Our Little Lady

Our Little Lady, by Emily Sarah
Holt

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Our Little Lady, by Emily Sarah Holt
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: Our Little Lady Six Hundred Years Ago
Author: Emily Sarah Holt
Illustrator: M. Irwin
Release Date: October 20, 2007 [EBook #23121]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OUR
LITTLE LADY ***

Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

Our Little Lady--Six Hundred Years Ago, by Emily Sarah Holt.
CHAPTER ONE.

SIX HUNDRED YEARS AGO--WHAT THINGS WERE LIKE.
The afternoon service was over in Lincoln Cathedral, and the
congregation were slowly filing out of the great west door. But that
afternoon service was six hundred years ago, and both the Cathedral
and the congregation would look very strange to us if we saw them
now. Those days were well called the Dark Ages, and how dark they
were we can scarcely realise in the present day. Let us fancy ourselves
coming out of that west door, and try to picture what we should have
seen there, six hundred years ago.
The Cathedral itself is hardly to be known. It is crowded with painted
images and embroidered banners, and filled with the smoke and scent
of burning incense. The clergy are habited, not in white surplices or in
black gowns, but in large stiff cloaks--copes they are called--of scarlet
silk, heavy with gold embroidery. The Bishop, who is in the pulpit,
wears a cope of white, thick with masses of gold, and on his head is a
white and gold mitre. How unlike that upper chamber, where the
disciples gathered together after the crucifixion of their Master! Is it
better or worse, do you ask? Well, I think if the Master were to come in,
it would be easier to see Him in the quiet upper chamber, where there
was nothing else to see, than in the perfumed and decorated Cathedral
where there was so much else!
But now let us look at the congregation as they pass out. Are they all
women? for all alike seem to wear long skirts and thick hoods: there are
neither trousers, nor hats, nor bonnets. No, there is a fair sprinkling of
men; but men and women dressed more alike then than they do now.
You will see, if you look, that some of these long skirts are open in
front, and you may catch a glimpse of a beard here and there under the
hood. This is a poor woman who comes now: she wears a serge dress
which has cost her about three-halfpence a yard, and a threadbare hood
for which she may have given sixpence.
Are things so cheap, then? No, just the other way about; money is so
dear. The wages of a mason or a bricklayer are about sixpence a week;
haymakers have the same; reapers get from a shilling to half-a-crown,
and mowers one and ninepence. The gentlemen who wait on the King

himself only receive a shilling a day.
Here comes one of them, in a long green robe of shining silky stuff,
which is called samite; round his neck is a curiously cut collar of dark
red cloth, and in his hand he carries a white hood. Men do not confine
themselves to the quiet, sober colours that we are accustomed to see;
they are smarter than the ladies themselves. This knight, as he passes
out, throws his gown back, before mounting his horse, and you see his
yellow hose striped with black--trousers and stockings all in a piece, as
it were--with low black shoes, and gilt spurs.
But who follows him?--this superbly dressed woman in rich blue
glistening samite, with a black and gold hood, under which we see her
hair bound with a golden fillet, and a necklace of costly pearls clasped
round her throat--for it is a warm day, and she has not tied her hood.
She must be somebody of consequence, for a smart gentleman leads her
by the hand, and one with a long staff walks in front, to keep the people
from pressing too close on her. She is indeed somebody of
consequence-- the Countess of Lincoln herself, by birth an Italian
Princess; and she is so grand, and so rich, and so beautiful and
stately--and I am sorry to add, so proud--that people call her the Queen
of Lincoln. She has not far to go home--only through the archway, and
past Saint Michael's Church and the Bull Gate, and then the great
portcullis of the grim old Castle