“And did he marry that Isabel Grey of Ashburton?”
“No, she married a fat and well-liking Devonshire squire.”
“Poor Cuthbert; what a shame!”
“Oh, you need not pity him; few people marry their first love; he found ample consolation in Eveline de Courcy, daughter of the baron, had many bright-eyed sons and daughters, and lived happy, as the story-books say, ‘ever afterwards.’”
“But how was it ever known who were his true parents: for it must have been found out, or we should never have had this tale,” said an older boy.
“You remember the good old priest of S. Mary of the Steppes in Exeter?”
“Yes,” cried several, “he was sent to fetch that Sir John Redfyrne to old Madge.”
“Well, after the death of the poor old woman, he found a sealed packet in her chamber, directed to himself, with the words, ‘To be opened in case of my sudden death,’ which revealed the truth, but he dared not act upon it at once, in favour of an attainted person, and against a court favourite: he waited his time. Meanwhile, in the early years of Edward the Sixth, the Devonshire rebellion broke out, and suspected of being implicated therein, he fled across the seas, and eventually, after many years, became a monk in the Abbey of Bec. There he discovered the identity of Cuthbert, then resident at the castle of Courcy, hard by, with the youth who so narrowly escaped the scaffold at Exeter. Then he revealed the secret to Father Ambrose, and he to Cuthbert.”
“Then why did not Cuthbert claim his own?” said many at once.
“Because he had already attained all he desired in France, and the England of Elizabeth, much as it is lauded by many, had no attractions for him: besides there would have been the old question of the Supremacy to have fought out again; I am not in a position to say that his opinions had undergone any change on that point, and otherwise he could not have lived in peace in his native land.”