Mistress Margery — Story, Setting & Ideas

Margery looked timidly at her mother. "I would like well to go," said she, "an' it might stand with your good pleasure."

"Ay, lass, go," replied Dame Lovell, good-naturedly. "It is seldom we have a homily in Bostock Church. Parson Leggatt is not much given to preaching, meseemeth."

"I will go with you, Master Pynson," said Margery, resuming the concoction of the dainty dish before her, "with a very good will, for I should like greatly to hear the Reverend Father. I never yet heard preach a scholar of Oxenforde."

Dame Lovell moved away to take the pottage off the fire, and Pynson, approaching Margery, whispered to her, "They say that this Master Sastre preacheth strange things, like as did Master John Wycliffe a while agone; howbeit, since Holy Church interfereth not, I trow we may well go to hear him."

Margery's colour rose, and she said in a low voice, "It will do us no harm, trow?"

"I trust not so," answered Richard; and, taking up his hunting-bag, he quitted the room.

"Why, Cicely!" exclaimed Dame Lovell, turning round from the pottage, "had I wist thou hadst put no saffron herein, thou shouldst have had mine hand about thine ears, lass! Bring the saffron presently! No saffron, quotha!"

Before we accompany Margery and Richard to hear the homily of Master Sastre, it might perhaps be as well to prevent any misunderstanding on the part of the reader with respect to Richard Pynson. He is the page of Sir Geoffrey Lovell, and the son of Sir John Pynson of Pynsonlee; for in the year 1395, wherein our story opens, it is the custom for young gentlemen, even the sons of peers, to be educated as page or squire to some neighbouring knight of wealth and respectability. Richard Pynson, therefore, though he may seem to occupy a subordinate position, is in every respect the equal of Margery.

The morning on which Master Sastre was to deliver his homily was one of those delicious spring days which seem the immediate harbingers of summer. Margery, in her black dress, and with a warm hood over her cote-hardie, was assisted by her father to mount her pillion, Richard Pynson being already seated before her on the grey palfrey; for in the days of pillions, if the gentleman assisted the lady on her pillion _before_ he mounted himself, he ran imminent risk of knocking her off when he should attempt to mount. They rode leisurely to church, the distance being about two miles, and a little foot-page ran beside them charged with the care of the palfrey, while they attended the service. Mass was performed by the parish priest, but the scholar from Oxford, who sat in the sedilia, where Margery could scarcely see him, took no part in the service beyond reading the Gospel.

The sermons of that day, as a rule, may be spoken of in two classes. Either the preacher would read a passage of Scripture in Latin, and throw in here and there a few remarks by way of commentary, or else the sermon was a long and dry disquisition upon some of the (frequently very absurd) dogmas of the schoolmen; such as, whether angels were synonymous with spirits, which of the seven principal angels was the chief, how long it took Gabriel to fly from heaven to earth at the Annunciation, at what time of day he appeared, how he was dressed, etcetera, Sastre's discourse could not be comprised in either of these classes. He read his text first, as usual, in Latin, but then he said:

"And now, brethren and sistren, to declare in the vulgar tongue unto you that have not the tongues, this passage of God's Word as sueth." [Sueth means follows].

"_The Lombe that was slayn is worthi to take vertue and Godhed and wisdom and strengthe and onour and glorie and blessyng_!"

Note: it will readily be seen that all the quotations from Scripture in this story are necessarily taken from Wycliffe's translation.