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exceptionally large and the scale of his open-handed hospitality quite outstanding. 34 When the Neville daughters were there, they found roasted meats prominent on the menu. Bar the laundress, the earl’s household was entirely male, but in the smaller replica that was the countess’s establishment there were females, bothgentlewomen (damsels) and domestic servants. Based on other parallels, there were probably both married women, the wives of his officers, and spinsters, although actually only one widow – the earl’s flighty cousin Dame Margaret Lucy 35 – is known by name. It was a female world that aristocratic girls like the Neville sisters inhabited. Men there were in plenty, both in the service departments, in office upstairs, in business transactions with their mother, and in polite society, but such maidens were always chaperoned and insulated against potential male predators except under the most strictly controlled circumstances.
    Whilst little, the earl’s daughters lived with their mother. Mothers took general responsibility for the upbringing of their children. 36 The image of St Anne teaching her daughter the Blessed Virgin Mary to read become popular in the fourteenth century. At this stage in history ladies did not suckle their babies or undertake themselves the physical care of their offspring. That was the work of a wet-nurse, from whom girls progressed to a governess – in a great household a gentle-woman – and boys to a master. The Warwicks, of course, had no sons, but at least two other boys, their ward Francis Lord Lovell and also the royal prince Richard, Duke of Gloucester, were brought up in their household; 36 female wards and other girls may also have been. Whatever their sex, all the children learnt at least to read and write in English, perhaps in Latin also, to say the Lord’s Prayer ( Paternoster ) and Hail Mary ( Ave ), and were taught about religious observance: there were religious services everyday, usually several times a day. They also learnt who they were: their family, its genealogy, its traditions, legends and renown. It was here, surely, that Anne Neville learnt about Guy of Warwick and her remarkable grandfather Earl Richard Beauchamp, about her Despenser, Montagu and Neville forebears. They must all have learnt to ride. Thereafter the routes for boys and girls separated. Boys were taught to a higher academic standard and also about the martial arts appropriateto future warriors. The upbringing of girls was designed to fit them for their role in life as gentlewomen, mothers, managers of households and members of polite society. They needed to attract good husbands and to make the most of their married lives. For the latter role, they needed to learn housewifery. Sewing and the working of textiles feature prominently in all the books of instruction. They learnt how to handle servants. Girls also needed to learn courtesy, proper deportment, the etiquette, procedures and good manners expected of polite society. The Neville girls must have been taught to eat as daintily as Chaucer’s Prioress.
    The content of education, as ever, was not everything. The Knight of the Tower wrote his book so that his daughters ‘ought to govern them self and to keep them from evil’. Academics and caring fathers alike sought to set girls on the right course, to inculcate proper values, and to cure them of the besetting female sins, of which a considerable list was compiled. Girls should avoid gossip, take care in what they said, not answer back, eschew idleness, extravagance and over-attention to their physical appearance, such as the painting of faces and plucking of eyebrows, and hence both vanity and pride. ‘Every good woman’ should ‘behave herself simply & honestly in her clothing and in the quantity of it’. Humility, obedience to men and silence were enjoined. That such advice had to be devised implies, of course, that many girls were not like this. If we cannot be sure that Anne