64 Ambresbury Monastery. 
III. Tue Princess Mary, sixth daughter of King Edward I., 
took the veil as a Nun of this house, or rather as a Nun of Font 
Evrault but resident at Ambresbury in A.D. 1285. (13. Edw. I.) 
An account of this ceremony, in which thirteen noble young ladies 
entered with her, is given in Mrs. Green’s Lives of the Princesses 
of England. vol. ii. p. 405. The Princess is said in one record 
to have been Prioress: but this is not confirmed. Her retreat was 
against the wishes of the King and Queen but was urged by the 
Queen Dowager. For the maintenance (the “ Camera,” as it was 
called) of his daughter, King Edward allowed at first £100 a year. 
In 1291 he increased this by £20 a year of oak timber out of 
Chute Forest and £20 from Buckholt Forest for her fuel: the 
Sheriff of Hants being charged to see the said fuel duly delivered 
at the King’s expense. The King also assigned to her 20 casks of 
wine yearly to be delivered by the Bailiff of the port of Southamp- 
ton. By a later deed, in 1801, he gave her in lieu of all this, 
Belinger, in Italian, Berlinghieri) Count of Provence. The Count had four 
daughters, all of whom became Queens. Margaret the eldest was married to 
Louis IX. (St. Louis) of France. Eleanor, the second daughter, was wife of 
Henry III. of England. Sanchia, the third, married Henry’s brother, Richard 
Earl of Cornwall, King of the Romans and of Almaine, and Beatrice, the 
youngest, was wife to Charles of Anjou, King of Naples and Sicily, brother to 
Louis. The mysterious person through whose able management these four 
royal matches were arranged is briefly known to us as one Roméo. [This name 
signified a person who went on pilgrimage to Rome. It is familiar to us in 
Shakespeare as Romeo the e being pronounced short: but properly the pronun- 
ciation was Romayo]. He appeared as a pilgrim at the court of Provence, 
under that asswmed name, and rose through extraordinary cleverness to be 
superintendent of Raymond Berenger’s finances, and affairs in general. But 
after a long and faithful stewardship certain enemies about the court filled 
Raymond’s mind with unjust suspicions, and upon an account being demanded 
from Roméo of the revenue which he had carefully husbanded, and which his 
master had lavishly disbursed, Roméo simply called for his little mule, the staff 
and scrip, with which, as a stranger from the shrine of St. James in Galicia, he 
had entered the Count’s service: and so, parted as he came: nor was it ever 
known who he was or whither he went. Such is G. Villani’s account, Lib. vi., 
c. 92. Dante has rescued him from oblivion by giving to him a place in the 
planet Mercury : the sphere which the great poet furnishes with the good spirits 
of those who laboured for honour and renown but were defrauded of it. 
“ Within the pearl that now encloseth us 
Shines Romeo’s light, whose goodly deed and fair 
Met ill acceptance,” &c. (Paradiso, Canto, yi.] 
