Page:The religious life of King Henry VI.djvu/22

4 In the year 1428 Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, became the King's master. On 1st June the Earl was ordered "to be about the King's person" and directed "to teach him to love, worship, and dread God, draw him to virtue by ways and means convenable, laying before him examples of God's Grace to virtuous Kings, and the contrary fortunes of Kings of the contrary disposition, to teach him nurture, literature, languages and other manner of cunning, to chastise him when he doth amiss, and to remove persons not behovefull nor expedient from his presence."

For his early training in religion and virtue the boy King had the advantage of the watchful care of Thomas Netter, or Walden, the learned and pious Carmelite, one of the most famous theologians of his day. Netter had been the Confessor of King Henry V, and in that capacity had accompanied him to France in 1422. The King was assisted in his last hours by the saintly Friar, and is said to have died in his arms. It was Netter who pronounced the funeral discourse over the body at its burial in Westminster Abbey on 6th November 1422.