it, for although it is so small that it will lie on
the palm of your hand, yet it did cost me full
five marks in exchange." But her marriage life
was doomed to bring her only brief and
transitory intervals of wedded happiness. Five
years after the date of her letter above quoted,
she was again alone in the house. Master Gall
died, but not until he had endowed his "tender
wife with all and singular his monies and plate,
bills, bonds, and ventures now at sea, &c.," with a
long inventory of the "precious things beneath
the moon," too long to rehearse, but each and
all to the sole use, enjoyment, and behoof of
Dame Thomasine, whose maiden name of
Bonaventure was literally interpreted and fulfilled in
every successive change of station.

We greet her then once more as a rich
and buxom widow of city fame. Her wealth,
added to her comeliness, for she was still in
the prime of life, brought many "a potent,
grave, and reverend seignor" to her feet, and
to sue for her hand. Nor did she long linger
in her choice. The favoured suitor now was
Sir John Perceval, goldsmith and usurer, that
is to say, banker, in the phrase of that day; very
wealthy, of high repute, alderman of his ward,
and in such a position of civic advancement
that he would have been described, in modern
language, as next the chair. He wooed and
won the "Golden Widow," for so, because of
her double inheritance of the wealth of two
rich husbands, she was merrily named. Their
wedding was a kind of public festival, and the
bride, in acknowledgment of her own large
possessions, was invested with a stately dower at
the church door. One year after their marriage
her husband, Sir John, was elected to that
honourable office which is still supposed by
foreign nations to be only second in rank to that
of the monarch on the throne, Lord Mayor of
the City of London.

Thus, by a strange succession of singular
events, the barefooted shepherdess of a Cornish
moorland became the Lady Mayoress of
metropolitan fame; and the legend of Thomasine
Bonaventure, for it was now well known, was
the popular theme of royal and noble interest
among the lords and ladies of the court. She
demeaned herself bravely and decorously in her
ascent among the great and lofty ones of the land.
Like all noble natures, her spirit rose with her
personal elevation, and took equal place with her
compeers of each superior rank. Nor did her
true and simple woman's nature undergo any
depreciation or change. It breathes and survives
in every sentence of her family letters, transcripts
of which have been perpetuated and preserved to
our own times. One page of her personal
history is illustrative of a scene of life and manners
when Henry the Seventh was king.

"Sweet mother," she wrote, "thy daughter
hath seen the face of the king. We were
bidden to a banket at the royal palace; and Sir
John and I dared not choose but go. There
was such a blaze of lords and ladies in silks
and samite, and jewels and gold, that it was
like the city of New Jerusalem in the
Scriptures; and I, thy maid Thomasine, was
arrayed so fine, that they brought up the saying
that I was dressed like an altar. When we
were led into the chamber of dais, where his
highness stood, the king did kiss me on the
cheek, as the manner is, and he seemed
gentle and kind. But then did he turn to my
good lord and husband, and say, with a look
stark and stern enow, 'Ha, Sir John! see to it
that thy fair dame be liege and true, for she
comes of the burly Cornish kind, and they be
ever rebels in blood and bone. Even now they
be one and all for that knave Warbeck, who is
among them in the West.' You will gesse, dear
mother, how my heart did beat. But withal
the king did drink to me at the banket, and did
merrily call 'Health to our Lady Mayoress, Dame
Thomasine Perceval, which now feedeth her flock
in the rich pastures of our city of London.'
And thereat they did laugh, and fleer, and shout,
and there was flashing of tankards and jingling
of cups all down the hall." With increase of
wealth came also many a renewed token of
affectionate regard and sterling bounty to her
old and well-beloved dwelling-place of Wike
St. Marie. As her wedding-gift of remembrance
she directed that "a firm and stedfast
road should be laid down with stones," at her
sole cost, along the midst of Green-a-Moor, and
fit for man and beast to travel on, with their
lawful occasions, from Lanstaphadon to the
sea. At another time, and for a New Year's
gift, she gave the sum of forty marks towards
the building of a tower for St. Stephen's church,
above the causeway of Dunheved; and it was her
desire that they should carry their pinnacles so
tall that "they might be seen from Swannacote
Cross, by the moor, to the intent that they who
do behold it from the Burgage-mound may
remember the poor maid which is now a wedded
dame of London citie."

During her three marriages she had no
children, and it was her singular lot to survive
her third husband, Sir John; it was in long
widowhood after him that she lived and died.
Her will, bearing date the vigil of the Feast
of Christmas, A.D. 1510, is a singular
document, for therein the memory and the
impulses of her early life are recalled and
condensed. She bequeaths large sums of money
to be laid out and invested in land for the welfare
of the village borough, whereto, amid all the
strange vicissitudes of her existence, her heart
had always clung with fond and lingering regret.
She directs that a chantry with cloisters was to
be built near the church of Wike St. Marie, at
the discretion, and under the control of her
executor and cousin, John Dineham, the
unforgotten priest. She endows it with thirty
marks by the year, and provides that there shall
be established therein "a schole for young
children, born in the paroche of Wike St. Marie;
and such to be always preferred as are friendless
and poor." They are to be "taught to read with
their fescue from a boke of horn, and also to
write, and both as the manner was in that
country when I was young." The well-remembered