He returned home, and whilst visiting Donvallo, King of Flintshire, fell in love with his daughter Winnifred. Finding her one day reading in her bower in the garden, he declared his love, but was courteously, though firmly, declined by the princess. Grieved at this disappointment, Sir Hugh went again abroad, was shipwrecked, and finally returned to Harwich in a destitute condition. Here he fell in with some shoemakers, and tarried with them a whole year, learning their trade.
In Chap-books one does not look for extreme historical accuracy, so we are not surprised that Diocletian came over to England, and sent Winnifred to prison for refusing to worship idols. Sir Hugh heard of this, and in order to join her, spoke loudly in favour of the Christian religion, and soon had his wish gratified. In prison, journeymen shoemakers brought him relief, and were so kind to him, that he styled them all gentlemen of the "gentle craft;" but the tale winds up informing us that "Sir Hugh and Winnifred remained a long time in prison, and were at last, for their steadfastness to the Christian religion, put to death by order of this cruel tyrant."
Crispin and Crispianus seem to have lived in Britain in the reign of Maximinius, and were the sons of King Logrid. Maximinius sent for them in order to slay them, but their mother, Queen Esteda, disguised them, and caused them to flee. They wandered to Faversham, where, tired out, they knocked at the door of a shoemaker, who took them in, and finally apprenticed them to himself. Crispianus, however, could not "stick to his last," so he went to assist the King of France against the Persians; whilst Crispin, whose master was the Court shoemaker, being a handsome young man, used to be sent there with shoes, and the Princess Ursula fell violently in love with him, declared her passion for him, and they were privately married under an oak tree in the park.
Crispianus, meanwhile, had been performing prodigies of valour, and at length returned to Maximinius with letters of commendation from the French king; whilst the Princess Ursula, whose confinement drew nigh, did not know how to screen herself. Love, however, is proverbially sharp-witted; so a false rumour of an enemy having landed being spread by means "of firing a gun," she escaped in the confusion, and took refuge in the shoemaker's house, where a son was born, whence the saying, "A shoemaker's son is a prince born." Maximinius received Crispianus with effusion, sent for his mother, acknowledged his birth, and would have given him his daughter in marriage could she have been found. At this juncture the young couple turned up, were forgiven, "and they lived very happy all their lives afterwards."
The original of this book seems to have been written by Thomas Deloney; an edition of it was printed in 1598, and it was entered on the Stationers' Books on October 19, 1597, as "a booke called the gentle Crafte, intreatinge of Shoomakers."