The next topic was the new Act to allow the marriage of priests. All the party being Gospellers, were, of course, unanimous upon this subject. But Mr Underhill, who was not in the family secrets, unfortunately took it into his head to clap Robin rather smartly on the back, and congratulate him that he might now be a priest without being necessarily a bachelor. Poor Robin looked unhappy again, but still wisely remained silent, not relishing the opening of the subject in Mr Rose's presence. But Mr Rose only smiled, and quietly suggested that it would be well for Mr Underhill to satisfy himself that he was not making his friends sorrier instead of merrier, by coming down upon them with such personal a.s.saults. John, by way of corollary, intimated in an aside to Isoult, that the gentleman in question "had a sore heavy hand when he was in right earnest."

The night after this day was one not soon forgotten in London. In the still darkness came an earthquake--that most terrible of phenomena held in G.o.d's hand, whereby He saith to poor, puny, arrogant man, "Be still, and know that I am G.o.d." Isoult awoke to hear sounds on all sides of her--the bed creaking, and below the dishes and pans dancing with a noisy clatter. In the next chamber she heard Walter crying, and Kate asking if the end of all the world were come; but John would not permit her to rise and go to them. And she also heard Esther talking with them and comforting them in a low voice, so she was comparatively satisfied.

The baby, Frances, slept peacefully through all.

The next morning Kate said,--"Mother, were you affrighted last night with the great rocking and noise?"

"A little afeard lest some of us should be hurt, sweet heart, if any thing should chance to fall down, or the like; but that was all."

"I thought," said she, "that the end of the world was come. What should have come unto us then, Mother?"

"Why, then," replied Isoult, "we should have seen the Lord Jesus Christ coming in the clouds, with all the angels."

"Well," answered Kate, thoughtfully, "I would not have been afeard of Him, for He took up the little babes in His arms, and would not have them sent away. If it had been some of them that desired for to have them away, I might have been afeard."

"Ay," said Dr Thorpe, looking up from his book, "the servants are worse to deal withal than the Master. We be a sight harder upon one the other than He is with any of us."

The Averys were visited, a day or two after the earthquake, by an old acquaintance of Isoult, the companion--"servant" he was called at that time--of Bishop Latimer. Augustine Bernher was by nation a German-Swiss, probably from Basle or its vicinity; and unless we are to take an expression in one of Bradford's letters as figurative, he married the sister of John Bradford.

Like every one else just then, Bernher's mind was running chiefly on the earthquake. He brought news that it had been felt at Croydon, Reigate, and nearly all over Kent; and the question on all lips was--What will come of it? For that it was a prognostic of some fearful calamity, no one thought of doubting.

Whether the earthquake were its forerunner or not, a fearful calamity did certainly follow. On the 7th of July the sweating sickness broke out in London. This terrible malady was almost peculiar to the sixteenth century. It was unknown before the Battle of Bosworth Field, in 1485, when it broke out in the ranks of the victorious army; and it has never been seen again since this, its last and most fatal epidemic, in 1551. It is said to have been of the character of rheumatic fever, but its virulence and rapidity were scarcely precedented. In some cases death ensued two hours only after the attack; and few fatal instances were prolonged to two days. On the tenth of July, the King was hurried away to Hampton Court, for one of his grooms and a gentleman of the chamber were already dead. The fury of the plague, for a veritable plague it was, began to abate in London on the 20th; and between the 7th and 20th died in the City alone, about nine hundred persons [Note 2].

Nor was the disease confined to London. It broke out at Cambridge--in term time--decimating the University. The d.u.c.h.ess of Suffolk, who was residing there to be near her sons, both of whom were then at Saint John's, hastily sent away her boys to Bugden, the Bishop of Lincoln's Palace. But the destroying angel followed. The young Duke and his brother reached Bugden on the afternoon of July 13; and at noon on the following day, the d.u.c.h.ess was childless.

The suspense was dreadful to those who lived in and near London. Every day Isoult watched to see her children sicken--for children were the chief victims of the malady; and on the 15th, when Walter complained of his head, and shivered even in the July sun, she felt certain that the sword of the angel had reached to her. The revulsion of feeling, when Dr Thorpe p.r.o.nounced the child's complaint to be only measles, was intense. The baby, Frances, also suffered lightly, but Kate declined to be ill of any thing, to the great relief of her mother. So the fearful danger pa.s.sed over. No name in the Avery family was inscribed on the tablet of death given to the angel.

John Avery was very indignant at the cant names given by the populace to the sweating sickness. "The new acquaintance"--"Stop-gallant"--"Stoop, knave, and know thy master"--so men termed it, jesting on the very brink of the grave.

"Truly," said he, "'tis enough to provoke a heavier visitation at G.o.d's hand, when His holy ears do hear the light and unseemly manner wherein men have received this one."

"Nor is the one of them true," replied Dr Thorpe. "This disorder is no new acquaintance, for we had it nigh all over one half of England in King Henry's days. I know I had in Bodmin eight sick therewith at one time."

When this terror was pa.s.sing away, an event happened which rejoiced the Papists, and sorely grieved the Gospellers.

On the 5th of April previous, after the deprivation of Gardiner, Dr Poynet had been appointed Bishop of Winchester, and 2000 marks in land a.s.signed for his maintenance. The new Bishop was married; and soon after his elevation, it transpired that his wife had a previous husband yet living. Whether the Bishop knew this at the time of his marriage does not appear; but we may in charity hope that he was ignorant. He was publicly divorced in Saint Paul's Cathedral on the 28th of July; to the extreme delight of the Papists, in whose eyes a blot on the character of a Protestant Bishop was an oasis of supreme pleasure.

