Ambresbury Monastery. 



III. The Princess Mary, sixth daughter of King Edward I., j 

 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 j 

 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 I 

 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 1301, 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 I 

 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 I 

 Louis. The mysterious person through whose able management these four || 

 royal matches were arranged is briefly known to us as one Romeo. [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 Romano]. He appeared as a pilgrim at the court of Provence, 

 under that assumed 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 

 Ravmond's mind with unjust suspicions, and upon an account being demanded 

 from Romeo of the revenue which he had carefully husbanded, and which his 

 master had lavishly disbursed, Romeo 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 GL 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, vi.] 



