ARMS SPIRITUAL AND TEMPORAL
“For him was leifer to have at his bedde’s hedde
Twenty books clothed in blacke or redde
Of Aristotle and his philosophie
Than robes riche or fiddle or psalterie.”
Chaucer.
Master Headley was found spending the summer evening in the bay window
of the hall. Tibble sat on a three-legged stool by him, writing in a
crabbed hand, in a big ledger, and Kit Smallbones towered above both,
holding in his hand a bundle of tally-sticks. By the help of these, and
of that accuracy of memory which writing has destroyed, he was
unfolding, down to the very last farthing, the entire account of
payments and receipts during his master’s absence, the debtor and
creditor account being preserved as perfectly as if he had always had a
pen in his huge fingers, and studied book-keeping by double or single
entry.
On the return of the two boys with such an apparently respectable
member of society as the handsome well-dressed personage who
accompanied them, little Dennet, who had been set to sew her sampler on
a stool by her grandmother, under penalty of being sent off to bed if
she disturbed her father, sprang up with a little cry of gladness, and
running up to Ambrose, entreated for the tales of his good greenwood
Forest, and the pucks and pixies, and the girl who daily shared her
breakfast with a snake and said, “Eat your own side, Speckleback.”
Somehow, on Sunday night she had gathered that Ambrose had a store of
such tales, and she dragged him off to the gallery, there to revel in
them, while his brother remained with her father.
Though Master Stephen had begun by being high and mighty about
mechanical crafts, and thought it a great condescension to consent to
be bound apprentice, yet when once again in the Dragon court, it looked
so friendly and felt so much like a home that he found himself very
anxious that Master Headley should not say that he could take no more
apprentices at present, and that he should be satisfied with the terms
uncle Hal would propose. And oh! suppose Tibble should recognise
Quipsome Hal!
However, Tibble was at this moment entirely engrossed by the accounts,
and his master left him and his big companion to unravel them, while he
himself held speech with his guest at some distance—sending for a cup
of sack, wherewith to enliven the conversation.
He showed himself quite satisfied with what Randall chose to tell of
himself as a well known “housekeeper” close to the Temple, his wife a
“lavender” there, while he himself was attached to the suite of the
Archbishop of York. Here alone was there any approach to shuffling, for
Master Headley was left to suppose that Randall attended Wolsey in his
capacity of king’s counsellor, and therefore, having a house of his
own, had not been found in the roll of the domestic retainers and
servants. He did not think of inquiring further, the more so as Randall
was perfectly candid as to his own inferiority of birth to the
Birkenholt family, and the circumstances under which he had left the
Forest.
Master Headley professed to be quite willing to accept Stephen as an
apprentice, with or without a fee; but he agreed with Randall that it
would be much better not to expose him to having it cast in his teeth
that he was accepted out of charity; and Randall undertook to get a
letter so written and conveyed to John Birkenholt that he should not
dare to withhold the needful sum, in earnest of which Master Headley
would accept the two crowns that Stephen had in hand, as soon as the
indentures could be drawn out by one of the many scriveners who lived
about St. Paul’s.
This settled, Randall could stay no longer, but he called both nephews
into the court with him. “Ye can write a letter?” he said.
“Ay, sure, both of us; but Ambrose is the best scribe,” said Stephen.
“One of you had best write then. Let that cur John know that I have my
Lord of York’s ear, and there will be no fear but he will give it. I’ll
find a safe hand among the clerks, when the judges ride to hold the
assize. Mayhap Ambrose might also write to the Father at Beaulieu. The
thing had best be bruited.”
“I wished to do so,” said Ambrose. “It irked me to have taken no leave
of the good Fathers.”
Randall then took his leave, having little more than time to return to
York House, where the Archbishop might perchance come home wearied and
chafed from the King, and the jester might be missed if not there to
put him in good humour.
The curfew sounded, and though attention to its notes was not
compulsory by law, it was regarded as the break-up of the evening and
the note of recall in all well-ordered establishments. The apprentices
and journeymen came into the court, among them Giles Headley, who had
been taken out by one of the men to be provided with a working dress,
much to his disgust; the grandmother summoned little Dennet and carried
her off to bed. Stephen and Ambrose bade good-night, but Master Headley
and his two confidential men remained somewhat longer to wind up their
accounts. Doors were not, as a rule, locked within the court, for
though it contained from forty to fifty persons, they were all regarded
as a single family, and it was enough to fasten the heavily bolted,
iron-studded folding doors of the great gateway leading into Cheapside,
the key being brought to the master like that of a castle, seven
minutes, measured by the glass, after the last note of the curfew in
the belfry outside St. Paul’s.
The summer twilight, however, lasted long after this time of grace, and
when Tibble had completed his accountant’s work, and Smallbones’ deep
voiced “Goodnight, comrade,” had resounded over the court, he beheld a
figure rise up from the steps of the gallery, and Ambrose’s voice said:
“May I speak to thee, Tibble? I need thy counsel.”
“Come hither, sir,” said the foreman, muttering to himself, “Methought
’twas working in him! The leaven! the leaven!”
