masterful prelate, and never
ceased to urge her to cast out Cranmer from his archbishopric and to
give it to him. And with him the Lady Mary sided, for she would have
Cranmer's head before all things, since Cranmer it was that most had
injured her mother. Moreover, he was so incessant in his urging the King
to make an alliance with the Catholic Emperor that at last, about the
time that Norfolk came back from France, the King was mightily enraged,
so that he struck the Bishop of Winchester in the face, and swore that
his friend the Kaiser was a rotten plank, since he could not rid himself
of a few small knaves of Lutheran princes.

Thus for long the Queen was sad; the little Prince very sick; and the
King ate no food, but sat gazing at the victuals, though the Queen
cooked some messes for him with her own hand.

* * * * *

One Sunday after evensong, at which Cranmer himself had read prayers,
the King came nearly merrily to his supper.

'Ho, chuck,' he said, 'you have your enemies. Here hath been Cranmer
weeping to me with a parcel of tales writ on paper.'

He offered it to her to read, but she would not; for, she said, she knew
well that she had many enemies, only, very safely she could trust her
fame in her Lord's hands.

'Why, you may,' he said, and sat him down at the table to eat, with the
paper stuck in his belt. 'Body o' God!' he said. 'If it had been any but
Cranmer he had eaten bread in Hell this night. 'A wept and trembled!
Body o' God! Body o' God!'

And that night he was more merry before the fire than he had been for
many weeks. He had in the music to play a song of his own writing, and
afterwards he swore that next day he would ride to London, and then at
his council send that which she would have sent to Rome.

'For, for sure,' he said, 'there is no peace in this world for me save
when I hear you pray. And how shall you pray well for me save in the old
form and fashion?'

He lolled back in his chair and gazed at her.

'Why,' he said, 'it is a proof of the great mercy of the Saviour that He
sent you on earth in so fair a guise. For if you had not been so fair,
assuredly I had not noticed you. Then would my soul have gone
straightway to Hell.'

And he called that the letter to Rome might be brought to him, and read
it over in the firelight. He set it in his belt alongside the other
paper, that next day when he came to London he might lay it in the hands
of Sir Thom