t, music,
good converse and the love of women, he was forced to wed with a
creature whose face resembled that of a pig stuck with cloves. He had
raged over-night, but, with the morning, he had seen himself growing
old, on a tottering throne, assailed by all the forces of the Old
Faith in Christendom. Rebellions burst out like fires every day in all
the corners of his land. He had no men whom he could trust: if he
granted a boon to one party it held them only for a day, and the other
side rose up. Now he rested upon the Lutherans, whom he hated, and,
standing on that terrace, he had watched gloomily the great State
barges of the Ambassadors from the Empire and from France come with
majestic ostentation downstream abreast, to moor side by side against
the steps of his water-gate.

It was a parade of their new friendship. Six months ago their trains
could not have mingled without bloodshed.

At last there stood before him Thomas Cromwell, un-bonneted, smiling,
humorous, supple and confident for himself and for his master's cause,
a man whom his Prince might trust. And the long melancholy and
sinister figure of the Duke of Norfolk stalked stiffly down among the
yew trees powdered with frost. The furs from round his neck fluttered
about his knees like the wings of a crow, and he dug his Earl
Marshal's golden staff viciously into the ground. He waved his
jewelled cap and stood still at a little distance. Cromwell regarded
him with a sinister and watchful amusement; he looked back at Privy
Seal with a black malignancy that hardened his yellow features, his
hooked nose and pursed lips into the likeness of a mask representing
hatred.

This Norfolk was that Earl of Surrey who had won Flodden Field. They
all then esteemed him the greatest captain of his day--in the field a
commander sleepless, cunning, cautious, and, in striking, a Hotspur.

A dour and silent man, he was the head of all the Catholics, of all
the reaction of that day. But, in the long duel between himself and
Cromwell he had seemed fated to be driven from post to post, never
daring to proclaim himself openly the foe of the man he dreaded and
hated. Cranmer, with his tolerant spirit, he despised. Here was an
archbishop who might rack and burn for discipline's sake, and he did
nothing.... And all these New Learning men with their powers of
language, these dark bearded men with twinkling and sagacious eyes, he
detested. He went clean shaved, lean and yellow-faced