The Gospellers were downcast and distressed. Isoult Avery, coming in from the market, recounted with pain and indignation the remarks which she had heard on all sides. But John only smiled when she told him of them.

"It is but like," said he. "The sin of one member tainteth the whole body, specially in their eyes that be not of the body. Rest thee, dear heart! The Judge of all the earth shall not blunder because they do, neither in Bishop Poynet's case nor in our own."

"But," said Isoult, "we had no hand in marrying Bishop Poynet."

"Little enough," he answered. "He shall bear his own sin (how much or little it be) to his own Master. If he knew not that the woman was not free, it is lesser his sin than hers; and trust me, G.o.d shall not doom him for sin he did not. And if he knew, who are we, that we should cast stones at him, or say any thing unto him (confessing and amending) beyond 'Go, and sin no more'?"

"Nay," she said, "it is not we that flout him, but these Papistical knaves which do flout us for his sake."

"Not for his sake," replied John, solemnly; "for an Other's sake. We know that the world hated Him before it hated us. Bishop Poynet is not the man they aim at; he is but a commodious handle, a pipe through which their venom may conveniently run. He whom they flout thus is an other Man, whom one day they as well as we shall see coming in the clouds of Heaven, coming to judge the earth. The question asked of Paul was not 'Why persecutest thou these men and women at Damascus?' It is not, methinks, only 'Inasmuch as ye did' this good, but likewise 'Inasmuch as ye did' this evil, 'unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye did it unto Me.'"

The next thing which aggrieved the people was an order for the abatement of the coinage. Henceforward, the nine-penny piece was to pa.s.s for sixpence, the groat or four-penny piece for twopence, the two-penny piece for a penny, the penny for a halfpenny, and the halfpenny for a farthing. Yet notwithstanding this, or perhaps in consequence of it, the price of provisions rose instead of falling.

"Why," said Dr Thorpe, "this is plainly putting an hand in a man's pocket, and robbing him of half his money!"

"Softly, good friend!" interposed John. "You would not call the King's Grace a robber?"

"The King's Grace is the King's Grace, and may do as it liketh him,"

said Dr Thorpe, a little testily; "'tis yonder rascally Council whereof I speak, and in especial that cheating knave of Warwick. I would we had my Lord of Somerset back, for all he is not a Lutheran, but a Gospeller.

He never thrust his hand into my pocket o' this fashion."

"Ah!" replied John, laughing, "touch a man's pocket, and how he crieth apace!"

"A child newly burnt dreadeth the fire, Jack," answered the old man.

"This is not the first time we have had the King's coin pulled down. I am as true a man to the King as any here; but I have taken no oath to that dotipole [blockhead] of Warwick; and if he play this game once too oft, he may find he hath fished and caught a frog."

"I count," suggested John, soberly, "that my Lord of Warwick's testers shall not pa.s.s for any more than ours."

"What matters that to him, lad," cried Dr Thorpe, "when he can put his hand into the King's treasury, and draw it out full of rose n.o.bles? The scurvy rogue! I would he were hanged!"

John laid his hand very gently and lovingly on the old man's shoulder.

"Would you truly that, friend?" said he, softly.

"A man meaneth not alway every thing he saith," replied Dr Thorpe, somewhat ashamed. "Bring me not to bar, prithee, for every word, when I am heated."

"Dear old friend," John answered, softly, "we shall stand at one Bar for every word."

"Then I shall look an old fool, as I do now," said he. "Sit thee down, lad! and hold that soft tongue o' thine. I can stand a fair flyting [scolding: still a Northern provincialism] or a fustigation [beating], but I never can one of those soft tongues like thine."

John sat down, a little smile playing round his lips, and said no more.

One day in October, Mr Underhill dined at the Lamb. He brought news that at Hampton Court, that day, the Earl of Warwick was to be made Duke of Northumberland; the Marquis Dorset [Henry Grey, husband of the late Duke's elder daughter], Duke of Suffolk; the Lord Treasurer [William Paulet, Lord Saint John], Marquis of Winchester; and Mr William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke.

"Duke of Northumberland!" cried Dr Thorpe, fairly roused at this news.

"Duke of Blunderhead! Had the King made him Duke of c.u.mberland I had little marvelled. Wherefore did his Grace (saving the reverence due) not likewise make me Duke of Truro or Marquis of Bodmin? I have been a truer man unto his Highness than ever my Lord of Warwick, and have done the kingdom a sight less harm."

"Less harm, quotha!" laughed Mr Underhill. "Why, friend, if all were made dukes and marquises that have done no harm to the kingdom, we should have the Minories choke-full of n.o.ble houses."

"We should have mighty few of the Lords keeping their t.i.tles," said Dr Thorpe, grimly.

A few days later, Dr Thorpe, having gone to the barber's near Aldgate, returned with a budget of news, as was usual when he came from that quarter.

"What will you give me for my news?" cried he, as he came in. "Rare news! glorious news!--for all knaves, dolts, and runagates!"

John entered likewise just after him.

"I will give you nought, Doctor, at that rate," said Isoult, laughing.

"I know it, friend," replied John, so sadly that her mirth vanished in a moment. "It is a woeful blow to the Gospel. Isoult, the Duke of Somerset and my Lord Grey de Wilton are committed to the Tower."

"The Duke of Somerset again!" she cried. "But my Lord Grey de Wilton!-- what hath he done?"