"We pass: the path that each man trod
Is dim, or shall be dim, with weeds.
What fame is left for human deeds
In endless age? It rests with God."
Tennyson.
No ill befel Lord Grey de Wilton. There was but little laid to his
charge,--only a journey to the North, preceding the Duke of Somerset, to
discover who were his friends. Perhaps the Council was ashamed to shed
the blood of the man who had but lately put down the rising in Cornwall,
and joined in raising the siege of Exeter. Whatever the cause were, he
was quietly acquitted on the 19th of December, and suffered to go home.
In came Dr Thorpe, shortly before Christmas, carrying in his hand a new
shilling.
"See thee!" said he, "Isoult, look well hereon. Seest it?"
"Well, what of it, Doctor?" said she. "I have seen many afore."
"Dost mark it?" inquired he.
"Ay," she answered, marvelling what he meant.
"Well," pursued he, "thou art not to speak evil of it."
"I am not like," said she, innocently, "for these new shillings be
lesser and neater than the broad shilling, and they like me the rather."
"Well," responded he, "take thou heed. `Forewarned is forearmed.'"
"But what mean you. Dr Thorpe?" asked the puzzled Isoult.
"Nay, nay, now!" answered the old man. "This dolt, my Lord of
Northumberland--they must have missed rocking of him in his cradle!--
this patch, look thou, hath taken offence at the canting name men have
given to these new shillings."
"Why," said she, "what name gave they them?"
"Forsooth," replied he, "`ragged staffs;' and thou wist what that
meaneth."
"What, a quip on my Lord of Northumberland's arms?" answered Isoult.
"Yea, justly," said he; "and this sweet companion loveth not to have his
arms spoke about. So here is a proclamation--come out of the Court of
Fools, as I live!--that no man henceforward shall speak evil of the new
coin upon penalty. Didst ever hear such a piece of folly?"
"Ay," interposed John, who sat reading in the chimney-corner, "and heard
you how Master Latimer hath offended? Some time agone, preaching before
the King, he chanced to repeat the device of the new shilling (that
coming pat, I take it, to his matter) to wit, `_Timor Domini fons
vitae_.' And here quoth he, `We have now a pretty little shilling, in
deed a very pretty one. I have but one, I think, in my purse; and the
last day I had put it away almost for an old groat.' And so plucked it
out of his purse, and read the device to the people, with the
signification thereof. Now (would you crede it?) there was murmuring
against Mr Latimer of my Lord of Northumberland's following, that he had
reviled the new shilling, and contemned it for no better than an old
groat."
"I do protest!" cried Dr Thorpe, "the world is gone mad!"
"Saving you and me," said John, gravely.
"I scantly know, Jack," answered he, shaking his white head. "Methinks
I shall not save you nor me long."
One of the strangest things in this strange world is the contrasts
perpetually to be found in it. While Somerset lay thus under sentence
of death, the Lord of Misrule passed through London. He was George
Ferris, an old friend of the Hot Gospeller, and a warm Protestant
himself; yet it would be a tolerably safe guess to assert that Ferris
was a Lutheran. Scarcely would a Gospeller have filled that position on
that day.
Perhaps the relics of Dr Thorpe's Lutheranism were to blame for his
persistent determination to have Twelfth Day kept with all the honours.
He insisted on cake and snap-dragon, and was rewarded for his urgency by
drawing the king, while Kate was found to be his queen. Their mimic
majesties were seated in two large chairs at one end of the parlour, the
white-haired king laughing like a child, while the little queen was as
grave as a judge. The snap-dragon followed, for which a summary
abdication took place; and greatly amused was the old man to find Walter
in abject fear of burning his fingers, while Kate plunged her hand into
the blue flaming dish with sufficient courage for any knight in
Christendom. The evening closed with hot cockles, after which Esther
took possession of the children, declaring, with more earnestness than
was her wont, that they must and should not stay up another minute.
"Verily," said the old Doctor, when they were gone, "if the childre must
be had away, then should I follow; for I do feel in myself as though I
were a little child to-night."
"So you have been, methinks," responded Isoult, smiling on him, "for
assuredly they had enjoyed far less mirth without you."
And now the dark cloud closed over England, which was to be the one blot
on the reign of our Josiah. Poor young King! he was but fourteen; how
could he tell the depth of iniquity that was hidden in those cold blue
eyes of the man who was hunting the hapless Duke of Somerset to death?
Probably there was only one man who fully fathomed it, and that was the
victim himself. And his voice was sterling in England no more.
Words fail in the attempt to describe what the Duke's execution was to
the Gospellers. There was not one of them, from the Tyne to the Land's
End, who for the country's sake would not joyfully have given his life
for the life of Somerset. He was only a man, and a sinful man too; yet
such as he was, speaking after the manner of men, he was the hope of the
Gospel cause. To every Gospeller it was as the last plague of Egypt;
and to judge by the lamentations to be heard in all their houses, it
might have been supposed that "there was not an house where there was
not one dead." It is not often that a whole land mourns like this.
Among her sons England has not many darlings, but those that she has,
she holds very dear.
The morning of the 22nd of January came.
"Know you, Mrs Avery," asked Esther, "if the Duke of Somerset is like to
be had afore the Council again, and when it shall be? I would like much
to see that noble gentleman, if I might get a glimpse of him."
Isoult referred the question to John, but he said he had heard nothing;
he was going to Fleet Street, and would see if he could find out. But
before he set out there came a rapping on the door, and when Ursula
opened it, there stood Mr Rose.
"Welcome!" said John to him. "Come in and give us your news."
"There shall be better welcome for me than them," he said, in his sad
grave manner. "Know you that even this day doth my Lord of Somerset
suffer?"
"Is there no help for it?" said Dr Thorpe, sternly.
Mr Rose answered sadly,--"There is alway help from God; but His help is
not alway to be seen of men. From men, in this matter, there is none
help whatever, remembering that he who should give it is my Lord of
Northumberland. You may ask the lion to have mercy on his new-caught
prey, but not John Dudley upon Edward Seymour. There is but this one
barrier betwixt him and--"
Mr Rose did not finish in words, but a slight motion of his hands over
his head [Note 1] showed well enough what he meant.
"But you count not that he would aim--" began Dr Thorpe.
Another motion of Mr Rose checked his further utterance.
"He that hath the thing in deed, doth sometimes all the better without
the name thereof," he said quietly.
"Where dieth he?" saith John, in a low voice.
"Upon Tower Hill," Mr Rose replied.
"I would like," he answered, "to see him once more, and hear what he
will say."
"You cannot," said Mr Rose. "There hath been commandment issued that
all householders (except specially summoned) shall keep their houses,
upon sore pain, betwixt six and eight of the clock this morrow, until
all be over. List! there goeth six of the clock now. I thought to have
gone somewhat further on my way, but now I must needs abide with you
these two hours."
So they sat down and talked, mournfully enough, until the clock struck
seven; and then Mr Rose, rising from his chair, said, "Brethren, let us
pray." John drew the bolts, and the curtains over the windows, and all
knelt down.
This morning England's heart was throbbing with pain; to-morrow she
would be mourning for her dead son. The only man whom England trusted
was dying on Tower Hill! And this group--atoms of England, and parts of
England's heart--without such guards as these, they dared not pray for
him.