Page:The religious life of King Henry VI.djvu/28

10 the Brief, dispatched with it from Rome, describes the blessing given to this gift on the previous Laetare Sunday. Both going to and returning from the church, in which the Pope celebrated Mass on that day, the Holy Father carried the golden ornament in his hand so that it might be seen by all the people through whose ranks he passed, and in his letter the Holy Father says that he is sending the "Rose" to Henry "having regard to his great faith and devotion to Him and the Holy Roman Church, which make it not only proper but rightly due to him" to receive this present.

In 1459 King Henry came to keep the feast of Easter at St. Albans. Abbot Whethamstede in his chronicle, describing the visit, says: "At the time when Our Lord came to Jerusalem, sitting on an ass to keep the Pasch with His disciples, the Lord King came also to the Monastery with his nobles, barons, knights and his suite to eat the Paschal Lamb." When the Easier celebrations were over Henry proposed to return at once to London, but before setting out, he bade the guardian of the royal wardrobe give to the Prior his best state robe, which he had worn only on Easterday, and