Tibble led the way up one of the side stairs into the open gallery,
where he presently opened a door, admitting to a small, though high
chamber, the walls of bare brick, and containing a low bed, a small
table, a three-legged stool, a big chest, and two cupboards, also a
cross over the head of the bed. A private room was a luxury neither
possessed nor desired by most persons of any degree, and only enjoyed
by Tibble in consideration of his great value to his master, his
peculiar tastes, and the injuries he had received. In point of fact,
his fall had been owing to a hasty blow, given in a passion by the
master himself when a young man. Dismay and repentance had made Giles
Headley a cooler and more self-controlled man ever since, and even if
Tibble had not been a superior workman, he might still have been free
to do almost anything he chose. Tibble gave his visitor the stool, and
himself sat down on the chest, saying: “So you have found your uncle,
sir.”
“Ay,” said Ambrose, pausing in some expectation that Tibble would
mention some suspicion of his identity; but if the foreman had his
ideas on the subject he did not disclose them, and waited for more
communications.
“Tibble!” said Ambrose, with a long gasp, “I must find means to hear
more of him thou tookedst me to on Sunday.”
“None ever truly tasted of that well without longing to come back to
it,” quoth Tibble. “But hath not thy kinsman done aught for thee?”
“Nay,” said Ambrose, “save to offer me a lodging with his wife, a good
and kindly lavender at the Temple.”
Tibble nodded.
“So far am I free,” said Ambrose, “and I am glad of it. I have a letter
here to one of the canons, one Master Alworthy, but ere I seek him I
would know somewhat from thee, Tibble. What like is he?”
“I cannot tell, sir,” said Tibble. “The canons are rich and many, and a
poor smith like me wots little of their fashions.”
“Is it true,” again asked Ambrose, “that the Dean—he who spake those
words yesterday—hath a school here for young boys?”
“Ay. And a good and mild school it be, bringing them up in the name and
nurture of the Holy Child Jesus, to whom it is dedicated.”
“Then they are taught this same doctrine?”
“I trow they be. They say the Dean loves them like the children of his
old age, and declares that they shall be made in love with holy lore by
gentleness rather than severity.”
“Is it likely that this same Alworthy could obtain me entrance there?”
“Alack, sir, I fear me thou art too old. I see none but little lads
among them. Didst thou come to London with that intent?”
“Nay, for I only wist to-day that there was such a school. I came with
I scarce know what purpose, save to see Stephen safely bestowed, and
then to find some way of learning myself. Moreover, a change seems to
have come on me, as though I had hitherto been walking in a dream.”
Tibble nodded, and Ambrose, sitting there in the dark, was moved to
pour forth all his heart, the experience of many an ardent soul in
those spirit searching days. Growing up happily under the care of the
simple monks of Beaulieu he had never looked beyond their somewhat
mechanical routine, accepted everything implicitly, and gone on
acquiring knowledge with the receptive spirit but dormant thought of
studious boyhood as yet unawakened, thinking that the studious clerical
life to which every one destined him would only be a continuation of
the same, as indeed it had been to his master, Father Simon. Not that
Ambrose expressed this, beyond saying, “They are good and holy men, and
I thought all were like them, and fear that was all!”
Then came death, for the first time nearly touching and affecting the
youth, and making his soul yearn after further depths, which he might
yet have found in the peace of the good old men, and the holy rites and
doctrine that they preserved; but before there was time for these
things to find their way into the wounds of his spirit, his expulsion
from home had sent him forth to see another side of monkish and clerkly
life.
Father Shoveller, kindly as he was, was a mere yeoman with nothing
spiritual about him; the monks of Hyde were, the younger, gay comrades,
only trying how loosely they could sit to their vows; the elder,
churlish and avaricious; even the Warden of Elizabeth College was
little more than a student. And in London, fresh phases had revealed
themselves; the pomp, state, splendour and luxury of Archbishop
Wolsey’s house had been a shock to the lad’s ideal of a bishop drawn
from the saintly biographies he had studied at Beaulieu; and he had but
to keep his ears open to hear endless scandals about the mass priests,
as they were called, since they were at this time very unpopular in
London, and in many cases deservedly so. Everything that the boy had
hitherto thought the way of holiness and salvation seemed invaded by
evil and danger, and under the bondage of death, whose terrible dance
continued to haunt him.
“I saw it, I saw it;” he said, “all over those halls at York House. I
seemed to behold the grisly shape standing behind one and another, as
they ate and laughed; and when the Archbishop and his priests and the
King came in it seemed only to make the pageant complete! Only now and
then could I recall those blessed words, ‘Ye are free indeed.’ Did he
say from the bondage of death?”
“Yea,” said Tibble, “into the glorious freedom of God’s children.”
“Thou knowst it. Thou knowst it, Tibble. It seems to me that life is no
life, but living death, without that freedom! And I _must_ hear of it,
and know whether it is mine, yea, and Stephen’s, and all whom I love. O
Tibble, I would beg my bread rather than not have that freedom ever
before mine eyes.”
“Hold it fast! hold it fast, dear sir,” said Tibble, holding out his
hands with tears in his eyes, and his face working in a manner that
happily Ambrose could not see.
