“Come, mistress, turn out!” said he. “We’ll find you other lodgings for a bit.”
“Master, I will do mine utmost,” said Alice Mount, lifting her aching head from the pillow; “but I am now ill at ease, and I pray you, give leave for my daughter to fetch me drink ere I go hence, or I fear I may scarce walk.”
We must remember that they had then no tea, coffee, or cocoa; and they had a funny idea that cold water was excessively unwholesome. The rich drank wine, and the poor thin, weak ale, most of which they brewed themselves from simple malt and hops—not at all like the strong, intoxicating stuff which people drink in public-houses now.
Mr Simnel rather growlingly assented to the request. Rose ran down, making her way to the dresser through the rough men of whom the kitchen was full, to get a jug and a candlestick. As she came out of the kitchen, with the jug in her right hand and the candle in her left, she met a man—I believe he called himself a gentleman—named Edmund Tyrrel, a relation of that Tyrrel who had been one of the murderers of poor Edward the Fifth and his brother. Rose dropped a courtesy, as she had been taught to do to her betters in social position.
Mr Tyrrel stopped her. “Look thou, maid! wilt thou advise thy father and mother to be good Catholic people?”
Catholic means general; and for any one Church to call itself the Catholic Church, is as much as to say that it is the only Christian Church, and that other people who do not belong to it are not Christians. It is, therefore, not only untrue, but most insulting to all the Christians who belong to other Churches. Saint Paul particularly warned the Church of Rome not to think herself better than other Churches, as you will see in the eleventh chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, verses 17 to 22. But she took no heed, and keeps calling herself the Catholic Church, as if nobody could be a Christian who did not belong to her. No Protestant Church has ever committed this sin, though some few persons in several denominations may have done so.
However, Rose was accustomed to the word, and she knew what Mr Tyrrel meant. So she answered, gently—
“Master, they have a better instructor than I, for the Holy Ghost doth teach them, I hope, which I trust shall not suffer them to err.” (See Note 1.)
Mr Tyrrel grew very angry. He remembered that Rose had been before the magistrates before on account of Protestant opinions, “Why art thou still in that mind, thou naughty hussy?” cried he. “Marry, it is time to look upon such heretics indeed.”
Naughty was a much stronger word then than it is now. It meant, utterly worthless and most wicked.