his assumed
name Capell, and remarked rather loudly that he had met Mr. Carr before;
who recognised him too, and greeted him by his real name.

It was an uncomfortable situation, as Mr. Carr was quite unaware of the
religion of five out of six of those present, and very soon began to give
voice to his views on Papistry. He was an oldish man by now, and of some
importance in Maidstone, where he had been appointed Jurat by the
Corporation, and was a very popular and influential man.

"The voice of the people," he said in the midst of a conversation on the
national feeling towards Spain, "that is what we must hearken to. Even
sovereigns themselves must come to that some day. They must rule by
obeying; as man does with God's laws in nature."

"Would you say that, sir, of her Grace?" asked Mary Corbet meekly.

"I should, madam; though I fear she has injured her power by her
behaviour this year. It was her people who saved her.--Hawkins, who is
now ruined as he says; my lord Howard, who has paid from his own purse
for the meat and drink of her Grace's soldiers, and those who fought with
them; and not her Grace, who saved them; or Leicester, now gone to his
account, who sat at Tilbury and did the bowing and the prancing and the
talking while Hawkins and the rest did the fighting. No, madam, it is the
voice of the people to which we must hearken."

This was rather confused and dangerous talking too; but here was plainly
a man to be humoured; he looked round him with a suffused face and the
eye of a cock, and a little white plume on his forehead increased his
appearance of pugnacity.

"It is the same in religion," he said, when all preserved a deferential
silence; "it is that that lies at the root of papist errors. As you know
very well," he went on, turning suddenly on Anthony, "our bishops do
nothing to guide men's minds; they only seem to: they ride atop like the
figure on a cock-horse, but it is the legs beneath that do the work and
the guiding too: now that is right and good; and the Church of England
will prosper so long as she goes like that. But if the bishops try to
rule they will find their mistake. Now the Popish Church is not like
that; she holds that power comes from above, that the Pope guides the
bishops, the bishops the priests, and the priests the people."

"And the Holy Ghost the Pope; is it not so, sir?" asked Mr. Buxton.

Mr. Carr turned an eye on him.

"So they hold, sir," he said after a pause.