When the Martyrdom on the Tor Hill was accomplished, and the Abbey suppressed, Sir John proposed to his neighbour to let young Nick begin the business of life (as was then customary even amongst the sons of gentlefolk) as his page, not, be it understood, in any menial sense of the word.
The squire consented, and the reader knows the consequences, so far as we have yet had space to unfold them.
FOOTNOTES
[41] These details were gathered from some melancholy pages in an old parish register, which the writer once perused, when staying in the neighbourhood. Under this terrible visitation the proportion of deaths was sometimes far larger than that given in the text.
[42] Craving another’s, wasteful of his own.
[43] The great snow storm of January, 1881, was entirely “unforecasted,” if the writer remembers aright.
[44] The process of Bill of Attainder was invented by Cromwell himself, and he was, by a wondrous nemesis the first to fall by it. Cranmer voted on the second and third readings for the death of his friend—his presence is noted in the journal of the house, and the Bill was carried “nemine discrepante.”