That man in armour now delivered his lance to his little page, his shield to the page of a friend of his, a Widdrington; his sword to Michael Eure, a cousin of the Lady Margaret, to be an honour to her, and Richard Raket and other grooms came round the horse while the rider descended and then they led the horse away. But he never raised the fluted steel of his visor. And when he was kneeling on high cushions of black velvet, since his steel shoes of tapering and reticulated rings were near two foot long, as the fashion was, the Bishop asked him if he would not uncover his face. But he whispered in the ear of the little page, and presently that boy said without fear in a high voice that the worshipful esquire had sworn an oath in the chapel that no woman should look upon his face or hear his voice until he was both knighted and betrothed. Those who upheld pure knight errants said that this was a very good vow, but the Percy laughed till his tears came. Then, in a high voice, but in an Italian accent, for he had been many years the King’s Advocate and Ambassador at Rome and had there learnt his latinity and love for the profane poets, Ovid, Vergil the Magician, and many others—the Bishop recited the words of the oath that this esquire should take. There was his duty to the Bishop Palatine to find for him, when he came to be a baron, sixteen knights when letters of array were sent out, and, by the year, sixty bushels of wheat, one hundred of oats and peas, ten carts of oat straw and ten of wheat when the Bishop and his men harboured within ten miles of the Castle, and the Bishop to have the rights of infangthef throughout his lands. Also he would observe the privileges of all clerks and of Durham sanctuary within those lands. The Bishop read also the oath to the King, for the Lord Percy had little Latin. The Knight, when he came to be a Baron, should find for the King’s service, north of the Humber when the King’s letters of array were read, twenty-two knights, or six only if the Bishop had before sent his letters calling for sixteen. For such lands as he should get from his mother he should pay the King four horseshoes of gold whenever the King lay at Morpeth, and for the Lovell lands a gold cup filled with snow whenever the King lay within the Cheviot country. The goods of all those convicted of treason within his territories at Morpeth should go to the Bishopric; those from the other parts one-tenth to the King, six-tenths to the Bishop, one-tenth to the monastery of St. Cuthbert at Belford, and the remainder to himself.