Rose-morals in English literature probably begin with
Sir John Mandeville in the fourteenth century. At any rate,
in the eighteenth chapter of his `Voyage and Travels' he professes
to tell us the origin of red and white roses. A fair maid had been
unjustly accused of wrong-doing and doomed to die by fire.
"And as the woode began to brenne (burn) about hir, she made hir prayer
to our Lorde as she was not gyltie of that thing, that he would helpe hir
that it might be knowne to all men. And whan (when) she had thus sayde,
she entered the fyre and anone the fyre went out, and those braunches
that were brenninge (burning) became red Roses and those braunches
that were not kindled became white Rosiers (rose bushes) full of white roses,
and those were the fyrst roses and rosyers that any man sawe,
and so was the mayden saved through the grace of God."

Thomas Carew has several rose-moralities, as `The True Beauty',
beginning "He that loves a rosy cheek," and his exquisite
`Red and White Roses':

"Read in these roses the sad story
Of my hard fate and your own glory:
In the white you may discover
The paleness of a fainting lover;
In the red, the flames still feeding
On my heart with fresh wounds bleeding.
The white will tell you how I languish,
And the red express my anguish:
The white my innocence displaying,
The red my martyrdom betraying.