There was much severity exercised towards children among all classes. Poor Lady Jane Grey pathetically relates how glad she was to go to her tutor to escape the blows, pinches, and constant reprimands which she received when in the presence of her parents, and Lady Jane was by no means of a refractory disposition. After this it is less surprising to find, at an earlier period, one of the Paston family, whose well-known letters throw so much light on domestic life in the fifteenth century, ill treated and beaten as if she were an unruly slave. “She [Elizabeth Paston, daughter of Agnes Paston] was never in so great sorrow as she is nowadays,” wrote one of the relatives in June, 1454; “for she may not speak with no man, whosoever come, ne not may see nor speak with any man, nor with servants of her mother’s, but that she beareth on her hand otherwise than she meaneth; and she hath since Easter the most part been beaten once in the week or twice, and sometimes twice on a day, and her head broken in two or three places.” Dame Paston did not approve of having marriageable daughters about her at home. One she had sent to a certain Cousin Calthorp, who, when he was making changes in his household, wished to be rid of his charge. She writes in some perturbation to her son-- “He seth she waxeth hygh, and it wer tyme to purvey her a mariage. I marvell what causeth hym to write so now; outher she hath displeased hym or elles he hath takyn her with diffraught. Therfor I pray you comune with my Cosyn Clere at London, and wete how he is dysposyd to her ward, and send me word, for I shall be fayn to send for her, and with me she shall but lese her tyme, and with ought she will be better occupied she shall often tymes meve me and put me in gret inquietenesse. Remembr what labour I had with your suster, therfor do your parte to help her forth, that may be your wurchiep and myn.” Girls married very young, and the poet who makes a daughter lament that at fifteen she had not found a husband, was probably not exaggerating. “Good faith, before I came to this ripe groath, I did accuse the labouring time of sloath; Methought the yere did runne but slowe about, For I thought each yeere ten I was without. Being foreteene and toward the tother yeere, Good Lord, thought I, fifteene will nere be heere! For I have heard my mother say that then Prittie maidens were fit for handsome men.” A Venetian noble who accompanied an ambassador from Venice to the English court in the sixteenth century writes-- “The want of affection in the English is strongly manifested towards their children; for after having kept them at home till they arrive at the age of seven or nine years at the utmost, they put them out, both males and females, to hard service in the houses of other people, binding them generally for another seven or nine years.”