"No doubt, my maid; but the spirit of humility and repentance hath
worked well in you. I fear me, however, that you are come back to
further trials, since probably Portchester may be no longer our
home."

"Nor Winchester?"

"Nor Winchester."

"Then is this new King going to persecute as in the old times you
talk of? He who was brought over to save the Church!"

"He accepts the English Church, my maid, so far as it accepts him.
All beneficed clergy are required to take the oath of allegiance to
him before the first of August, now approaching, under pain of
losing their preferments. Many of my brethren, even our own Bishop
and Dean, think this merely submission to the powers that be, and
that it may be lawfully done; but as I hear neither the Archbishop
himself, nor my good old friends Doctors Ken and Frampton can
reconcile it to their conscience, any more than my brother Stanbury,
of Botley, nor I, to take this fresh oath, while the King to whom we
have sworn is living. Some hold that he has virtually renounced our
allegiance by his flight. I cannot see it, while he is fighting for
his crown in Ireland. What say you, Anne, who have seen him; did he
treat his case as that of an abdicated prince?"

"No, sir, certainly not. All the talk was of his enjoying his own
again."

"How can I then, consistently with my duty and loyalty, swear to
this William and Mary as my lawful sovereigns? I say not 'tis
incumbent on me to refuse to live under them a peaceful life, but
make oath to them as my King and Queen I cannot, so long as King
James shall live. True, he has not been a friend to the Church, and
has wofully trampled on the rights of Englishmen, but I cannot hold
that this absolves me from my duty to him, any more than David was
freed from duty to Saul. So, Anne, back must we go to the poverty
in which I was reared with your own good father."

Anne might grieve, but she felt the gratification of being talked to
by her uncle as a woman who could understand, as he had talked to
her mother.

"The first of August!" she repeated, as if it were a note of doom.

"Yes; I hear whispers of a further time of grace, but I know not
what difference that should make. A Christian man's oath may not be
broken sooner or later. Well, poverty is the state blessed by our
Lord, and it may be that I have lived too much at mine ease; but I
could wish, dear child, that you were safely bestowed in a house of
your own."

"So