By What Authority? - Robert Hugh Benson (ebook reader for pc txt) 📗

dinner Anthony's time was often his own, until the evening prayers at six, followed by supper again spread in the hall. It was necessary for him always to sleep in the house, unless leave was obtained from the steward. This gentleman, Mr. John Scot, an Esquire, took a fancy to Anthony, and was indulgent to him in many ways; and Anthony had, as a matter of fact, little difficulty in coming and going as he pleased so soon as his morning duties were done.

Lambeth House had been lately restored by Parker, and was now a very beautiful and well-kept place. Among other repairs and buildings he had re-roofed the great hall that stood just within Morton's gateway; he had built a long pier into the Thames where the barge could be entered easily even at low tide; he had rebuilt the famous summerhouse of Cranmer's in the garden, besides doing many sanitary alterations and repairs; and the house was well kept up in Grindal's time.

Anthony soon added a great affection and tenderness to the awe that he felt for the Archbishop, who was almost from the first a pathetic and touching figure. When Anthony first entered on his duties in November '76, he found the Archbishop in his last days of freedom and good favour with the Queen. Elizabeth, he soon learnt from the gossip of the household, was as determined to put down the Puritan "prophesyings" as the popish services; for both alike tended to injure the peace she was resolved to maintain. Rumours were flying to and fro; the Archbishop was continually going across the water to confer with his friends and the Lords of the Council, and messengers came and went all day; and it was soon evident that the Archbishop did not mean to yield. It was said that his Grace had sent a letter to her Majesty bidding her not to meddle with what did not concern her, telling her that she, too, would one day have to render account before Christ's tribunal, and warning her of God's anger if she persisted.

Her Majesty had sworn like a trooper, a royal page said one day as he lounged over the fire in the guard-room, and had declared that if she was like Ozeas and Ahab and the rest, as Grindal had said she was, she would take care that he, at least, should be like Micaiah the son of Imlah, before she had done with him. Then it began to leak out that Elizabeth was sending her commands to the bishops direct instead of through their Metropolitan; and, as the days went by, it became more and more evident that disgrace was beginning to shadow Lambeth. The barges that drew up at the watergate were fewer as summer went on, and the long tables in hall were more and more deserted; even the Archbishop himself seemed silent and cast down. Anthony used to watch him from his window going up and down the little walled garden that looked upon the river, with his hands clasped behind him and his black habit gathered up in them, and his chin on his breast. He would be longer than ever too in chapel after the morning prayer, and the company would wait and wonder in the anteroom till his Grace came in and gave the signal for dinner. And at last the blow fell.

On one day in June, Anthony, who had been on a visit to Isabel at Great Keynes, returned to Lambeth in time for morning prayer and dinner just before the gates were shut by the porter, having ridden up early with a couple of grooms. There seemed to him to be an air of constraint abroad as the guests and members of the household gathered for dinner. There were no guests of high dignity that day, and the Archbishop sat at his own table silent and apart. Anthony, from his place at the steward's table, noticed that he ate very sparingly, and that he appeared even more preoccupied and distressed than usual. His short-sighted eyes, kind and brown, surrounded by wrinkles from his habit of peering closely at everything, seemed full of sadness and perplexity, and his hand fumbled with his bread continually. Anthony did not like to ask anything of his neighbours, as there were one or two strangers dining at the steward's table that day; and the moment dinner was over, and grace had been said and the Archbishop retired with his little procession preceded by a white wand, an usher came running back to tell Master Norris that his Grace desired to see him at once in the inner cloister.

Anthony hastened round through the court between the hall and the river, and found the Archbishop walking up and down in his black habit with the round flapped cap, that, as a Puritan, he preferred to the square head-dress of the more ecclesiastically-minded clergy, still looking troubled and cast down, continually stroking his dark forked beard, and talking to one of his secretaries. Anthony stood at a little distance at the open side of the court near the river, cap in hand, waiting till the Archbishop should beckon him. The two went up and down in the shade in the open court outside the cloisters, where the pump stood, and where the pulpit had been erected for the Queen's famous visit to his predecessor; when she had sat in a gallery over the cloister and heard the chaplain's sermon. On the north rose up the roof of the chapel. The cloisters themselves were poor buildings--little more than passages with a continuous row of square windows running along them the height of a man's head.

After a few minutes the secretary left the Archbishop with an obeisance, and hastened into the house through the cloister, and presently the Archbishop, after a turn or two more with the same grave air, peered towards Anthony and then called him.

