tor Robert
Belknappe was to have "a horn made from a griffin's hoof with a silver
core, and the said horn has a silver rim and two silver gilt feet." But
she was most anxious, poor lady, about her soul. "Before everything
else" there were to be said 7000 masses, immediately upon her death, and
the priests were to have L29 3_s._ 4_d._ for saying them. A penny a
mass, that is, and the priests took the pence. But it was twelve years
before they had said the masses.

The second Lord Cobham had mingled experiences of love and war.
According to the inscription on his tomb, broken in the church but
preserved in the College of Arms, he was "as brave as a leopard, a
sumptuous entertainer, handsome, imperturbable, and courteous." He was a
soldier, but the great struggle of his life had nothing to do with a
battlefield. It was his attempt to secure a dispensation from the Pope
for marrying his cousin in defiance of the canon law. Almost a year
passed before the Pope gave his decision on the point, and then he
ordered the unhappy cousins a horribly tedious penance. For four years
they might not eat meat; they might not drink wine on Wednesdays, and at
the six fasts they might only eat the second-best kinds of fish, and not
those which were most agreeable to them. They had to feed four poor
persons daily, and wait upon them themselves; and these poor persons
were to have bread and meat or fish, with half a flagon of ale, and were
to have new tunics and new russet hoods every year. All this was in
addition to various heavy fines. The money part must have been the least
exasperating: but it might have been amusing to choose the less
agreeable kinds of fish.

The eldest son of this much be-penanced marriage had two distinctions.
He was for some years the warden, at Sterborough castle, of the French
heir to the throne, the Duke of Orleans who was taken prisoner at
Agincourt; and he was the founder of Lingfield College. Lingfield
College had a provost, six chaplains, four clerks, and thirteen poor
persons, but none of its walls stand to-day. The life of the college
farm alone survives, in an inventory of the implements and live stock
taken at the Dissolution. Here are some extracts:--

THE LABORERS CHAMBRE.

Itm a mattres ii bolsters A cou'lett a payer of Shets iiii^s
Itm iii Axes & iii hedgying bylls ii^s
Itm ii Augurs a whymble a chesell a horsecombe x^d
Itm a Share a