body,
thanked be God, beseeching your good and gracious fatherhood
for our daily blessing.

"And whereas you command us by your said letters to attend
specially to our learning in our young age, that should cause
us to grow to honor and worship in our old age, please it
your highness to wit, that we have attended to our learning
since we came hither, and shall hereafter, by the which we
trust to God your gracious lordship and good fatherhood shall
be pleased.

"Also we beseech your good lordship that it may please you to
send us Harry Lovedeyne, groom of your kitchen, whose service
is to us right agreeable; and we will send you John Boyes to
wait upon your lordship.

"Right high and mighty prince, our most worshipful and
greatly redoubted lord and father, we beseech Almighty God
to give you as good life and long as your own princely heart
can best desire.

"Written at your Castle of Ludlow, the 3d of June.

"Your humble sons,
"E. MARCHE.
"E. RUTLAND."

[Footnote A: There were no postal arrangements in those days, and all
letters were sent by private, and generally by special messengers.]

[Footnote B: Daily.]

The subscriptions E. March and E. Rutland stand for Edward, Earl of
March, and Edmund, Earl of Rutland; for, though these boys were then
only eleven and twelve years of age respectively, they were both
earls. One of them, afterward, when he was about seventeen years old,
was cruelly killed on the field of battle, where he had been fighting
with his father, as we shall see in another chapter. The other,
Edward, became King of England. He came immediately before Richard the
Third in the line.

The letter which the boys wrote was superscribed as follows:

"To the right high and mighty prince, our most worshipful and greatly
redoubted lord and father, the Duke of York, Protector and Defender of
England."

[Illustration: LUDLOW CASTLE.]

The castle of Ludlow, where the boys were residing when this letter
was written, was a strong fortress built upon a rock in the western
part of England, not far from Shrewsbury. The engraving is a correct
representation of it, as it appeared at the period when those boys
were there, and it gives a very good idea of the sort of place where
kings and princes were accustomed to send their families for safety in
those stormy times. Soon after th