But the register corrects the historian just where we should expect to find him at fault. "The noble and worthy lady my mistress" would scarcely have told Froissart how much State policy there had been in the marriage, true love-match as it had been in spite of all. The old bishop, before whose face she had trembled, and laughed again behind his back with her sisters; his invidious comparisons between her first and second teeth; his business-like collection of backstairs gossip, which some more confidential maid-of-honour must surely have whispered to her mistress--of all this the noble lady naturally breathed no syllable to her devoted clerk. But, apart from the official record in the secret archives of Exeter diocese, a vague memory of it all was kept alive in men's minds by that most efficacious of historical preservatives--a broad jest. The rhyming chronicler Hardyng, whose life overlapped Froissart's and Chaucer's by several years, records a good deal of Court gossip, especially about Edward III.'s family. He writes[177]--
"He sent forth then to Hainault for a wife A bishop and other lordës temporal, Where, in chamber privy and secret At discovered, dishevelled also in all, As seeming was to estate virginal. Among themselves our lords, for his prudence Of the bishop asked counsel and sentence.
"Which daughter of the five should be the queen. Who counselled thus, with sad avisëment 'We will have her with good hippës, I mean, For she will bear good sons, to mine intent.' To which they all accorded by assent, And chose Philippa that was full feminine, As the bishop most wise did determine.
"But then among themselves they laughed fast ay; The lords then said [that] the bishop couth Full mickle skill of a woman alway, [was a good judge That so could choose a lady that was uncouth; [unknown And, for the merry words that came of his mouth, They trowed he had right great experience Of woman's rule and their convenience."
Later on again, after enumerating the titles and virtues of the sons that were born of this union, Hardyng continues--
"So high and large they were of all stature, The least of them was of [his] person able To have foughten with any creature Single battaile in actës merciable; The bishop's wit me thinketh commendable, So well could choose the princess that them bore, For by practice he knew it, or by lore."