“Sir,” Cromwell interrupted him, “in this ye have hit upon mine own secret judgment that I had told to no man save my private servants.”
Lascelles bent his knee to acknowledge this great praise.
“Very gracious lord,” he said, “his Grace of Canterbury opines rather that this woman must be propitiated. He hath sent her books to please her tickle fancy of erudition; he hath sent her Latin chronicles and Saxon to prove to her, if he may, that the English priesthood is older than that of Rome. He is minded to convince her if he may, or, if he may not, he plans to make submission to her, to commend her learning and in all things to flatter her—for she is very approachable by these channels, more than by any other.”
In short, as Lascelles made it appear to Cromwell’s attentive brain, the Archbishop was, as always, anxious to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. He was a schismatic bishop, appointed by the King and the King’s creature, not the Bishop of Rome’s. So that if with his high pen and his great gift of penning weighty sentences, he might bring Kat Howard to acknowledging him bishop and archbishop, he was ready so to do. If he must make submission to her judgment, he was ready so to do.
“Yet,” Lascelles concluded, “I have urged him against these courses; or yet not against these courses, but to this other end in any case.” For it was certain that Kat Howard would have no truck with Cranmer. She would make him go on his knees to Rome and then she would burn him; or if she did not burn him she would make him end his days with a hair shirt in the cell of an anchorite. “I hold it manifested,” Lascelles said, “that this lady is such an one as will listen to no reason nor policy, neither will she palter, for whatever device, with them that have not lifelong paid lip-service to the arch-devil whose seat is in Rome.”
Cromwell nodded his head once more to commend the Archbishop’s gentleman with a perfect acquiescence.
It had chanced that that morning Lascelles had gone to Greenwich to fetch for the Archbishop some books and tractates. The Archbishop was minded to lend them to the Bishop Hugh Latimer of Worcester; that day he was to dispute publicly with the friar Forest that was cast to be burned. And, coming to Greenwich, still thinking much upon Katharine Howard and her cousin, at the dawn, Lascelles had seen the tall, drunken, red-bearded man in green, with his squat, broad gossip in grey, come staggering up from the ship at the public quay.
“I did leave my burden of books,” he said; “for what be Bishop Hugh Latimer’s arguments from a pulpit to a burning priest to the pulling down of this woman?” He had dogged Thomas Culpepper and his crony; he had seen him burst open windows, cast meat about in the mud and feed the populace of the Greenwich hamlet.
“And for sure,” he said, “if the King’s Highness should see this man’s filthiness and foul demeanour, he will not be fain to feed after such a make of hound.”
Coming to Smithfield, where Culpepper stayed to cheer on the business, Lascelles had very swiftly begged the Archbishop, where, behind Hugh Larimer’s pulpit, he sat to see Friar Forest corrected—had very swiftly begged the Archbishop to give him leave to come to Hampton.
“Sir,” Lascelles said, “with a great sigh he gave me leave; for much he fears to have a hand in this matter.”
“Why, he shall have no hand,” Cromwell said. He clapped his hands, and told the blonde pageboy that appeared to send him very quickly Viridus, that had had this matter in his care.
Lascelles recounted shortly how he had set four men to watch Thomas Culpepper till he came to Hampton, and very swiftly to send word of when he came. Then the spy dropped his voice and pulled out a parchment from his bosom.
“Sir,” he said, “whilst Culpepper was in the palace of Greenwich I made haste to go on board the ship that had brought him from Calais, being minded if I could to discover what was discoverable concerning his coming.”
He dropped his voice still further.
“Sir,” he began again, “there be those in this realm, and maybe very close to your own person, that would have stayed his coming. For upon that ship lay a boy, sore sick of the sea and very beaten, by name Harry Poins. Wherefore, or at whose commands, he had done this I had no occasion to discover, since he lay like a sick dog and might not see nor hear nor speak; but this it was told me he had done: in every way he sought to let and hinder T. Culpepper’s coming to England with so marked an importunity that at last Culpepper did set his crony to beat this boy.” He paused again. “And this too I discovered, taking it from the boy’s person, for in my avocations and service to his Grace, whom God preserve and honour! I have much practised these abstractions.”
Lascelles held the parchment, from which fell a seal like a drop of blood.
“Sir,” he said, “this agreement is sealed with your own seal; it is from one Throckmorton in your service. It maketh this T. Culpepper lieutenant of barges and lighters in the town and port of Calais. It enjoineth upon him to stay diligently there and zealously to persevere in these duties.”
Cromwell neither started nor moved; he stood looking down at the floor for a minute space; then he held out his hand for the parchment, considered the seal and the subscription, let his eyes course over the lines of Throckmorton’s handwriting that made a black patch on the surface soiled with seawater