“But how—how? The barefoot friar said that for an _Ave_ a day, our
Blessed Lady will drag us back from purgatory. I saw her on the wall of
her chapel at Winchester saving a robber knight from the sea, yea and a
thief from the gallows; but that is not being free.”
“Fond inventions of pardon-mongers,” muttered Tibble.
“And is one not free when the priest hath assoilsied him?” added
Ambrose.
“If, and if—” said Tibble. “But bone shall make me trow that shrift in
words, without heart-sorrow for sin, and the Latin heard with no
thought of Him that bore the guilt, can set the sinner free. ’Tis none
other that the Dean sets forth, ay, and the book that I have here. I
thank my God,” he stood up and took off his cap reverently, “that He
hath opened the eyes of another!”
His tone was such that Ambrose could have believed him some devout
almost inspired hermit rather than the acute skilful artisan he
appeared at other times; and in fact, Tibble Steelman, like many
another craftsman of those days, led a double life, the outer one that
of the ordinary workman, the inner one devoted to those lights that
were shining unveiled and new to many; and especially here in the heart
of the City, partly from the influence of Dean Colet’s sermons and
catechisings at St. Paul’s, but also from remnants of Lollardism, which
had never been entirely quenched. The ordinary clergy looked at it with
horror, but the intelligent and thoughtful of the burgher and craftsman
classes studied it with a passionate fervour which might have sooner
broken out and in more perilous forms save for the guidance it received
in the truly Catholic and open-spirited public teachings of Colet, in
which he persisted in spite of the opposition of his brother clergy.
Not that as yet the inquirers had in the slightest degree broken with
the system of the Church, or with her old traditions. They were only
beginning to see the light that had been veiled from them, and to
endeavour to clear the fountain from the mire that had fouled it; and
there was as yet no reason to believe that the aspersions continually
made against the mass priests and the friars were more than the chronic
grumblings of Englishmen, who had found the same faults in them for the
last two hundred years.
“And what wouldst thou do, young sir?” presently inquired Tibble.
“That I came to ask thee, good Tibble. I would work to the best of my
power in any craft so I may hear those words and gain the key to all I
have hitherto learnt, unheeding as one in a dream. My purpose had been
to be a scholar and a clerk, but I must see mine own way, and know
whither I am being carried, ere I can go farther.”
Tibble writhed and wriggled himself about in consideration. “I would I
wist how to take thee to the Dean himself,” he said, “but I am but a
poor man, and his doctrine is ‘new wine in old bottles’ to the master,
though he be a right good man after his lights. See now, Master
Ambrose, meseemeth that thou hadst best take thy letter first to this
same priest. It may be that he can prefer thee to some post about the
minster. Canst sing?”
“I could once, but my voice is nought at this present. If I could but
be a servitor at St. Paul’s School!”
“It might be that the will which hath led thee so far hath that post in
store for thee, so bear the letter to Master Alworthy. And if he fail
thee, wouldst thou think scorn of aiding a friend of mine who worketh a
printing-press in Warwick Inner Yard? Thou wilt find him at his place
in Paternoster Row, hard by St. Paul’s. He needeth one who is clerk
enough to read the Latin, and the craft being a new one ’tis fenced by
none of those prentice laws that would bar the way to thee elsewhere,
at thy years.”
“I should dwell among books!”
“Yea, and holy books, that bear on the one matter dear to the true
heart. Thou might serve Lucas Hansen at the sign of the Winged Staff
till thou hast settled thine heart, and then it may be the way would be
opened to study at Oxford or at Cambridge, so that thou couldst expound
the faith to others.”
“Good Tibble, kind Tibble, I knew thou couldst aid me! Wilt thou speak
to this Master Hansen for me?”
Tibble, however, held that it was more seemly that Ambrose should first
try his fate with Master Alworthy, but in case of this not succeeding,
he promised to write a billet that would secure attention from Lucas
Hansen.
“I warn thee, however, that he is Low Dutch,” he added, “though he
speaketh English well.” He would gladly have gone with the youth, and
at any other time might have been sent by his master, but the whole
energies of the Dragon would be taken up for the next week by
preparations for the tilting-match at court, and Tibble could not be
spared for another working hour.
Ambrose, as he rose to bid his friend good-night, could not help saying
that he marvelled that one such as he could turn his mind to such
vanities as the tilt-yard required.
“Nay,” said Tibble, “’twas the craft I was bred to—yea, and I have a
good master; and the Apostle Paul himself—as I’ve heard a preacher
say—bade men continue in the state wherein they were, and not be
curious to chop and change. Who knoweth whether in God’s sight, all our
wars and policies be no more than the games of the tilt-yard. Moreover,
Paul himself made these very weapons read as good a sermon as the Dean
himself. Didst never hear of the shield of faith, and helmet of
salvation, and breastplate of righteousness? So, if thou comest to
Master Hansen, and provest worthy of his trust, thou wilt hear more,
ay, and maybe read too thyself, and send forth the good seed to
others,” he murmured to himself, as he guided his visitor across the
moonlit court up the stairs to the chamber where Stephen lay fast
asleep.