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 burthe