Meanwhile what of little Katherine Riche? She recurs over and over in Thomas Betson's letters. Occasionally she is in disgrace, for she was not handy with her pen. 'I am wroth with Katherine,' writes he to her mother, 'because she sendeth me no writing. I have to her divers times and for lack of answer I wax weary; she might get a secretary if she would and if she will not, it shall put me to less labour to answer her letters again.'[[22]] But the important thing is that she grows steadily older, though not quickly enough to please our lover. On Trinity Sunday in 1478 he writes to Dame Elizabeth: 'I remember her full oft, God know[eth] it. I dreamed once she was thirty winters of age and when I woke I wished she had been but twenty and so by likelihood I am sooner like to have my wish than my dream, the which I beseech Almighty Jesu heartily when it shall please Him'[[23]]; and to the lady's stepfather he writes a month later: 'I beseech you to remember my cousin Katherine. I would she did well, God knoweth it, and ye deme, as I trow, if I had found her at home here my comfort should have been the more; but I thank God of all. My pain is the more; I must needs suffer as I have done in times past, and so will I do for God's sake and hers.'[[24]] However, Katherine was now fifteen years of age and was sufficiently grown up to wed, and the next letter, written a week later to Dame Elizabeth, shows us Thomas Betson beginning to set his house in order and getting exceedingly bothered about laying in her trousseau, a business with which Dame Elizabeth had, it seems, entrusted the future bridegroom.
Madam, and it like you, I understand by your writing that it will be the latter end of August or your ladyship can come here to London; and if it should be so I would be sorry, for I have much to do and I can little skill to do anything that longeth to the matter ye wot of [evidently the preparations for Katherine] ... I must beseech your ladyship to send me [your advice] how I shall be demeaned in such things as shall belong unto my cousin Katherine, and how I shall provide for them. She must have girdles, three at the least, and how they shall be made I know not, and many other things she must have, ye know well what they be, in faith I know not; by my troth, I would it were done, liever than more than it shall cost.... And as for the sending hither of my Cousin Katherine, your ladyship may do therein as it shall please you. I would she knew as much as you know, forsooth, and then she should do some good and help me in many things when she come.... Also, madam, as ye write me the courteous dealing of my master with my Cousin Katherine, etc., truly I am very glad thereof and I pray God heartily thank him therefore, for he hath ever been lovingly disposed [unto] her, and so I beseech God ever continue him and also my Cousin Katherine to deserve it unto him by her goodly demeanour and womanly disposition, as she can do right well if her list, and so saith every body that praiseth her.[[25]]
The note of pride in the last words is as engaging as the impatience of the harassed male faced with the choosing of girdles. Even more charming is the letter which he wrote the same day to Sir William Stonor. He is a little incoherent with joy and gratitude, full of regrets that business keeps him from Stonor and good wishes for the health of the family. 'I fare like a sorry piper,' he says. 'When I begin I cannot leave, but yet once again our blessed Lord be your speed and your help,' Of Katherine he writes thus:
I understand by the worshipful report of your mastership the [be]haviours of my cousin Katherine unto you, to my lady your wife and to all other, etc.; and truly it is to me right joyful and comfortable gladness to hear of her and I beseech our blessed Lord ever to preserve her in all virtue and good living to his pleasure, and to reward your mastership with heaven at your ending, for your good disposition to herwards in good exhortations giving. And that I wot well of old, or else truly she could not be of that disposition, virtuous and goodly, her youth remembered and excused.... Sir, remember your mastership well what ye have written of my Cousin Katherine; truly I shall when I speak with her, tell her every word, and if I find the contrary. Our vicar here, so God help me, shall cry out upon her[M] within this ten weeks and less, and by that time I shall be ready in every point, by God's grace, and so I would she were, forsooth ye may believe me of it.[[26]]
[M] I.e. call the banns.
This letter was written on June 24, 1478, and Thomas probably married his little Katherine in August or September, for when Dame Elizabeth writes to her husband on October 5, she says, 'My son Betson and his wife recommend them to you'[[27]] The poor child was to learn soon enough some of the sorrows of a wife, for a year later Thomas Betson fell dangerously ill, and she was nursing him and looking after his business for all the world as though she were a grave matron and not a bride of sixteen. Moreover, she must already have been expecting the birth of her eldest son. William Stonor's attitude towards his partner's illness is not without humour. He was torn between anxiety for the life of a friend and an even greater anxiety that Betson should not die without setting straight the business obligations between them. We hear of the illness and of Katherine's labours in a letter from one of Stonor's agents to his master:
Sir, according to the commandment of your mastership, we were at Stepney by nine of the clock; at such time as we came thither we saw the gentleman forthwith, and in good faith he made us good cheer as a sick man might by countenance notwithstanding, for in good faith we saw by his demeanour that he might not prosper in this world, for Mistress Bevice and other gentlewomen and his uncle were of the same opinion. And we desired and prayed him to be of good comfort and so comforted him as heartily as we could in your name and in my lady's, and so we departed from the chamber down into the hall, and he fell into a great slumbering and was busily moved in his spirits. And at eleven of the clock I called his uncle out of his bed into the gentleman's chamber, and I asked his advice and my mistress his wife, of the stock and of the demeanour thereof for the year and the half that is last past. And touching the stock he confessed that it was £1,160, wherein at the sight of your acquittance in discharging of him and all his doers that shall be behind him, the said stock shall be ready. And as for the occupation of it, as he will answer between God and devil, the book that he bought it by ye shall be privy thereto; and the book that he sold by ye shall be also privy to, which two books shall be his judges, which remain in the keeping of my mistress his wife's hands under lock and key and other bills and obligations according, concerning the surety for divers payments to be made to divers merchants, as the said lord saith.... And as for the plate my mistress Jane [probably Jane Riche, the younger sister of Katherine] and I have caused it to be taken up and set in surety, save that that must needs by occupied.
He sends to Sir William for information about two sums of £80 each owed by Betson to his master and mistress, and adds:
I trust to Jesu he shall endure till the messenger come again; longer the physicians have not determined. The executors be three persons, my mistress his wife, Humphrey Starkey, Recorder of London, Robert Tate, merchant of Calais; notwithstanding I moved him, between him and me and mistress Jane, that he should break this testament and make my mistress his wife sole executrix. What will be done therein as yet I cannot speak, but I shall do as I can, with God's grace.[[28]]
There is something unexpected and a little vulture-like about this gathering of creditors and seizing of plate about the death-bed of a man who had always, after all, shown himself exceedingly affectionate towards the Stonors and devoted to their interests, and who was now my lady's son-in-law. The attempt to make the young wife of sixteen sole executrix, so that she might be completely in her family's hands and without the counsel of two experienced and disinterested merchants, has a somewhat sinister air. The intrigues went on, and three days later the agent writes again. It is pleasant to observe that bad-tempered old Mistress Croke, Dame Elizabeth's mother, was not unmindful of Betson's forbearance during those visits when she had railed upon him with her sharp tongue: