Elizabeth, who knew well enough how to run a household, who knew how to prepare herbs for the still room, indeed knows how they should be grown and when harvested, who knows the properties of a hundred plants and how to call the venom out of them – she is my daughter, after all – had the good sense and the good manners never to correct the lady of the house; but simply learned how it was done at Groby. Of course, she already knew how linen should be folded, or cream skimmed, she knew how a county lady should command her maids, actually she knows far more than Lady Grey will ever dream: for she has learned from me how a royal court is run and how things were done in the courts of France and of Luxembourg. But she accepted the orders of the woman who would be her mother-in-law as a polite young woman should, and gave every appearance of a girl eager to learn the right way that things should be done: the Groby way. In short, as she picked and dried the herbs for the Groby still room, prepared the oils, polished the silver and watched the cutting of the strewing rushes, my daughter enchanted the hard-hearted lady of Groby, just as she enchanted the son of the house.

It is a good match for her. I had it in mind for years. She has my name and her father’s position in our county; but next to no dowry. Service to this king has not brought us a fortune. It seems to be profitable only for those lords who take their fees and do nothing. Those courtiers who do nothing but sympathise with the king and conspire with his wife can take a great profit, as we see from the rich lands that were given to William de la Pole and the extraordinary wealth that Edmund Beaufort now enjoys. But my husband took sixty lancers and nearly six hundred archers with him to Calais, all trained under his command, all wearing our livery, and all paid by us. The treasury has promised to reimburse us, but they might as well date the tally sticks the day of judgement; for the dead will rise from their graves before we can take the sticks into the treasury and get a full repayment. We have a new name and a beautiful house, we have influence and a reputation, we are trusted by both the king and the queen; but money – no, we never have any money.

With this marriage my Elizabeth will become Lady Grey of Groby, mistress of a good part of Leicestershire, owner of Groby Hall and the other great properties in the Grey family, kinswoman to all the Greys. It is a good family, with good prospects for her, and they are solidly for the king and fiercely opposed to Richard, Duke of York, so we will never find her on the wrong side if the dispute between the Duke of York and his rival, the Duke of Somerset, grows worse.