Anthony immediately came towards him and received orders that half a dozen horses with grooms should be ready as soon as possible, who were to receive orders from Mr. Richard Frampton, the secretary; and that three or four horses more were to be kept saddled till seven o'clock that evening in case further messages were wanted.

"And I desire you, Mr. Norris," said the Archbishop, "to let the men under your charge know that their master is in trouble with the Queen's Grace; and that they can serve him best by being prompt and obedient."

Anthony bowed to the Archbishop, and was going to withdraw, but the Archbishop went on:

"I will tell you," he said, "for your private ear only at present, that I have received an order this day from my Lords of the Council, bidding me to keep to my house for six months; and telling me that I am sequestered by the Queen's desire. I know not how this will end, but the cause is that I will not do her Grace's will in the matter of the Exercises, as I wrote to tell her so; and I am determined, by God's grace, not to yield in this thing; but to govern the charge committed to me as He gives me light. That is all, Mr. Norris."

The whole household was cast into real sorrow by the blow that had fallen at last on the master; he was "loving and grateful to servants"; and was free and liberal in domestic matters, and it needed only a hint that he was in trouble, for his officers and servants to do their utmost for him.

Anthony's sympathy was further aroused by the knowledge that the Papists, too, hated the old man, and longed to injure him. There had been a great increase of Catholics this year; the Archbishop of York had reported that "a more stiff-necked, wilful, or obstinate people did he never hear of"; and from Hereford had come a lament that conformity itself was a mockery, as even the Papists that attended church were a distraction when they got there, and John Hareley was instanced as "reading so loud upon his Latin popish primer (that he understands not) that he troubles both minister and people." In November matters were so serious that the Archbishop felt himself obliged to take steps to chastise the recusants; and in December came the news of the execution of Cuthbert Maine at Launceston in Cornwall.

How much the Catholics resented this against the Archbishop was brought to Anthony's notice a day or two later. He was riding back for morning prayer after an errand in Battersea, one frosty day, and had just come in sight of Morton's Gateway, when he observed a man standing by it, who turned and ran, on hearing the horse's footsteps, past Lambeth Church and disappeared in the direction of the meadows behind Essex House. Anthony checked his horse, doubtful whether to follow or not, but decided to see what it was that the man had left pinned to the door. He rode up and detached it, and found it was a violent and scurrilous attack upon the Archbishop for his supposed share in the death of the two Papists. It denounced him as a "bloody pseudo-minister," compared him to Pilate, and bade him "look to his congregation of lewd and profane persons that he named the Church of England," for that God would avenge the blood of his saints speedily upon their murderers.

Anthony carried it into the hall, and after showing it to Mr. Scot, put it indignantly into the fire. The steward raised his eyebrows.

"Why so, Master Norris?" he asked.

"Why," said Anthony sharply, "you would not have me frame it, and show to my lord."

"I am not sure," said the other, "if you desire to injure the Papists. Such foul nonsense is their best condemnation. It is best to keep evidence against a traitor, not destroy it. Besides, we might have caught the knave, and now we cannot," he added, looking at the black shrivelling sheet half regretfully.

"It is a mystery to me," said Anthony, "how there can be Papists."

"Why, they hate England," said the steward, briefly, as the bell rang for morning prayer. As Anthony followed him along the gallery, he thought half guiltily of Sir Nicholas and his lady, and wondered whether that was true of them. But he had no doubt that it was true of Catholics as a class; they had ceased to be English; the cause of the Pope and the Queen were irreconcilable; and so the whole incident added more fuel to the hot flame of patriotism and loyalty that burnt so bright in the lad's soul.

But it was fanned yet higher by a glimpse he had of Court-life; and he owed it to Mary Corbet whom he had only seen momentarily in public once or twice, and never to speak to since her visit to Great Keynes over six years ago. He had blushed privately and bitten his lip a good many times in the interval, when he thought of his astonishing infatuation, and yet the glamour had never wholly faded; and his heart quickened perceptibly when he opened a note one day, brought by a royal groom, that asked him to come that very afternoon if he could, to Whitehall Palace, where Mistress Corbet would be delighted to see him and renew their acquaintance.

As he came, punctual to the moment, into the gallery overlooking the tilt-yard, the afternoon sun was pouring in through the oriel window, and the yard beyond seemed all a haze of golden light and dust. He heard an exclamation, as he paused, dazzled, and the servant closed the door behind him; and there came forward to him in the flood of glory, the same resplendent figure, all