"Any news, quotha?" she answered. "But a yard or twain. Hast heard
that my Lord Protector is not in very good case?"
"Nay!" cried Isoult. "My Lord Protector! what mean you, Mrs Philippa?"
"This, Mrs Avery," answered she. "My Lord Protector, being no Lutheran,
but a Gospeller, is not over well liked of some that be Lutherans, and
no Gospellers: and as for us poor Catholics, we never (you know) held
him for a saint. So this being the case (this in thine ear,
Isoult--'tis under _benedicite_ [under the seal of confession]),
certain, if not all of the King's Council, be resolved to be rid of my
high and mighty Lord. And ere thou be ten days older, I count thou
shalt hear somewhat thereof. I have so much from a good hand, that can
be trusted; the name I utter not."
"Then," said Isoult, "be the Catholics and Lutherans conspiring together
for this?"
"Truth," answered she; "they that be least Christians of both."
"You say well, Mrs Philippa," replied Isoult.
"Do I so, Mrs Avery?" she answered.
"I cry you mercy!" said Isoult; "Philippa, then, if you will have it
so."
"Ay, I will have it so," said she, laughing.
"But," answered Isoult, "what saith the King's Highness thereto?"
"The King!" exclaimed she. "The King marketh but his twelfth birthday
this month, dear heart. What can he know? or an' he spake, who would
heed him?"
"But," said Isoult, "we hear for ever of his Highness' sageness and
wisdom, such as 'tis said never had Prince afore him."
"Did we not so of his father?" asked she, with a short laugh. "There be
alway that will sing loud hymns to the rising or risen sun. Sageness
and wisdom, forsooth! of a lad of twelve years! He may be as sage as he
will, but he will not match Dr Stephen Gardiner yet awhile."
A shudder ran through Isoult Avery at the name of the deviser of the
Bloody Statute. But the danger of the Protector was too serious a
question to every Gospeller not to be recurred to and prayed against.
"It doth seem to me, Jack," said Isoult that evening, when the story had
been told, "as though the cause of the Gospel should stand or fall with
my Lord Protector. What thinkest thou?"
"Sweet wife," he answered, "if my Lord Protector were the only prop of
the Gospel, it had fallen long ago. The prop of the Gospel is not my
Lord or thy Lord, but the Lord of the whole earth. His strength is
enough to bear it up."
"I know that, Jack," she said. "Yet God worketh by means; and my Lord
Protector gone, who else is there?"
"Nay, child!" answered Dr Thorpe. "Is God so lately become unable of
these stones to raise up children unto Abraham? Shall He, by whose word
a nation shall be born in a day, be too weak to strengthen the King, in
despite of his tender years, or to raise up another man that shall
follow in the wake of my Lord Protector?"
"I know God can do miracles," said Isoult, somewhat despondingly.
"`For all but me'--is that thy thought, sweeting?" asked Avery, smiling.
"But where is there a man?" cried Isoult.
"How know I?" said Dr Thorpe. "Some whither in the Indies, it may be.
But the Lord shall surely fetch him thence when the time cometh.
Prithee, Jack, bid thy friend the Hot Gospeller to dinner, and leave us
see if he (that I gather from thy talk to be mighty busy in public
matters) can find us a man for the time."
Avery smiled, and said he would ask Mr Underhill to dinner. But Isoult
shook her head, averring that neither Dr Thorpe nor even the Hot
Gospeller could find a man for the time.
For some days, at her husband's desire, Isoult had been on the look-out
for a bower-woman to replace Jennifer. She inquired from Mrs Brent and
other neighbours, but could nowhere hear of a satisfactory person. On
the Sunday evening following Philippa's visit, as they were coming home
from Saint Botolph's, the church which stood at the top of the Minories,
Isoult heard her name softly called from the crowd of dispersing
worshippers. She looked up into a pair of black, pensive eyes, which
she knew to belong to an old friend--a converted Jewess, who had been
one of her bridesmaids, but whom she had never met since that time. The
friends halted and clasped hands.
