“Methinks it were scantly so merry for you, Mistress Doll,” answered Agnes rather keenly. The stranger must not intermeddle with her joy. She held her new treasure with a tight, jealous grasp. Not yet had she learned that the living water flows the fuller for every streamlet that it fills; that the true riches are heaped the higher, the more lavish is the hand that transmits them.
“Hold thy silly tongue!” cried Mistress Winter, turning sharply round upon her daughter. “It were jolly work to fall of idle tale-telling, when all the work in the house gapeth for to be done!—Thou weary, dreary jade! what art thou after now? (Agnes was hastily mending a rent in the curtain.) To fall to dainty stitchery, like a gentlewoman born, when every one of the trenchers lacketh scraping, and not the touch of a mop have the walls felt this morrow! Who dost look to, to slave for thee, prithee, my delicate-fingered damsel? Thou shouldst like well, I reckon, to have a serving-maid o’ thy heels, for to ’tend to all matter that was not sweet enough for thy high degree! I go not about to sweep up the dirt off thy shoes, and so I tell thee plainly!”
Certainly there was not often any want of perspicuity in Mistress Winter’s admonitions, though there might occasionally be a little lack of elegance and gentleness. But plainly told or not, Agnes remained silent, scraped the wooden trenchers, a process which answered to the washing of earthenware, and duly mopped the walls, and to the best of her power fulfilled the hard pleasure of her superior.
And here let us leave her for a moment, while we take a glance at the outer world, to discover where we are in the stream of time, and what sort of an England it is into which we have entered.
The day, the festival of Corpus Christi, is the first of June, 1553. King Edward the Sixth is on the throne—a white-faced, grave, reserved boy of fifteen years, whose life is to close about five weeks thereafter. But beside the throne, and on it in all but name—his hand firmly grasping the reins of power, his voice the living law of the State—stands John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland; a man whose steel-blue eyes are as cold as his heart, and whose one aim in every action of his life is the welfare and aggrandisement of John Dudley. He professes himself a Lutheran: at heart, if he care at all for religion of any kind, he is a Papist. But it will not be of service to John Dudley at the present moment to confess that little fact to the world. Grouped around these two are men of all types—Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, true Nature’s gentleman, leal-hearted Gospeller, delicate in mind, clear in intellect, only not able, having done all, to stand; Ridley, Bishop of London, whose firm, intelligent, clear-cut features are an index to his character—perhaps a shade too severe, yet as severe to himself as any other; Hugh Latimer, blunt, warm-hearted old man, who calls a spade a spade in the most uncompromising manner, and spares not vice, though it flaunt its satin robes in royal halls; William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, the mean-spirited time-server who would cry long life to a dozen rival monarchs in as many minutes, so long as he thought it would advance his own interests; Henry Grey, Duke of Suffolk, who spends his life in a fog of uncertainty, wherein the most misty object is his own mind; William Paulet, Marquis of Winchester, who always remembers his motto, “I bend, but break not;” Richard Lord Rich, the sensual-faced, comfortable-looking, stony-hearted man who pulled off his gown the better to rack Anne Askew, of old time; and, behind them all, one of whom they all think but little—a young man of short stature, with good forehead, and small, wizened features—Mr Secretary Cecil, some day to be known as the great Earl of Burleigh, who holds in his clever hands, as he sits in the background with his silent face, the strings that move most of these puppets, and pulls them without the puppets knowing it, until, on the accession of Mary, the Tower gates will be opened, and Stephen Gardiner will walk forth, to take the reins into his hands, and to steep England in blood.
Of public events, there have been few since the general confiscation of church plate in the preceding month.
The Londoners, of whom our friends at Mistress Winter’s form a part, are divided in opinion concerning this step; but neither party has been too much distressed to observe the usual dance round the Strand maypole, on the site of which Saint Mary-le-Strand will presently be built. At present, and for those five weeks yet to come, the march of events is dull and sleepy. It will be sufficiently lively and startling to please the most sensational, before many days of July have run out.
The Bible is now open in every parish church, chained to a desk, so that any one who pleases may read. The entire service is conducted in English. The roods and images have been pulled down; candles, ashes, and palms are laid aside; “the wolves are kept close” in Tower and Fleet and Marshalsea; masses, public and private, are contraband articles; the marriage of priests is freely allowed; the altar has been replaced by the table. It is still illegal to eat flesh in Lent; but this is rather with a view to encourage the fish trade than with any religious object.
To turn to minor matters, such as costume and customs, we find Government does not disdain to occupy itself in the regulation of the former, by making stringent sumptuary laws, and effectually securing their observance by heavy fines. The gentlemen dress in the Blue-Coat style, occasionally varying it by a short tunic-like coat instead of the long gown, and surmounting it by a low flat cap, which the nobles ornament by an ostrich feather. The ladies array themselves in long dresses, full of plaits, and often stiff as crinoline—plain for the commonalty, but heavily laden with embroidery, and deeply edged with fur, in the case of the aristocracy. Both sexes, if aspiring to fashion, puff and slash their attire in all directions. The ruff, shortly to become so fashionable, is only just creeping into notice, and as yet contents itself with very modest dimensions.
Needles are precious articles, of which she is a rich woman who possesses more than two or three. Glass bottles are unknown, and their place is supplied by those of leather, wood, or stone. Wooden bowls and trenchers for the poor, gold and silver plate for the rich, make up for the want of china. The fuel is chiefly wood, coal being considered unhealthy. Every now and then Government takes alarm at the prodigious size to which the metropolis is growing, and an Act is passed to restrain further building within a given distance from the City walls. Country gentlemen receive peremptory orders to reside on their estates, and not to visit London except by licence; for the authorities are afraid lest the influx of visitors should cause famine and pestilence. There is no drainage; for every householder pours his slops into the street, with a warning shout, that the passengers below may run out of the way. There are few watches, and fewer carriages; no cabs, no police, no post-office; no potatoes, tea, coffee, newspapers, brown paper, copper coinage, streetlamps, shawls, muslin or cotton goods. But there is at times the dreaded plague, which decimates wherever it comes; the terrible frequency of capital punishment for comparatively trivial offences; the pleasant probability of meeting with a few highwaymen in every country journey; the paucity of roads, and the extreme roughness of such as do exist; a lamentable lack of education, even in the higher classes, hardly atoned for by the exceptional learning of one here and there; and (though the list might be greatly enlarged) last, not least, the constant presence of vermin of the most objectionable sort, from which neither palace nor cottage is exempt. This, then, was the England of 1553.