into granting a favour, or they themselves were to be forgiven some girlish indiscretion. Sir Ralph was their humble servant, whether he was wanted to choose them some 'modish' lace and ribbons, or to prevent an invitation being sent by their parents to an unwelcome suitor. Nancy, his god-daughter and special favourite, still continued to address him as 'Deare Parent' when she was herself a matron with a son at Oxford and a marriageable daughter. His relations with Margaret and Mary Eure were equally affectionate they asked his advice in their difficulties, as their mother had done before them, and indeed still did, though she was now under the protection of a third husband, Captain the Honourable Philip Sherard.

While girls of all ages excited Sir Ralph's reverent admiration, and could always command his services, boys were a trouble and a weariness to him: he had never been a boy himself, and did not understand the species. He was far too good a man not to perform conscientiously all the graver duties of a father, and the intimate correspondence between him and his sons when they came to man's estate shows the solid friendship that existed between them. But he was over-anxious and severe; he would come down upon some childish fault with a sledge-hammer blow which Mary's tact would have warded off; and because of his desire that his eldest son should maintain the traditions of the family, and be a worthy owner of Claydon, he judged him more

6

Edmund and

severely than his younger brother. John Verney belonged to the unhappy generation of young Englishmen who were cut off from that public school and college life which has provided England (as Canning believed) with an uninterrupted succession of men qualified for the performance of parliamentary and other public work. The discipline of Eton and Winchester, the noisy fun of the playing-fields, the rivalries and friendships of Oxford and Cambridge, were all unknown to boys whose parents were dragging out weary years of exile in the provincial towns of France and the Low Countries, or dancing attendance on the Stuarts in Paris and at the Hague. Sir Ralph spared no expense for tutors. Mun's breeding costs me more than you imagen,' he wrote to Dr. Denton, and I would rather save it in anything then that. But at least one French master, Durand, turned out badly, and had to be dismissed for his Drinking and Lyeing,' and Sir Ralph discovered later, to his infinite vexation, that some of those who had been about the boys had neglected their proper work, and tried to infuse into their minds the poison of Popish doctrine.'

Edmund was not quite seven years old when he was taken from home. During the eighteen months that Mary was attending to her husband's business in England, he sadly missed his mother's tender care, and at thirteen he lost her altogether. Instead of spending his holidays in scampering on his pony about the

park at Claydon, in watching the decoys with the keeper, or hawking in the Great Sea Wood,' he had been brought up amidst the petty decorums and restraints of a small French town. There was some out-of-door life in the autumn, when the whole population of Blois turned out for the grape-gathering, and there was fun, not of the best kind, at the time of the annual fair, when the boys generally managed to get into mischief and domestic disgrace.

Sir Ralph himself as a young man had never cared for field sports: he could ride for miles and miles when business demanded it, but he never thought of exercise for either health or pleasure. Cricket and football were yet unknown at our public schools; but even their antique predecessors, marbles, hoops, and hopscotch, must have been more amusing than the fencing and dancing which Mun and Jack were so punctiliously taught. When Mun is said to be sluggish' in his ways as a youth, and apt to lounge over the fire in slovenly attire, these drawbacks of his boyhood must not be forgotten. There was but little laughter in the home at Blois after Mary left them, unless while Sir Henry Puckering Newton was on a visit. When Sir Ralph was buried in his letters, and Luce Sheppard was watching over the proprieties, it could scarcely have been seemly in the little house for Mun and Jack to indulge in such noisy games as boys love and require.

Sir Ralph during his wife's absence had corresponded with her about his educational anxieties.

'Mun, poore childe, is a woefull schollar, though neither himselfe nor Master will beleeve it.'' Mun,' he writes again, 'fearing his last letter would not please you, the carracter beeing small, hath now writt againe, and expects an answere, therefore you had best write him word you like this, but dislike the other; charge him to bee a good Boy and learne hard, and let him bid his sister doe soe too; and then make large promises what you will bring them out of England. . . . Now if Now if you like it. like it. . . I would . . have André come every day to teach Munn the gittarr and to sing to it, for the Lute is soe tedious a thing that I doubt (unlesse hee made it his whole businesse) hee would never play well; but this hee may doe, and not neglect his lattin, and also learne to singe with it.'

When Sir Ralph was to sup with some French neighbours he writes: They invited both the children very sollemly, but I had the witt to leave them behinde'; and of Jack he says: 'I would have him keepe good houres, rather let him fast at night than eate soe late.' A friend describes to Ralph how 'Your sonn Mr. Munn,' aged eleven, ' did us the favour last Fryday to repeate some verses out of Virgil to us, which he did so well, that hee therby acquired honnour both to himselfe and Master. Our gentlemen here sayeing they never saw the like, and I am confident they did not dissemble.' The tutor reports: 'Il faict merveille. . . . Je luy raconte une histoire en Français, il me la rend (extempore) en Latin.'

The singing, and the playing on the guitar, do not seem to have prospered so well, and Sir Ralph writes rather severely to Mun from Paris: 'I have taken order with the Gittarr Master to send me a fine Gittare for you when I send for it, but first I will see whether you deserve it; . . . for if you have not studdied it hard in my absence, a worse shall serve your turne, and therefore I would not buy one till I have heard you sing and play.'

Sir Ralph became a perfect oracle about the cost of education and board in France, even to the price of extras, 'their extraordinaries,' as he calls them, that inexperienced boarders ordered between their meals, 'and the fees to the Hostess' that must be presented on leaving. 2007. a year was considered a proper allowance for an English youth who was to be boarded in a good French family: 'they will keepe him a footboy, and procure him an able man that shall bee his Tutor both in Greeke and Lattin; and also pay for all his other exercises, as Mathematike, Dancing, Fencing, Riding, Musick, and Language Master, and finde him good cloathes of all sorts, gloves, ribbons, etc., and pocket money also in a reasonable way. . . . Bookes, paper, Instruments, both for Musick, and the Mathematicks, and further in case he should bee sick, they will provide Doctor, Apothecary, and a keeper.'

It had been settled before Mary's death that his Aunt, Mrs. Sherard,' should send her two little girls, Margaret and Mary Eure, to France under the care of 1 See vol. i. chap. xii.-'The Rich Wido.' VOL. III.

F