"I knew not you were in this vicinage," said Esther in her grave manner,
"but methought that face could belong to none other."
"We dwell at this present in the Minories," said Isoult, "and are but
now come hither, by reason of certain riots in the western parts. And
where dwell you?"
"I am now abiding," she replied, "with a friend, one Mistress Little,
until I may find conveniency to meet with a service: for I have left the
one, and am not yet fallen in with the other."
"And I am but now looking for a bower-woman," said Isoult.
"Have you covenanted with any?" asked she quickly.
"Nay," was the answer, "I have not yet fallen in with any with whom to
covenant."
"Mrs Avery, will you take me?" she said, earnestly.
"Nay," answered Isoult, "but will you come to me? I had thought you
should look for a much better service than mine."
"I could not have a better, methinks," she responded, with a rather
sorrowful smile. "I would right fain come to you, if that might be."
"Then it may be, dear heart!" said Isoult, much moved by her urgency.
"I would fainer have you than any which I do know, unless it were Annis
Holland, that I have known from the cradle. But should it like you to
follow me into Devon? for we do look to return thither when the troubles
are past."
"I will follow you any whither," answered she. "I care nothing where I
am, only this,--that I would liefer be out of London than in it."
So Esther came, and took up her quarters at the sign of the Lamb. Every
house in London had then its sign, which served the purpose of a number.
Meanwhile the clouds gathered more darkly over the only man in power
(excepting the boy-King himself), who really cared more for the welfare
of England than for his own personal aggrandisement. And it was not
England which forsook and destroyed Somerset. It was the so-called
Lutheran faction, to the majority of whom Lutheranism was only the cloak
which hid their selfish political intrigues. There had been a time when
Somerset was one of them, and had sought his own advancement as they now
did theirs. And the deserted regiment never pardons the deserter. The
faction complained that Somerset was proud and self-willed: he worked
alone; he acted on his own responsibility; he did not consult his
friends. This of course meant in the case of each member of the faction
(as such complaints usually do), "He did not consult _me_." Somerset
might truthfully have pleaded in reply that he had not a friend to
consult. The Court held no friend to him; and, worst of all, his own
home held none. He had, unquestionably, a number of acquaintances, of
that class which has been well and wittily defined as consisting of
"intimate enemies;" and he had a wife, who loved dearly the high title
he had given her, and the splendid fortune with which she kept it up.
But neither she nor any one else loved _him_--except One, who was
sitting above the Water-floods, watching His tried child's life, and
ready, when his extremity should have come, to whisper to that weary and
sorrowful heart, "Come and rest with Me."
But that time was not yet. The battle must be fought before the rest
could come.
On Friday, the 5th of October, a private gathering of nineteen of the
Council was held at Lord Warwick's house in Holborn--that Lord Warwick
of whom I have already spoken as John Dudley, the half-brother of Lady
Frances Monke. No man on earth hated Somerset more heartily than
Warwick, and perhaps only one other man hated him quite as much. While
they were yet debating how to ruin Somerset, a letter came in the King's
name from Secretary Petre, inquiring for what cause they thus gathered
together: if they wished to speak with the Protector they must come
peaceably. This letter sealed the fate of the conference--and of
Somerset. The victim, it was evident, was awake and watching. Ruin
might have served the original purpose: now only one end would serve
it--death. But Warwick was one of the few who know how to wait.
In this emergency--for he manifestly feared for his life--Somerset
appealed to the only friends he had, the people of England. And England
responded to the appeal. Hour after hour thickened the crowd which
watched round Hampton Court, where the King and Protector were; and in
the middle of Sunday night, when he thought it safe, Somerset hastened
to take refuge with his royal nephew in the strong-hold of Windsor [Note
4], the crowd acting as guards and journeying with them.
It was a false move. The populace were with Somerset, but the army was
with Warwick. The crowd melted away; the Lords held London; and on
every gate of the city a list of the charges against the Protector was
posted up. The bird, struggling vainly in the toils of the serpent, was
only exhausting its own life.
