Three hundred and a few more years ago the Great North Road leading from London to Edinburgh ran through and by an English village in Nottinghamshire just as it had done three hundred years earlier than that and as it has these three hundred years. The streets of the village ran toward it and into it as brooks flow to a river, it being the main thoroughfare of travel and therefore source of all outside interests for the inhabitants of the village.
At the corner as one could say, of one of these little streets or roads where it joined the Great Road, one spring day of the sixteenth century, we might see a group of some of the villagers, young people principally, and it is plain some event of unusual interest has called them together; they are laughing and waving to a young man who rides away from them down the road, a friend who has been one of them from childhood and popular as evidenced by the number who have been wishing him a safe journey and all the usual farewells of any time and place. This young man with the pleasing face and manner is the son of the postmaster of the village and he goes to college; his erstwhile companions gaze after his retreating figure down the Great Road through the meadows and farm lands and there is one girl looks the longest—a girl named Mary.
Other times other manners in some things—yet even today in another country village we have seen the postmaster’s son leave home for college, not on horseback but in an automobile, and a gay crowd of his friends seeing him off, his presence to be missed in much the same degree as among those we are now viewing with the mind’s eye. Though time and circumstance be the result of the passing of three hundred years, human nature remains as unchanged as the sky and sea; the student of the present whom we mention may be cousin of a Cabinet official, that scarcely is remembered at the moment, neither is it thought of that the boy who rides on the Great Northern Road is a member of one of the most substantial county families, with powerful friends ecclesiastical and lay. As the turn of the road will soon take him from sight, he looks back at the group watching him for a final wave of his hat, then rides on towards his destination, Cambridge, thinking, perhaps, of the gentle Mary, whom we have noted, whose fine character and winning ways are already an influence with him and not thinking at all, or knowing, of another Mary who is to be perhaps an equal if not more potent influence in his life—a woman in as great a contrast in rank and circumstance as the difference may be between a queen and a village maid.
The gay group now lessens as some turn their steps towards their daily tasks, a few of the boys perchance to a long walk to the nearest school, few and far between in those days; others to help in the farm work, if parents could not spare them; the girls to look after the flocks on the Commons, or home work, such as cooking, wool spinning, caring for the children or the sick. In this time and locality no hospitals, orphanages or homes for the aged were there to relieve the sick or homeless; friendship and charity must indeed have reached a crest among these only moderately well to do people, education was backward from conditions easily found, yet a thread of knowledge of life in other countries as well as their own came almost daily to these quiet, rustic people, not by books or newspapers, (the first seen rarely, the last not existing), nor by letters which were not publicly delivered by the government until some time later, but by the constant travellers on foot or on horseback by the Great Road. The post house, both an inn, relay station and receptible for news, though not a post office as is today thought of by the words, was the finest house in this particular town and well known, from the north country to London. The position of postmaster was a coveted benefaction of the government, the salary being large and enabling the official to lease the manor house from a wealthy ecclesiastic. The office at this time had been retained in one family for several generations. Thus the men and women and children, of course, had plenty to talk about beside their local interests at gatherings at the inn or after church services on Sundays, for the old Church still was revered and followed, the changes that were coming to some of its then supporters not yet discernable.
As we have selected a spring day for our glimpse into this long ago life we may hear conversation among our young friends of the coming May Day fetes and procession of mummers and maskers, and plans being formed and opinions given as to who should act the usual characters in the masque of Robin Hood. It was a pity indeed that “Will” would not be with them this year; who might be Alan a Dale in his stead? But Will was graver since learning Latin and Greek, perhaps he would not care for their good times as much as he used to. A mistake surely—Will was just as sociable and genial as ever.
Thus Mary and an Alice and Elizabeth and another Mary and Katherine chatted away of coming pleasures and absent friends as blithe as any similar bevy of girls in a far futured century from theirs can do.
In front of one of the cottages another group has gathered; a peddler has come in and the older women have let the brew and baking wait a few moments to hear the news of the towns he has come from on his chain of travel, where other friends dwell, and to see his merchandise. The girls’ eyes gleam as they join the listeners and prospective buyers, departing Will and coming dances forgotten for the moment in this new interest of the day. Joy! Patty, across the river, has sent a message to Bess; not a written note, oh, no, for neither she could write nor Bess could read it, but a message well delivered by the friendly vender of trifles, so why give a thought to a lack of ability to read or write just then, when one has learned, nevertheless, the latest important event in the life of a dear friend in her very own words. The peddler was a reliable and patient transmitter of words or gifts; a telephone and parcel post in one, and always a welcome visitor. Today he might be telling of the pageant lately given in a city not far away in distance, but far in fact to them, to entertain the Queen on a visit she had made there in the interests of the enterprise and industry that “Good Queen Bess” endeavored to prosper in her land. Fashions were also described, as the old time peddlers were indeed specialists in much beside selling commodities and fancies. It is decided that Molly “shall have a new ribbon to tie in her nut brown hair.” A new clasp knife is needed by some one;—listen to the tale of the strange vegetables now being brought for the nobles and gentry from the place called the Queen’s kitchen garden in Holland. He had seen them and they were good to taste;—a measure of linen? yes; starch just imported and the use explained; a looking-glass, none too many on hand for comfort; a Bible printed in English by a Dutch printer—he has just sold one to the rector in a neighboring town—and so the peddler passes by.
An arrival at the inn, later in the day, of a high dignitary of the Church with his train of employees made bustle about the village while horses were changed. Towards evening, many of the people gathered about the manor house, old in their day, and while the sunset gleamed in the fish ponds on the estate and touched the church’s spire, they talked of that day’s and other day’s events, discussed the curtailment of the commons, as the landlords enclosed more and more, whereof one had said not that geese were stolen from the common but the common taken from under the geese; stories heard from travellers, or doubted what they could not believe. A noted personage had passed that way quite recently who had made more than ordinary impression, a gentleman of the court going on an important mission to Scotland, then quite as foreign seeming a country as Holland, where this gentleman had lived also. He had talked especially with Will, the postmaster’s son and seemed glad to hear about his studies, and was altogether friendly. But few travellers changed the course of the lives of any of the dwellers in this community as this same pleasant gentleman was to do for some. Could Mary have dreamed that she should see her Will one day riding away again, not to studies of Latin and Greek but in company with this same gallant gentleman, to the study and knowledge of a new world and language, as private secretary of Queen Elizabeth’s ambassador to Holland?
Neighborly visits, while the twilight lingers after babies are in their cradles, for recounting impressions and retelling news; thus the women of that little village close a day like many another of which their lives were made.
“Weaving through all the poor details
And homespun warp of circumstance
A golden woof-thread of romance.”