"Stay, fair maiden!" continued Ned Dyram, who well knew where the hostelry of the Falcon was situate--"It may be as well to keep our counsel, whatever it be, from host and hostess. Gossip is a part of their trade; and it is wise to avoid giving them occasion. I will give you, when we are within, a letter from my young lord, and read it to you, too, as perchance you cannot do that yourself; but it will let the people see that I am not without authority to hold converse with you, which may be needful." "Nay," answered Ella, "I can read it myself; for I have not been without such training." "Ay, I forgot," rejoined Ned Dyram, with one of his light sneers; "had you been a princess, you would not have been able to read. Such clerk-craft is only fit for citizens and monks. I wonder how Childe Richard learned to read and write. I fear it will spoil him for a soldier." The satire was not altogether just; for, though it did not unfrequently happen that high nobles and celebrated warriors and statesmen were as illiterate as the merest boors, and in some instances (especially after the wars of the Roses had deluged the land with blood, and interrupted all the peaceful arts of life) the barons affected to treat with sovereign contempt the cultivation of the mind, yet such was not by any means so generally the case, as the pride of modern civilization has been eager to show. We have proofs incontestable, that, in the reigns of Richard II., Henry IV., and Henry V., men were by no means so generally ignorant as has been supposed. The House of Lancaster was proud of its patronage of literature; and, though more than one valiant nobleman could not sign his own name, or could do so with difficulty, there is much reason to believe that the exceptions have been pointed out as the rule; for we know that many a citizen of London could not only maintain, without the aid of another hand, long and intricate correspondence with foreign merchants, but also took delight in the reading during winter's nights of Chaucer and Gower, if not in studying secretly the writings of Wickliffe and his disciples.