The King's Daughters

"Art thou come, dear heart?" said Alice Mount, as her daughter ran hurriedly into her bedchamber. "That is well. Rose, the Master is come, and calleth for us, and He must find u...

Cissy Johnson was not old enough to understand all the reasons why her father distrusted the priest; but she knew well that "Father didn't like him," and like the dutiful little...

Loud and full rang the volume of voices in the kitchen of the King's Head at Colchester, that winter evening. They did not stand up in silence and let a choir do it for them, wh...

Mr Ewring had stayed at the gate, guessing that Dorothy would not be long in fulfilling her errand. He cast the reins on the neck of his old bay horse, and allowed it to crop th...

"Yes, but you are not she that spake to us on the road," said Cissy. "Somebody told us to call here as we went down the lane, and her daughter should go home with us, and help u...

The whole population of Much Bentley seemed to have turned out to witness the arrest at the Blue Bell. Some were kindly and sympathising, some bitter and full of taunts; but the...

"Give you good den, Master Clere!" said a rosy-faced countrywoman with a basket on her arm, as she came into one of the largest clothier's shops in Colchester. It was an odd way...

"What! Agnes Bongeor taken to the Moot Hall? Humph! they'll be a-coming for me next. I must get on with my work. Let's do as much as we can for the Lord, ere we're called to suf...

"Must you be gone, Bessy?" said Dorothy Denny, sitting down on the side of her bed with a weary air. "Eh, I'm proper tired! Thought this day 'd never come to an end, I did. Coul...

Nicholas Clere was a man of one idea at once; and people of that sort do a great deal of good when they get hold of the right idea, and a great deal of harm when a wrong idea ge...

"I vow, Bess, this is fun!" said she, "I've twenty minds to get out on the roof, and see if I can reach the next window. It would be right jolly to wake up Ellen Mallory--she's...

Arrived at the spot where they were to suffer, the prisoners knelt down to pray: "but not in such sort as they would, for the cruel tyrants would not suffer them." Foremost of t...

"Now then, who goes home?" cried the cheerful voice of Mrs Wade, when the sermon was over. "You, Mistress Benold?--you, Alice Mount?--you, Meg Thurston? You'd best hap your mant...

Elizabeth Foulkes was almost in despair. Her master held her arm tight, and he was a strong man--to break away from him was simply impossible-- and to persuade him to release he...

"That's true enough of me, but it's right false of thee. Thou's nought but peace all day long, for thou never puts thyself out. I dare be bounden, if the Queen's Grace and all h...

Mr Ewring had already tapped several times with his stick on the brick floor of the King's Head kitchen, and had not heard a sound in answer. The clock ticked to and fro, and th...

While Elizabeth Foulkes was passing through these experiences, the Mounts, Rose Allen, and the children, had gone back to Much Bentley as soon as morning broke. Rose took the li...

Alice Mount looked back, and saw the small pair still toiling slowly on, the big jar between them. It would not have been a large jar for her to carry, but it was large and heav...

The Commissioners who tried these prisoners were thoroughly worldly men, who really cared nothing about the doctrines which they burned people for not believing. Had it been oth...

Once more the days wore on, and no fresh arrests were made; but no help came to the prisoners in the Castle and the Moot Hall, nor to Elizabeth Foulkes in the keeping of Mr Ashb...

The clothier's shop which we entered in the last chapter was in Balcon or Balkerne Lane, not far from its northern end. The house was built, as most houses then were, with the u...

Mrs Cosin, the landlady of the White Hart, prepared a very good supper for the Commissioners. These gentlemen did not fare badly. First, they had a dish of the oysters for which...

From having been very small of her age, Cissy was suddenly shooting up into a tall, slim, lily-like girl, nearly as white as a lily, and as delicate-looking. "How are you gettin...

"Wherefore! Sotting your head in the lion's mouth! I should have thought you'd keep as far from Moot Hall as you could compass. Yourself not unsuspected, and had one burned alre...

"Ay, I dare say Father thought of us and what we should like," said Cissy. "He nodded to Mistress Wade, and smiled on me, as he went forth; so of course I had to 'bide. But then...

"Well, be sure! who ever saw such a lad? Sent out to play at four o' the clock, and all o'er mud at five! Where hast thou been, Will? Speak the truth, now!"

Two girls were standing in an upper room of Nicholas Clere's house, and the younger asked this question of the elder. The elder girl was tall, of stately carriage and graceful m...

It was the evening of the first of August. The prisoners in the Castle, now reduced to four--the Mounts, Rose, and Johnson--had held their Bible-reading and their little evening...

"Dost thou believe that in the blessed Sacrament of the altar the bread and wine becometh the very body and blood of Christ, so soon as the word of consecration be pronounced?"

Elizabeth Foulkes was the last prisoner tried in the Moot Hall. The Commissioners then adjourned to the Castle. Here there were six prisoners, as before. The first arraigned was...

"_Him's_ the priest, be sure! Met me up at top o' the lane, he did, and he must needs turn him round and walk by me. I well-nigh cracked my skull trying to think of some excuse...

"You'll not find no better, search all Colchester through!" said Mrs Clere, to a fat woman who did not look particularly amiable, holding up some worsted florence, drab with a r...

As Mr Ewring stood looking out, he saw somebody coming up from the gate towards the mill--a girl, who walked slowly, as if she felt very hot or very tired. The day was warm, but...

The great hall of the Moot Hall in Colchester was filling rapidly. Every townsman, and every townswoman, wanted to hear the examination, and to know the fate of the prisoners--o...

For half-an-hour, safely hidden behind a hedge, Robert Purcas watched the door of Johnson's cottage, until at last he saw the priest come out, and go up the lane for a short dis...

Mrs Silverside turned to Robert Purcas. "Is not here a lesson for thee and me, my brother? Our Father is come too: God is with us, and thus it is all right."

"Now get to your sewing. Cicely, I must be obeyed; and you are a right perverse child as one might look for with the training you have had. Let me hear no more about headache: i...

Mr Ewring only returned Wastborowe's uncivil farewell by a nod, as he walked up High Street towards East Gate. At the corner of Tenant's Lane he turned to the left, and went up...

"Prithee reckon not, Cicely," said the nun, "that thou art likely to come out. There is no such likelihood at all whilst our good Queen reigneth; and if it please God, she shall...

The long hours of that day wore on, and nobody came again to Elizabeth in the porch-chamber. The dusk fell, and she heard the sounds of locking up the house and going to bed, an...

A placard with us means a large handbill for pasting on walls: in Queen Mary's time they meant by it a double stomacher,--namely an ornamentation for the front of a dress, put o...

"Oh, but I've burnt my fingers before now," said Cissy, with an air of extensive experience which would have suited an old woman. "It's not proper pleasant: but the worst's afte...