; 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.

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