Monmouth, 1388, and sent to Courtfield, about seven
miles distant, where the air was considered more salubrious. There he
was nursed under the superintendence of Lady Montacute, and in that
place this cradle was preserved for many years. It was sold by a steward
of the Montacute property, and, after passing through several hands,
was in the possession of a gentleman near Bristol when engraved for
Shaw's "Ancient Furniture," in 1836.

In the Douce Collection of the Bodleian Library, Oxford, there is
figured in a manuscript of the fifteenth century a cradle, with the baby
very nicely tucked up in it. The cradle resembles those of modern date,
and is upon rockers. Another illustration of the same period shows us a
cradle of similar form, the "cradle, baby, and all" carried on the head
of the nursery-maid,--a caryatid style of baby-tending which we cannot
suppose to have been universal. The inventories of household furniture
belonging to Reginald de la Pole, after enumerating some bed-hangings of
costly stuff, describe: "Item, a pane" (piece of cloth which we now call
counterpane) "and head-shete for y'e cradell, of same sute, bothe furred
with mynever,"--giving us a comfortable idea of the nursery
establishment in the De la Pole family. The recent discovery in England
of that which tradition avers to be the tomb of Canute's little
daughter, speaks of another phase in nursery experience. The relics,
both of the cradle and the grave, bear their own record of the joys,
cares, and sorrows of the nursery in vanished years, and bring near to
every mother's heart the baby that was rocked in the one, and the grief
which came when that little form was given to the solemn keeping of the
other.

A miniature in an early manuscript, called "The Birth of St. Edmund,"
gives us a picture of a bedroom and baby in the fifteenth century. St.
Edmund himself was born five hundred years previous to that date; but as
saints and sinners look very much alike when they are an hour old, we
can imagine that, as far as the baby is concerned, it may be considered
a portrait. A pretty young woman, in a long white gown, whose cap looks
like magnified butterflies' wings turned upside down, sits on a low seat
before the blazing wood-fire burning on great andirons in a wide
fireplace, which, instead of a mantelpiece, has three niches for
ornamental vases. She holds the baby very nicely, and, having warmed his
feet, has wrapt him in a long white garment, s