The Blind Beggar of Bednall Green
A popular
Elizabethan ballad 'The Beggar's Daughter of Bednall
Green' refers events of this time and to Bessy, who left
her parents and went to Stratford le Bow to make her
fortune, going into service at Romford.
Her father
was a blind beggar and only one of her suitors did not
despise her poverty and humble origins. Then it was
disclosed that her father, who had been left for dead
after the battle of Evesham in 1265, was Henry, son of Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester.
A daughter of
one of the warring barons, searching for the body of her
father stumbled on the body of Henry de Montfort. She carried him from the
battlefield and hid him, nursing him back to health. But
he was blind. They married in secret.
When he was
poor and old he was looked after by his daughter. (His
wife disappears into the mists of time and is heard of no
more.)
'My
father,' she sayd, 'is soone to be seene;
The seely blind beggar of Bednalle-greene,
That dayle sits begging for charitie,
He is the good father of prettye Bessee.
His markes
and tokens are known very well;
He always is led with a dogg and a bell;
A seely olde man, God knoweth, is hee,
Yett hee is the father of prettye Bessee.'
A brave
knight (presumably the one who had not despised her
poverty) loved her enough to want to marry her and only
then did the father confess that he was the rightful Earl
of Leicester and he endowed her with a great fortune.
'Thus was
the feast ended with joye and delighte,'
'A bridegroom most happy then was the young Knighte,
In joye and felicitie long lived he
All with his faire ladye, the pretty Bessee.'
For the
complete poem see Abbeys, castles and Ancient Halls of
England and Wales, South, by John Timbs and Alexander
Gunn, page 56.
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