“By the Mass,” said Peter Lanaret, “I will have one peep at this burly gallant;” and leaving the buttery, he went to the guard-room where Gaston St. Clere was confined. A man-at-arms, who kept sentinel on the strong studded door of the apartment, said he believed he slept; for that after raging, stamping, and uttering the most horrid imprecations, he had been of late perfectly still. The falconer gently drew back a sliding board, of a foot square, towards the top of the door, which covered a hole of the same size, strongly latticed, through which the warder, without opening the door, could look in upon his prisoner. From this aperture he beheld the wretched Gaston suspended by the neck, by his own girdle, to an iron ring in the side of his prison. He had clambered to it by means of the table on which his food had been placed; and in the agonies of shame and disappointed malice, had adopted this mode of ridding himself of a wretched life. He was found yet warm, but totally lifeless. A proper account of the manner of his death was drawn up and certified. He was buried that evening in the chapel of the castle, out of respect to his high birth; and the chaplain of Fitzallen of Marden, who said the service upon the occasion, preached, the next Sunday, an excellent sermon upon the text, “Radix malorum est cupiditas,” which we have here transcribed. [Here the manuscript from which we have painfully transcribed, and frequently, as it were, translated this tale, for the reader’s edification, is so indistinct and defaced that, excepting certain “howbeits,” “nathlesses,” “lo ye’s!” etc. we can pick out little that is intelligible, saving that avarice is defined “a likourishness of heart after earthly things.”] A little farther there seems to have been a gay account of Margery’s wedding with Ralph the Tasker, the running at the quintain, and other rural games practised on the occasion. There are also fragments of a mock sermon preached by Gregory upon that occasion, as for example:— “Mv dear cursed caitiffs, there was once a king, and he wedded a young old queen, and she had a child; and this child was sent to Solomon the Sage, praying he would give it the same blessing which he got from the witch of Endor when she bit him by the heel. Hereof speaks the worthy Dr. Radigundus Potator. Why should not Mass be said for all the roasted shoe souls served up in the king’s dish on Saturday? For true it is that Saint Peter asked father Adam, as they journeyed to Camelot, an high, great, and doubtful question: ‘Adam, Adam, why eated’st thou the apple without paring?’”[*]