have been more exemplary than the care which the Anglo-Saxon dame
bestowed on her sons. In a conversation which Walter Espec held on the
battlements of the castle of Wark, with his brother-in-arms Guy
Muschamp, the heir of an Anglo-Norman baron of Northumberland, he lauded
her excellence as a woman, and her tenderness as a mother.

'I was in my tenth year,' said Walter, 'when my father, after having
served King Henry as a knight in Gascony, fell in battle; and, albeit my
mother, when she became a widow, was still fair and of fresh age, a
widow she resolved to remain; and she adhered firmly to her purpose. In
truth, her mouth was so accustomed to repeat the name of her dead
husband that it seemed as if his memory had possession of her whole
heart and soul; for whether in praying or giving alms, and even in the
most ordinary acts of life, she continually pronounced his name.

'My mother brought up my brother and myself with the most tender care.
Living at our castellated house of Heckspeth, in the Wansbeck, and hard
by the abbey of Newminster, she lived in great fear of the Lord, and
with an equal love for her neighbours, especially such as were poor; and
she prudently managed us and our property. Scarcely had we learned the
first elements of letters, which she herself, being convent-bred, taught
us, when, eager to have us instructed, she confided us to a master of
grammar, who incited us to work, and taught us to recite verses and
compose them according to rule.'

It was while the brothers Espec were studying under this master of
grammar, and indulging with spirit and energy in the sports and
recreations fashionable among the boys of the thirteenth century--such
as playing with whirligigs and paper windmills, and mimic engines of
war, and trundling hoops, and shooting with bows and arrows, and
learning to swim on bladders, that Dame Algitha followed her husband to
a better world, and they found themselves orphans and unprotected. For
both, however, Providence raised up friends in the day of need.
Remembering what he owed to his connection with the Especs, the Lord de
Roos received Walter into his castle of Wark, to be trained to arms; and
another kinsman, who was a prior in France, received Osbert into his
convent, to be reared as a monk. The orphans, who had never before been
separated, and who were fondly attached, parted after many embraces, and
many tears; and, with as little knowledge of the world into which they