t of fruit,
gibbering and dangling against the heavens on high, the King and his
host rode back into the Border country. It was pleasant to ride in the
summer weather, and they hunted and rendered justice by the way, and
heard tales of battle that there had been before in the north country.

But there was one man, Thomas Culpepper, in the town of Edinburgh to
whom this return was grievous. He had been in these outlandish parts now
for more than nineteen months. The Scots were odious to him, the town
was odious; he had no stomach for his food, and such clothes as he had
were ragged, for he would wear nothing that had there been woven. He was
even a sort of prisoner. For he had been appointed to wait on the King's
Ambassador to the King of Scots, and the last thing that Throckmorton,
the notable spy, had done before he had left the Court had been to write
to Edinburgh that T. Culpepper, the Queen's cousin, who was a dangerous
man, was to be kept very close and given no leave of absence.

And one thing very much had aided this: for, upon receiving news, or the
rumour of news, that his cousin Katharine Howard--he was her mother's
brother's son--had wedded the King, or had been shown for Queen at
Hampton Court, he had suddenly become seized with such a rage that,
incontinently, he had run his sword through an old fishwife in the
fishmarket where he was who had given him the news, newly come by sea,
thinking that because he was an Englishman this marriage of his King
might gladden him. The fishwife died among her fish, and Culpepper with
his sword fell upon all that were near him in the market, till, his heel
slipping upon a haddock, he fell, and was fallen upon by a great many
men.

He must stay in jail for this till he had compounded with the old
woman's heirs and had paid for a great many cuts and bruises. And Sir
Nicholas Hoby, happening to be in Edinburgh at that time, understood
well what ailed Thomas Culpepper, and that he was mad for love of the
Queen his cousin--for was it not this Culpepper that had brought her to
the court, and, as it was said, had aforetime sold farms to buy her food
and gowns when, her father being a poor man, she was well-nigh starving?
Therefore Sir Nicholas begged alike the Ambassador and the King of Scots
that they would keep this madman clapped up till they were very certain
that the fit was off him. And, what with the charges of blood ransom and
jailing for nine months, Culpepper had no m