From the Top Shelf - At Home II

This selection from At Home by Bill Bryson is taken from the chapter on the evolution of the bedroom, which examines the sleeping arrangements of people over the centuries. The author refers to a passage written by John Aubrey, a seventeenth-century historian, about the marriage of Thomas More's daughter Margaret to a man named William Roper. For those of us interested in canes and their application, it leads to some interesting speculation.

...Roper calls one morning and tells More that he wishes to marry one of More's daughters--either one will do--upon which More takes Roper to his bedroom, where the daughters are asleep in a truckle bed wheeled out from beneath the parental bed. Leaning over, More deftly takes "the sheet by the corner and suddenly whippes it off," Aubrey relates in words that all but glisten lustily, revealing the girls to be fundamentally naked. Groggily protesting at the disturbance, they roll onto their stomachs, and after a moment's admiring reflection Sir William announces that he has seen both sides now and with his stick lightly taps the bottom of sixteen-year-old Margaret.

Was the suitor testing the resilience of his intended's backside? A sign of things to come, perhaps? Rather a novel way to ask for a woman's hand in marriage.