As an illustration of the times I give the story of William Blakeney. He was a shuttle-maker by trade, but a pilgrim by profession. He dressed for the part with long hair, long gown, and bare feet. He loitered about in places where men resorted--taverns and such--and there entertained all comers with travellers' tales. He had been everywhere, this pious and adventurous pilgrim. He had seen Seville, city of sacred relics; Rome, the abode of his Holiness the Pope; he had even seen the Pope himself. He had been to the Holy Land, and stood within the very sepulchre of our Lord. And what with the strange creatures he had met with in those far-off lands, and the men and women among whom he had sojourned, and the things he could tell you, and the things which he postponed till the next time, the story would fill volumes. For six years he lived in great comfort, eating and drinking of the best, always at the expense of his hearers. This man must have been an unequalled story-teller. Six years of invention ever fresh and new! Then he was found out--he had never been a pilgrimage in his life. He had never been out of sight of the London walls. So he stood in pillory--this poor novelist, who would in these days have commanded so much respect and such solid rewards--he stood in pillory, with a whetstone round his neck, as if he had been a common liar! And then he had to go back to the dull monotony of shuttle-making, and that in silence, with nobody to believe him any more. Well, he shortly afterwards died, I am convinced, of suppressed fiction. But perhaps his old friends rallied round him, and by the light of the fire he still beguiled the long evenings by telling for the hundredth time of the one-eyed men, and the men with tails, and the men who have but one leg, and use their one foot for an umbrella against the scorching sun--all of whom he had seen in the deserts on the way from Jerusalem to Damascus, where St. Paul was converted. [Illustration: BLACKWELL HALL, KING STREET] On a day in the beginning of October, 1382, there was great excitement in the parish of St. Mildred, Poultry. A certain mazer, or silver cup, the property of Dame Matilda de Eye, had been stolen. Now, whether Alan, the water-carrier, had his suspicions, or whether he was himself suspected, or whether he wished to fix the guilt on somebody else, I know not, but he repaired to the house of Robert Berewold, of great repute for art magic, and inquired of him as to the real thief. Whereupon Robert took a loaf, and in the top of it fixed a round peg of wood, and four knives at the four sides, so as to present the figure of a cross. He then did "soothsaying and art magic" over the loaf. After which he declared that Johanne Wolsy was the person who had stolen the cup.