Geoffrey de la Tour-Landry fought in the Hundred Years' War at least as early as 1346 and as late as 1383. He wrote in 1371, for the instruction of his daughters, a book which became the most popular educational treatise of the Middle Ages. This "Book of the Knight of the Tower" was translated into German, and at least twice into English; it had passed through seven editions in the three languages before 1550. After Caxton's edition of 1483 there was none in English until it was reprinted in 1868 by T. Wright for the Early English Text Society, from a MS. of Henry VI's reign. It is from this edition that the following extract is taken.

A ROMANCE OF RUTH (p. 119.)

Another example I shall tell you of a good lady named Ruth, of whom descended the king David. Holy Scripture praiseth much the same lady, for she loved God truly and she honoured Him. And she honoured and obeyed unto her husband as a good woman at all times, and for the love of her husband she honoured and loved all his friends, and bare them more favour and privity than unto her own friends; whereupon it befel that after, when her husband was dead, his sons that were of another wife, they would have left her nothing, nor lands, heritage, nor meuble (1); and she was of a strange country, and far from her friends. And the woman fell into a great heaviness by the occasion hereof, but the friends of her husband, that loved her for the great goodness and cherishing that they had found in her the time before in her husband's life, they withstood against the sons of her husband. And they were with her in her helping, insomuch that she had all that she ought to have by right and of custom. And in this wise the good woman saved and won her own, for the friendship and good company that she had y-done unto the kin of her husband, and unto his friends, while he was living. And therefore here is a good example how every good woman oweth to worship and to love kin and friends of her husband, for aye the more semblance of love that she showeth unto them, the more wealth she shall have among them.

(1) Furniture.

(Coulton II, p.114-115)