Stepney

Stepney is a house used by Thomas Cromwell’s family as a refuge during the sweating sickness: in the summer of 1528, he sends the girls away from London, first to Stepney and then farther from the city. Its brief appearances place the household’s private exposure to epidemic illness alongside the wider crisis at court.

Refuge during the epidemic

When the sickness returns in the summer of 1528, Cromwell sends the girls out of London. Stepney is their first destination before they are moved farther away. The novel does not describe the house itself or specify how long the girls remain there; its significance lies in this staged retreat from an infected city.

A household shaped by loss

The move takes place against the memory of the previous year’s epidemic, which had already brought death into Cromwell’s family. Later, the girls return to London at summer’s end, after the sickness has left the city. Grace has grown and her hair has been bleached by the sun. She is shy with Cromwell, who wonders whether she associates him with the night he carried her to bed after she learned that her mother had died. The narrative thus links the family’s movement away from danger with the continuing emotional consequences of bereavement.

Narrative significance

Stepney is one point in a geography of separation and return: the girls leave London for the house and then go farther away, before coming back when the epidemic has passed. The account gives no architectural portrait of Stepney and no separate events within it. Instead, the place marks Cromwell’s attempt to shelter his household while illness threatens both the city and the court, and makes visible the uncertainty that even precaution cannot dispel.