“Please your Worships,” said the gaoler, “here be all that are indicted. There is but one left, and she was presented only for not attending at mass nor confession.”
“Bring her up!”
And Elizabeth Foulkes stepped up to the table, and courtesied to the representatives of the Queen.
“What is thy name?”
“Elizabeth Foulkes.”
“How old art thou?”
“Twenty years.”
“Art thou a wife?”
Girls commonly married then younger than they do now. The usual length of human life was shorter: people who reached sixty were looked upon as we now regard those of eighty, and a man of seventy was considered much as one of ninety or more would be at the present time.
“Nay, I am a maid,” said Elizabeth.