Chapter Two.
Father Dan.
“Fasting is all very well for those
Who have to contend with invisible foes:
But I am quite sure that it does not agree
With a quiet, peaceable man like me.”
Longfellow.
Fortunately for Agnes Stone, she was too low down in the world for many things to affect her which sorely troubled the occupants of the upper strata. Sumptuary laws were of no consequence to a woman whose best gown was patched with pieces of different colours, and who had not a hood in her possession; taxes and subsidies, though they might press heavily on the rich, were no concern of hers, for she did not own a penny; while no want, however complete, of letters, books, and newspapers, distressed the mind of one who had never learned the alphabet.
Mistress Winter dwelt in Cowbridge Street, otherwise Cow Lane; now the site of crowded City thoroughfares, but then a quiet, pleasant, suburban lane, the calm of which was chiefly broken by the presence, on market-days, of numbers of the animal whence the street took its name, caused by the close proximity of Smithfield. Green fields lay at the back of the houses, through which, on its way to the Thames, ran the little Fleet River, anciently known as the River of the Wells; beyond it towered the Bishop of Ely’s Palace, with its extensive walled garden, famous for strawberries; to the left was the pleasant and healthy village of Clerkenwell, whither the Londoners were wont to stroll on summer evenings, to drink milk at the country inn, and gossip with each other round the holy well. On the right hand, between Cow Lane and the Thames, lay the open, airy suburbs of Fleet and Temple, and the royal Palace of Bridewell, with its grounds. In front, Hosier Lane and Cock Lane gave access to Smithfield, beyond which was the sumptuous but now dissolved Priory of Saint Bartholomew, the once royal domain of Little Britain, and the walls and gates of the great city, with the grand tower of Saint Paul’s Cathedral visible in the distance, over the low roofs of the surrounding houses.
The locality of Cow Lane was far from being a low neighbourhood, though its name was not particularly aristocratic in sound. In the old days before the dissolution, which Agnes could just remember, the Prior of Sempringham had his town house in Cow Lane; and the Earl of Bath lived on the further side of the Fleet River, with Furnival’s Inn beyond, the residence of the Barons Furnival, now merged in the Earldom of Shrewsbury. Mistress Winter lived in the last house at the north end of the lane, next to Cow Cross, and almost in the country. There is no need to name her neighbours, with two exceptions, since these only are concerned in the story. But in Cow Lane every body knew every body else’s business; and the mistress at the Fetterlock could not put on a new ribbon without the chambermaid at the Black Lion being aware of it. Do not rush to the conclusion, gentle modern reader, that Cow Lane was full of inns or public-houses. Streets were not numbered in those days; and in order to effect the necessary distinction between one house and another, every man hung out his sign, selecting a silent woman (Note 1), a blue cow, a griffin, or a rose, according as his fancy led him. Sign-painting must have been a profitable trade at that time, and a very necessary one, when scarcely one man in twenty knew his alphabet; and the cardinal figures were cabalistic signs to common eyes.
The two families previously alluded to lived at the southern end of Cow Lane, and their respective names were Flint and Marvell. Mistress Flint was a cheerful, good-tempered woman, with whom life went easily, and who had a large family of sons and daughters, the youngest but one, little Will, being a special favourite with Agnes. The Marvells were very quiet people, who kept their opinions and feelings to themselves; though their son Christie, a mischievous lad of some twelve years, was renowned in Cow Lane for the exact opposite.
The day was drawing towards evening, when Agnes, as she turned round from emptying a pail of dirty water into the common sewer of Cow Lane, detected the burly figure of Father Dan, the Cordelier Friar, who was Mistress Winter’s family confessor, coming up from Seacoal Lane. Not without some fears of his errand, she waited till he came near, and then humbly louted—the ancient English reverence, now conventionally supposed to be restricted to charity children.