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There is a curious old set of verses, written by Lord Stanley's squire, which says that Lady Bessee called Lord Stanley to a secret room, and begged him to send to his stepson, Richmond, to invite him to come to England and set them all free. Stanley said he could not write well enough, and that he could not trust a scribe; but Lady Bessee said she could write as well as any scribe in England.
And, as had often before been his practice, he sang in a deep manly voice, to the boy's accompaniment on his harp. "A poore beggar's daughter did dwell on a greene, Who might for her faireness have well been a queene; A blithe bonny lasse and a dainty was she, And many one called her pretty Bessee."
A flower-wreathed instrument of his calling went to the player of the sprightliest air; after which awardment, the fiddlers, each to the tune of his own choosing, marched off the green to make room for Pretty Bessee, her father the beggar, and her suitors the innkeeper, the merchant, the gentleman, and the knight.
"Come hither, Bessee," he added after a brief pause; "say thy prayer for thy blessed mother, child."
He held out his hands to her, and claimed her as his cousin; and she came readily to him, and stood between his knees. "Little cousin, he said, "wilt thou come home with me, to be with my two little maids, the elder much of thine age?" "You are a red monk!" said Bessee, amazed. "That's his shell, Bessee," said her father; "he has come a-masking, and forgot his part."
"No harm was done," briefly but sharply exclaimed the strange knight; and the blind man, who had, as little Bessee at least perceived, been turning his acute ear in that direction all the time he had been speaking, now let his features light up with sudden perception.
Little Bessee seemed quite comforted when on her way back to her father, and sat on Richard's knee, eating the comfits with which the Princess had provided her, and making him cut a figure that seemed somewhat to amaze the other boat-loads whom they encountered on the river.
The King, making inquiries of the Grand Prior, learnt that pretty Bessee was daily deposited at the sisterhood of Poor Clares, where she remained while her father was out on his begging expeditions, and learnt such breeding as convents then gave.
"'Nay, then, quoth the merchant, 'thou art not for me. 'Nor, quoth the inn-holder, 'my wiffe shalt thou be. 'I lothe, said the gentle, 'a beggar's degree; And therefore adewe, my pretty Bessee."
And pretty Bessee had clung fast to his hand, and discreetly guided him through every maze of the crowd, with the strange dexterity of a child bred up in throngs.
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