hat are old age's alms.
And so from Court to cottage I depart,
My Saint is sure of mine unspotted heart.

And when I sadly sit in homely cell,
I'll teach my saints this carol for a song:
Blest be the hearts that wish my sovereign well!
Cursed be the souls that think to do her wrong!
Goddess! vouchsafe this aged man his right
To be your beadsman now, that was your knight.

But not long after Sir Henry Lee had resigned his office of especial
champion of the beauty of the sovereign, he fell in love with the new
maid of honour--the fair Mrs. Anne Vavasour--who, though in the
morning flower of her charms, and esteemed the loveliest girl in the
whole court, drove a whole bevy of youthful lovers to despair by
accepting this ancient relic of the age of chivalry.[12]

Queen Isabella vowed to make a pilgrimage to Barcelona, and return
thanks at the tomb of that City's patron Saint, if the Infanta Eulalie
recovered from an apparently mortal illness, and Queen Joan of Naples
honoured the knight Galeazzo of Mantua by opening the ball with him at
a grand feast at her castle of Gaita. At the conclusion of the dance,
Galeazzo, kneeling down before his royal partner, vowed, as an
acknowledgment of the honour he had received, to visit every country
where feats of arms were performed, and not to rest until he had
subdued two valiant knights, and presented them as prisoners to the
queen, to be disposed of at her royal pleasure. After an absence of
twelve months, Galeazzo, true to his vow, appeared at Naples, and laid
his two prisoners at the feet of Queen Joan, but who, it is said,
displayed commendable wisdom on the occasion, and "declined her right
to impose rigorous conditions on her captives, and gave them liberty
without ransom."

Such cases, it is true, have been somewhat rare, for made oftentimes
on the impulse of the moment, "unheedful vows," as Shakespeare says,
"may heedfully be broken." But, scarce as the records of unbroken vows
may be, they are deserving of a permanent record, more especially as
the direction of their eccentricity is, for the most part, in itself
curious and uncommon. Love, for instance, has been responsible for
many strange and curious vows in the past, and some years ago it was
stated that the original of Charles Dickens's Miss Havisham was living
in the flesh not far from Ventnor in the person of an old maiden lady,
who, because of the maternal objection to some lov