Page:Stories from Old English Poetry-1899.djvu/144





ING HENRY III. was holding court in London and treating with ambassadors from Spain for the marriage of his son and heir with the Castilian Princess Elinor. In the mean time the Prince of Wales was playing truant in Suffolkshire, and with a troop of lords and courtiers, young and giddy as himself, all dressed in Lincoln green, was chasing the deer through the merry wood of Framlingham, and holding revels among the country rustics as if he had forgot that the blood of royalty ran in his veins.

In the little hamlet of Fresingfield stood the keepers cottage, just on the verge of the grand greenwood, where only the king and his followers held the right to hunt. Here dwelt the royal keeper of the game, with his only daughter Margaret, who far and wide was famed as the fair daisy, the peerless pearl, of Fresingfield.