misadventure many years before, and recorded in the "Paston Letters,"
as well as in the "Chronicles."--In the year 1459, Anthony Woodville
and his father, Lord Rivers (then zealous Lancastrians), really did
fall into the hands of the Earl of March (Edward IV.), Warwick and
Salisbury, and got off with a sound "rating" upon the rude language
which such "knaves' sons" and "little squires" had held to those "who
were of king's blood."]




CHAPTER III.

THE PLOT OF THE HOSTELRY--THE MAID AND THE SCHOLAR IN THEIR HOME.

The country was still disturbed, and the adherents, whether of Henry
or the earl, still rose in many an outbreak, though prevented from
swelling into one common army by the extraordinary vigour not only of
Edward, but of Gloucester and Hastings,--when one morning, just after
the events thus rapidly related, the hostelry of Master Sancroft, in
the suburban parish of Marybone, rejoiced in a motley crowd of
customers and topers.

Some half-score soldiers, returned in triumph from the royal camp, sat
round a table placed agreeably enough in the deep recess made by the
large jutting lattice; with them were mingled about as many women,
strangely and gaudily clad. These last were all young; one or two,
indeed, little advanced from childhood. But there was no expression
of youth in their hard, sinister features: coarse paint supplied the
place of bloom; the very youngest had a wrinkle on her brow; their