or mother, whether I speak, keep silence, sit, stand, or go, eat, drink,
be merry, or sad, be sewing, playing, dancing, or doing anything else, I
must do it as it were in such weight, number, and measure, even so
perfectly as God made the world, or else I am so sharply taunted, so
cruelly threatened, yea, presently, sometimes with pinches, nips, and
bobs, and other ways, (which I will not name for the honor I bear them,)
so without measure misordered, that I think myself in hell, till time
come that I must go to Mr. Elmer, who teacheth me so gently, so
pleasantly, with such fair allurements to learning, that I think all the
time nothing while I am with him. And when I am called from him, I fall
on weeping, because whatsoever I do else beside learning is full of
grief, trouble, fear, and whole misliking unto me. And thus my book hath
been so much my pleasure, and bringeth daily more pleasure and more,
that in respect of it all other pleasures, in very deed, be but trifles
and troubles to me." The Duke and Duchess of Suffolk were neither better
nor worse than other parents who tormented and tyrannized over their
children _temp._ Edward VI., and nothing but the prominence of the most
unfortunate of their unfortunate daughters has preserved the memory of
their domestic despotism. Throughout all England it was the same, from
palace to castle, and from castle to hovel; and father and tyrant were
convertible terms. Youth must have been but a dreary time in those old
days. Scott's Sir Henry Lee, according to his son, kept strict rule over
his children, and he was a type of the antique knight, not of the
debauched cavalier, and would be obeyed, with or without reason. The
letters and the literature of the seventeenth century show, that, how
loose soever became other ties, parents maintained their hold on their
children with iron hands. Even the license of the Restoration left
fatherly rule largely triumphant and undisputed. When even "husbands, of
decent station, were not ashamed to beat their wives," sons and
daughters were not spoiled by a sparing of the rod. Harshness was the