Again, once when riding in a street which lay outside the graveyard to the east of a certain church, wherein the pyx that hung over the altar did not contain the sacrament of the Eucharist, he on that account did not bare his head, as he was wont always at other times to do most reverently in honour of the sacrament; and when many of his lords and nobles wondered thereat, he gave them his reason, saying: 'I know that my Lord Jesus Christ is not there for me to do so in His honour.' And it was found to be so as he had said. Nay, those who were his privy servants say that the king often saw our Lord Jesus presenting Himself in human form in the sacrament of the altar in the hands of the priest.
It was also his custom of his very great humility and devotion to bear in his own hands a great taper on the eve and at the season of the Lord's resurrection for his reverence and belief in the same.
The humility of the king.
Further of his humility in his bearing, in his clothes and other apparel of his body, in his speech and many other parts of his outward behaviour;—it is well known that from his youth up he always wore round-toed shoes and boots like a farmer's. He also customarily wore a long gown with a rolled hood like a townsman, and a full coat reaching below his knees, with shoes, boots and foot-gear wholly black, rejecting expressly all curious fashion of clothing.
Also at the principal feasts of the year, but especially at those when of custom he wore his crown, he would always have put on his bare body a rough hair shirt, that by its roughness his body might be restrained from excess, or more truly that all pride and vain glory, such as is apt to be engendered by pomp, might be repressed.
His work and pursuits.
As concerning the employments of the king and how well he passed his days and his time, it is well known to many yet alive that he used wholly to devote the high days and Sundays to hearing the divine office and to devout prayer on his own behalf and his people's, lest his enemies should scorn his sabbaths; and he was earnest in trying to induce others to do the like. So that some who were once attendant on him declare that his whole joy and pleasure was in the due and right performance of the praise of God and of divine service. The other days of less solemnity he passed not in sloth or vanities, not in banquetings or drunkenness, not in vain talk or other mischievous speech or chatter (all such he ever avoided in his lifetime and indeed used but very brief speech, of words tending to edification or profitable to others), but such days he passed not less diligently either in treating of the business of the realm with his council as need might require, or in reading of the scriptures or of authors and chronicles. Such witness of him was borne by an honourable knight who was once his most trusty chamberlain, Sir Richard Tunstall, who gave this testimony of him both in speech and in writing: 'His delight was in the law of the Lord by day and by night.' And to prove this, the Lord King himself complained heavily to me in his chamber at Eltham, when I was alone there with him employed together with him upon his holy books, and giving ear to his wholesome advice and the sighs of his most deep devotion. There came all at once a knock at the king's door from a certain mighty duke of the realm, and the king said: 'They do so interrupt me that by day or night I can hardly snatch a moment to be refreshed by reading of any holy teaching without disturbance.'