The ale-wife who brewed on St Mark’s Day

Under the old church St Mark’s Day was kept as a great fast in England. One old writer remembered that in 1589, when he was a boy, an ale-wife who made no distinction of days insisted on brewing on St Mark’s Day; while she worked the top of her chimney caught fire and her house burned down, which he called a gentle warning to those who profaned forbidden days. Another writer complained of the fast because other saints were fasted on their eves but St Mark on his day itself, and asked why one side of Cheapside, in the diocese of London, fasted while the other side, in the diocese of Canterbury, did not.