“Hast thou heard, Bertha,” said Avice, “that when I was young, I dwelt for a season in the Castle of Windsor, and my mother was nurse to some of the children of the Lord King that then was? Brothers and sister they were of our Lord King Edward that reigns now.”
Bertha’s eyes brightened. She liked, as all girls do, to hear a story which had to do with great people.
“No, Aunt Avice, I never knew that. Won’t you tell me all about it?”
So Avice began and told her what we know already—how the Bishop had recommended Agnes to the Queen, and all about the journey, and the Castle, and the Queen herself. Then she went on to tell the rest of the story.
“We lived nigh five years,” said Avice, “in the Castle of Windsor—until the Lord Richard was dead, and the Lord William was nearly four years old. Then the Lady Queen removed to the royal Palace of Westminster, for the Lord King was gone over seas, and she with Earl Richard his brother was left to keep England. It was in August, the year of our Lord 1253, at we took up our abode in Thorney Island, where the Palace of Westminster stands. It is a marshy place—not over healthy, some folks say; but I never was ill while we dwelt there. And it was there, on Saint Katherine’s Day”—which is the 25th of November—“that our little Lady was born. Her royal mother named her Katherine, after the blessed saint. She was the loveliest babe that eye could rest on, and she was christened with great pomp. And on Saint Edward’s Day, when the Lady Queen was purified”—namely, churched—“there was such a feast as I never saw again while I dwelt with her. The provisions brought in for that feast were fourteen wild boars, twenty-four swans, one hundred and thirty-five rabbits, two hundred and fifty partridges, sixteen hundred and fifty fowls, fifty hares, two hundred and fifty wild ducks, thirty-six geese, and sixty-one thousand eggs.”
“Only think!” cried Bertha. “Did you get some, Aunt?”
“Surely I did, child. The Lady Queen, I told thee, was then keeper of England, for the Lord King was away across the seas; and good provision she made. Truly, she was free-handed enough at spending. Would she had been as just in the way she came by her money!”
“Why, Aunt, what mean you?” asked Bertha, when Avice expressed her wish that Queen Eleanor had been as just in gaining money as she was liberal in spending it.
“Why, child, taxes came heavy in those days. When the Lord King needed money, he sent home to his treasurer, and it was had as he could get it—sometimes by selling up divers rich folks, or by levying a good sum from the Jews, or any way man could; not always by equal tenths or fifteenths, as now, which comes not nigh so heavy on one or two when it is equally meted out to all. But never was there king like our late Lord King Henry (whom God pardon) for squeezing money out of his poor subjects. Yet old folks did use to say his father King John was as ill or worse.”
Taxes, in those days, were a very different thing from what they are now, and were far more at the mere pleasure of the King, not only as to the collecting of them, but as to the spending. Ignorant people fancy that this is the case still; but it is not so. Queen Victoria has no money from the taxes for her private spending. When she became Queen, she gave up all the land belonging to her as Queen, on condition that her daughters should be portioned, and that she should receive a certain sum of money every year, of less value than the land she gave up; so that it would be fraud and breach of trust in the people if they did not keep their word to pay the sum agreed on to the Queen. There is so much misunderstanding on this point that it is worth while to mention it.