"Well!" said Frideswide, looking after her. "Verily, I am astonied. I had thought Annis should be well-nigh as sorry as I for our poor master."
"Folks can be sorry, Frideswide, though they say it not," quietly answered the Lady Idonia.
But in her heart she was saying,—"O blind eyes, that can see no further than that! Agnes is an hundred times more sorry than Frideswide—so sorry that she can speak of it to none but God."
In the early winter of this year, the baby Prince of Wales, just three years old, was placed under the care of governors spiritual and temporal. His uncle Lord Rivers was the latter, and the Bishop of Rochester the former. King Edward's language, in the decrees which record these appointments, is worth quoting, not only as a specimen of the English of his day, but on account of its inherent singularity. The one entry commences thus:—
"How be it euery child in his yong age ought to be brought vp in vertue and cunnyng,[#] to then-tent that he might delite therin and contynue in the same, and soo consequently deserue the merites of euerlasting blisse, and in this world to be therfore the more eureux[#] and fortunat, yit nathelesse such persoones as god hath called to the pre-eminent astate of princes, and to succede thair progenitours in thestate of Regalte ought more singulerly and more diligently to be enfourmed and instructed in cunnyng and vertu," etc.
[#] Knowledge.
[#] Heureux=happy.
The second decree asserts that—
"We, considering the great bounte of our lord god, whom it hath pleased to send unto us our first begoten son, hole[#] and furnysshed in nature, to succeed us in our Realmes of England and France, and lordship of Ireland, for the which we thank most humbly his infynyte magnificens, purpose by his grace so to purvey for his precieux sonde[#] and yefte[#] and our most desired tresour our seid first begoten son, that he shall be so virtuously, cunningly, and knyghtly brought up, for to serue Almighty God cristenly and deuoutly, as accordeth to his dute, and to leue and precede in the world honourably, after his estate and dignite."[#]
[#] Whole.