took good care to confiscate all the property he could from any excuse lay hands on. Roger was also himself much attached to the principles of the Lollards, and he wished, if possible, that the young Herbert should marry into a family which held them. There were many families at that time who read Wycliffe's Bible and Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales"--more, indeed, than are generally supposed. The English, as a nation, never bowed the neck very readily to Rome, and even in the darkest days there were some who put no faith in her assumptions and pretensions. The more enlightened had also ere this discovered what a clog to the prosperity and progress of the country existed in the many thousands of lazy and idle monks and friars, and other members of what were called religious orders. Still it may be considered that the lower classes generally, and many of the upper, were ignorant in the extreme, and believed in all those gross superstitions which have ever been the direct result of the teaching of the Church of Rome, where no counteracting influences are at work. As Roger did not himself possess much book-learning, he was compelled to leave young Herbert under the instruction of Father Mathew, the curate of the parish, to whom Sir Herbert had confided the charge of his education. Not that the knight had any great esteem for the learning of the father, but simply that he knew of no one else under whom he could place his son. Father Mathew was not a learned man, but he had cleverness enough to conceal his ignorance, and Sir Herbert, who, though a brave soldier, was no clerk, was not likely to find it out. If the truth must be said, the curate was himself fonder of hawk and hound than of his books, and it was whispered that if a fat pullet came in his way, even on a fast day, he did not always turn aside from the temptation. He could, however, do more than many of his brethren, for he could not only read his breviary, but write a neat hand and copy manuscripts with precision--an art he had learned in the cloister, and which was still the chief mode of multiplying books; for printing had only been introduced into England about twenty years before. Such was Father Mathew; in the main, with all his faults, an honest man. Roger, who had more shrewdness than his late lord, was not altogether satisfied with him, but he consoled himself with the thought that his young charge might have had a worse preceptor when he saw him growing into a fine handsome young man, with many noble and generous qualities, though certainly more addicted to field sports and athletic exercises than to the study of any of those branches of knowledge by which he might restore the fallen fortunes of his house.