These were the charges (in substance), which Isoult Avery found Dr
Thorpe carefully reading when she came home from the market on Monday
morning. The old man was making comments as he proceeded, not very
complimentary to my Lord of Warwick and his colleagues.
"One. That he hath made inward divisions.
"Two. That he hath lost his Majesty's pieces beyond the sea.
"Three. That he did enrich himself in the war, and left the King's poor
soldiers unpaid of their wages.
"Four. That he hath laboured to make himself strong in all countries.
"Five. That he hath subverted all law, justice, and good order, whereby
he hath fearfully shaken the chair of the King's seat.
"Six. That he hath little esteemed the grave advice of the King's good
and faithful councillors.
"Seven. That he hath little regarded the order appointed by King Henry,
for the government of his son.
"Eight. That he hath laboured to sow dissension in the kingdom among
the nobles, gentlemen, and commoners.
"Nine. That the King and kingdom hath suffered great loss by his wilful
negligence."
"`Shaken the chair of the King's seat!'" cried he. "If the men be not
rebels that writ this paper, I have little wit to know what a rebel is.
How dare they speak or think of shaking the King's seat, which is in the
hands of God, and is accountable unto none save Him?--`Little esteemed
the advice of the King's faithful councillors'--to wit, the runagates
that writ this paper. `Laboured to sow dissension betwixt the gentry
and the commoners!' 'Tis the enclosures they point at, I reckon. What!
was he the only man that allowed them? and who could have thought the
commons had been such dolts? Now let us see the names of these wise,
good, and faithful councillors. `R. Rich, W. Saint John, W.
Northampton, J. Warwick,'" [Note 5] and he paused a minute. "Isoult,"
said he again, "methinks that Earl of Warwick is a knave."
"I never thought him otherwise, Dr Thorpe," said Isoult quietly.
Sir Anthony Wingfield was sent by the Lords of the Council to Windsor on
the following Friday. He parted the Lord Protector from the King, and
set a strong guard to watch him until the coming of the Lords. On the
Saturday the Lord Chancellor and the Council rode to Windsor, and that
night the Protector was set in ward in the Beauchamp Tower of Windsor
Castle. And on the Monday afternoon was the Duke of Somerset (no longer
Lord Protector) brought to the Tower of London, riding between the Earls
of Southampton and Huntingdon, accompanied by many gentlemen, and three
hundred horse. At his own desire, he came into London by way of Saint
Giles in the Fields; and opposite Soper Lane were knights sitting on
horseback, and all the officers with halberds. And so they led him from
Holborn Bridge to Cheapside; where, with a loud voice, he cried to the
bystanders, "Good people, I am as true a man to the King as any here."
In all the streets were Aldermen or their deputies, on horseback; and
the householders, each man at his door, all standing with bills in their
hands, as he passed. And so he was conducted to the Tower, where he
remained.
"As true a man to the King!" Poor little Edward, bewildered and
deceived! He did not know there was none other half so true.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note 1. The enclosure riots had a more religious aspect in the West
than in the East or the Midland Counties.
Note 2. William Lord Grey de Wilton was an eminent General, and a
staunch Gospeller. He had been a member of the Council at Calais during
the persecution, and his close friendship with Lord and Lady Lisle is
shown by the fact that of his three children, two bore their names.
Lord Grey died at Cheston, near Waltham, December 25, 1562.
Note 3. The Minories was then to all intents in the country. A single
street, Whitechapel Bars, lay between it and the Spital Field on the
north; in front (west) was the city wall, with its gardens; on the east
lay Goodman's Fields, and an open space to the south, bounded by the
Tower enclosure and the Thames. It must have been a very pleasant
suburb.
Note 4. Most historians say that the removal was against Edward's will.
The account given by himself shows no trace of any such feeling.
Note 5. At this era, peers did not use their titles only in signature,
but added at least the initial of the Christian name.