[Footnote L:  Greek wine.]

Meanwhile what of little Katherine Riche?  She recurs over and over in Thomas Betson’s letters.  Occasionally she is in disgrace, for she was not handy with her pen.  ‘I am wroth with Katherine,’ writes he to her mother, ’because she sendeth me no writing.  I have to her divers times and for lack of answer I wax weary; she might get a secretary if she would and if she will not, it shall put me to less labour to answer her letters again.’[22] But the important thing is that she grows steadily older, though not quickly enough to please our lover.  On Trinity Sunday in 1478 he writes to Dame Elizabeth:  ’I remember her full oft, God know[eth] it.  I dreamed once she was thirty winters of age and when I woke I wished she had been but twenty and so by likelihood I am sooner like to have my wish than my dream, the which I beseech Almighty Jesu heartily when it shall please Him’[23]; and to the lady’s stepfather he writes a month later:  ’I beseech you to remember my cousin Katherine.  I would she did well, God knoweth it, and ye deme, as I trow, if I had found her at home here my comfort should have been the more; but I thank God of all.  My pain is the more; I must needs suffer as I have done in times past, and so will I do for God’s sake and hers.’[24] However, Katherine was now fifteen years of age and was sufficiently grown up to wed, and the next letter, written a week later to Dame Elizabeth, shows us Thomas Betson beginning to set his house in order and getting exceedingly bothered about laying in her trousseau, a business with which Dame Elizabeth had, it seems, entrusted the future bridegroom.

Madam, and it like you, I understand by your writing that it will be the latter end of August or your ladyship can come here to London; and if it should be so I would be sorry, for I have much to do and I can little skill to do anything that longeth to the matter ye wot of [evidently the preparations for Katherine] ...  I must beseech your ladyship to send me [your advice] how I shall be demeaned in such things as shall belong unto my cousin Katherine, and how I shall provide for them.  She must have girdles, three at the least, and how they shall be made I know not, and many other things she must have, ye know well what they be, in faith I know not; by my troth, I would it were done, liever than more than it shall cost....  And as for the sending hither of my Cousin Katherine, your ladyship may do therein as it shall please you.  I would she knew as much as you know, forsooth, and then she should do some good and help me in many things when she come....  Also, madam, as ye write me the courteous dealing of my master with my Cousin Katherine, etc., truly I am very glad thereof and I pray God heartily thank him therefore, for he hath ever been lovingly disposed [unto] her, and so I beseech God ever continue him and also my Cousin Katherine to deserve it unto him by her goodly demeanour and womanly disposition, as she can do right well if her list, and so saith every body that praiseth her.[25]