“Nay, she is wedded wife. ’Tis five years or more sithence they were wed. My Lady Custance had years four, and my Lord Le Despenser five. They could but just syllable their vows. And I mind me, the Lady Custance stuck at ‘obey,’ and she had to be threatened with a fustigation (beating, whipping) ere she would go on.”
“But who dared threaten her?” inquired Maude.
“Marry, my Lord her father, which fell into a fit of ire to see her perversity.—There goeth the dinner bell; lap thy work, child. For me, I am well fain to hear it.”
Note 1. The child was Constance, only daughter of Edmund Duke of York (seventh son of Edward the Third) and Isabel of Castilla.
Note 2. Agnes de La Marche had been the nurse of two of Edward the Third’s sons, Lionel and Edmund. She lived to old age, and was long in receipt of a pension from the Crown for her former service.
Note 3. Wycliffe’s rendering of Revelations sixteen 6. In various places he follows what are now determined to be the best and most ancient authorities.