, and he writes home asking for her clothes--'She hath need unto them and that knoweth our Lord'--and complaining of the old grandmother's behaviour: 'If my lady your mother meet my cousin Anne she will say no more but "God's blessing have ye and mine', and so go her way forth, as though she had no joy of her."[[16]] It was Betson, too, who escorted Dame Elizabeth, when need was, from Windsor to London and wrote to her husband: 'By the way we were right merry, thanked be God, and so with his mercy we mean here to be merry for the season that my lady is here, and when your mastership is ready to come hitherwards, we here shall so welcome you that the season of your abiding shall not be noisome, with God's grace.'[[17]] Whereupon Sir William sends a present of capons by the carrier to assist the merriment, and Betson reports, 'Sir, I took two capons, but they were not the best, as ye counselled me by your letter to take, and indeed to say the truth I could not be suffered. My lady your wife is reasonably strong waxed, the Lord be thanked, and she took her will in that matter like as she doth in all other.'[[18]]
[K] The convent of Minoresses, or Franciscan nuns, outside Aldgate.
There are, indeed, a hundred evidences of the warmth of Betson's affection for the Stonors and of the simple piety of his character. Sometimes he ventures to give them good advice. Dame Elizabeth was somewhat uplifted by her elevation from the ranks of the mercantile bourgeoisie to a place among the country gentry, and was apt to be extravagant, nor was her husband entirely guiltless of running up bills. We hear of the ale brewer and the bread baker calling daily upon his agent for money, and on one occasion the Stonors owed over £12 to Betson's own brother, a vintner, for various pipes of red and white wine and a butt of Rumney[L][[19]]. So Thomas writes to Dame Elizabeth, on his way to the mart: 'Our blessed lord Jesus Christ preserve you both in honour and worship virtuously to continue in God's pleasure and also to send you good and profitable counsel and grace to do hereafter. This is and shall be my prayer forsooth every day; your honour and worship of countenance hereafter sticketh as nigh mine heart as doth any friend, man or other about you, by my troth, our blessed Lord so help me. I will avise you, Madame, to remember large expenses and beware of them, and in likewise my master your husband; it is well done ye remember him of them, for divers considerations, as ye know both right well. And our blessed Lord be your comforter and help in all your good work. Amen.'[[20]] A month later he hears that William Stonor has been ill and writes to sympathize with Dame Elizabeth: 'And if I could do anything here that might be to his pleasure and yours, I would I knew it and it should be done withouten fail. Truly your discomfort is not my comfort, God knoweth it. Nevertheless your ladyship must cause him to be merry and of glad cheer, and to put away all fantasies and unthrifty thoughts, that comes no good of, but only hurtful. A man may hurt himself by riotous means; it is good to beware.'[[21]]
[L] Greek wine.