[176] I cannot refrain here from calling attention to the extraordinary historical value of the eight volumes of Exeter registers published by Prebendary Hingeston-Randolph, who in this department has done more for historical students, during the last twenty-five years, than all the learned societies of the kingdom put together.
[177] Ed. 1812, p. 317. The text of this book is frequently corrupt; but the evident sense of these ungrammatical lines 3-5 is that the envoys were allowed to watch the unsuspecting damsels from some hidden coign of vantage. It will be noted that Hardyng speaks of five daughters; there had been five, but the eldest was now dead.
[178] Ed. 1841, p. 206. She was Katherine, daughter to Sir Adam Banastre. Miss Strickland asserts that the Queen, contrary to the custom of medieval ladies in high life, nursed the infant herself. She gives no reference, and her authority is possibly Joshua Barnes’s “Life of Edward III.” (1688), p. 44, where, however, references are again withheld. The Black Prince was born June 15, 1330, when the King would have been 19 and the Queen just on 16 years old according to Froissart; but Edward was in fact only 17, and Bishop Stapledon’s reckoning would make the Queen about the same age.
[179] Throughout this chapter I multiply the ancient money by fifteen, to bring it to modern value.
[180] Such acts of vandalism were far more common in the Middle Ages than is generally imagined; a good many instances are noted in the index of my “From St. Francis to Dante.”
[181] Devon, “Issues of the Exchequer,” pp. 144, 153, 155, 199; “York Fabric Rolls,” p. 125; cf. 154. It was one of the privileges of the Archbishops of York to crown the Queen. For the mortuary system, see my “Priests and People in Medieval England.” (Simpkins. 1s.)
[182] Clough, “Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich.”
[183] “Mon. Germ. Scriptt.,” xxxii., 444.
[184] “Mirour,” 23893 ff.
[185] Lénient, “Satire en France” (1859), p. 202.