The fair sex, though not in that day remarkable, generally speaking, for the cultivation of letters and for the most part precluded from scientific pursuits, had as great a sway over the persons and manners of the age, as they have at this day. Fair ladies were highly prized in the land, and stately and ceremonious were the attentions paid to them in public, however much neglected in the castle. The bloody wars between the houses of York and Lancaster had now terminated; and in the persons of the reigning sovereigns, Henry VII. and Elizabeth, the contending families became united, and this example was beginning to be generally followed. As soon as these differences were terminated, that is in the following year, the first rose-plants were cultivated in England. All the flowers which the friends of the opposing parties wore were sent over from the continent: there might be some exotics, but not till the wars of the roses terminated did the banks of the Orwell, and Ellen's garden, exhibit plants of both the red and white rose, and hers were some of the earliest planted in England. Not for thirty years after did they become generally cultivated throughout the country. Ellen grew to womanhood beloved. She was not only admired, but she was sought after by many who courted an alliance with the family of De Freston. She was an heiress too of no mean possessions, as well as of high connexion. Had she been disposed to wed highly and merely for nobility of blood, the De la Poles were accounted sufficiently noble to claim equality with any in the land. Independently of estates, of good personal carriage, and fine countenance, she possessed a mind like a diamond of great value, fit to make its possessor incomparably happy. Nor was she without suitors, led to her by the fame of her beauty, her acquirements, and her fortune. Lord Willoughby, of Farham House, in the county of Suffolk, was one of the first to endeavor to create a sympathy in the fair maid of Freston Tower for his own person and establishment. He was a frank, independent nobleman, of gallant mien, and ever deemed the foremost, whether with horse and hound, or helm and spear. He was lofty in his carriage, vain of his person, and proud of his feats; and according to his ideas, whoever he took to be his wife must be considered to have acquired infinite honor by the alliance, and must observe an obsequious servility before him: for, an equal in a man he could scarcely brook; and, as to a woman, though Ellen might be his wife, she must never expect to be his equal. She had wisdom to perceive this, and declined the proffered honor.