OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 23 



for the night none, except the highest nobility, disdained to sleep 

 two or three in a bed, whence arose that old saying, — " Poverty 

 acquaints men with strange bedfellows." " 



AVe who travel with the luxuries of first and second class carriages, 

 and enter papered, painted, and gilded refreshment rooms, decorated 

 with splendid mirrors, and can afford a bed apiece, can scarcely picture 

 to our mind's eye the difficulties with which travellers had to contend 

 in those days. 



The danger, too, from robbers, was such as we can form no adequate 

 idea of in our present age and country, or perhaps in any country 

 in Europe now-a-days, unless it be Spain or Italy. Persons of high 

 rank did not disdain to become freebooters, and brigands. Witness 

 the feats of Eobin Hood, the bold Earl of Huntingdon ; and hero 

 a singular occurrence may be mentioned as illustrative of the man- 

 ners and habits of the age in which our hero lived. It so happened 

 that his brother Eobert and his nephew Guy where riding on horse- 

 back, in the neighbourhood of the city of Hereford, when eight 

 servants of a certain Richard Oldcastle, Esq. with other miscreants, 

 to the number of thirty, seized, and carried them off to a hill called 

 Dynmore Hill, and after robbing them of their horses and property, kept 

 them all' night in a deserted chapel, and threatened them with death, 

 or to be carried off into Wales. At last Guy was liberated to pro- 

 cure a ransom, on condition that he returned the following day ; 

 meanwhile his father was led by these robbers from wood to wood, to 

 a certain mill, where, on Guy's return, they were both imprisoned 

 until they promised to pay the robbers six hundred pounds upon tlieir 

 release, and to enter into a bond to forego all actions from the creation 

 of the world down to the feast of All Saints then next ensuing. Upon 

 these grounds, Eobert "Whittington supplicates the king, through the 

 Parliament, to declare such bonds and covenants null and void, and to 

 take legal proceedings against those miscreants. The copy of the 

 original grant of the application from the Parliamentary Polls is 

 given in the Appendix. 



r The celebrated bed at the inn at Ware, Hertfordshire, existing at that time, 

 was twelve feet sqiiare, and would accommodate a goodly number of bedfellows. 

 — Rees' Ct/clopeedia, under Ware. 



