In the account of the murder of king Ethelbert by the instrumentality of the queen of king Offa, as it is told by Roger of Wendover, we see the queen ordering to be prepared for the royal guest, a chamber, which was adorned for the occasion with sumptuous furniture, as his bed-room. “Near the king’s bed she caused a seat to be prepared, magnificently decked, and surrounded with curtains; and underneath it the wicked woman caused a deep pit to be dug.” Into this pit the king was precipitated the moment he trusted himself on the treacherous seat. It is clear from the context that the chamber thus prepared for the king was a building apart, and that it had only a ground-floor. It was in the chamber that the child, while an infant, was brought up by its mother. We have few contemporary notices of the treatment of children at this early age by the Anglo-Saxons, but probably it differed little from the general practice of a later period. Towards the close of the thirteenth century, an Englishman named Walter de Bibblesworth, who wrote, as a great proportion of English writers at that day did, in French verse--French as it was then spoken and written in England--has left us a very curious metrical vocabulary, compiled in French with interlinear explanations of the words in English, which commences with man’s infancy. “As soon as the child is born,” says the author, “it must be swathed; lay it to sleep in its cradle, and you must have a nurse to rock it to sleep.” _Kaunt le emfès sera nées,_ _Lors deyt estre maylolez,_ _En soun berz l’enfaunt chochet,_ _De une bercere vus purvoyet,_ _Où par sa norice seyt bercé._ This was the manner in which the new-born infant was treated in all grades of society. If we turn to one of the more serious romances, we find it practised among princes and feudal chiefs equally as among the poor. Thus, when the princess Parise, wandering in the wild woods, is delivered in the open air, she first wraps her child in a piece of _sendal_, torn apparently from her rich robe, and then binds, or swathels, it with a white cloth:-- _La dame le conroie à un pan de cendex,_ _Puis a pris un blanc drap, si a ses fians bendez._ --Parise la Duchesse, p. 76. When the robbers carry away the child by night, thinking they had gained some rich booty, they find that they have stolen a newly-born infant, “all swatheled.” _Lai troverent l’anffant, trestot anmaloté._--Ibid. p. 80.