The doctor’s colour rose a little. He seemed about to reply, but thought better of it and held his peace. From the back of the court, however, came angry murmurs, for few men were more popular in Hereford. The people did not trouble at all about his views, but almost all of them knew what he was in times of sickness or distress. Nat, the sailor, swore beneath his breath in a soft monotone which seemed to relieve him, and Gabriel, with eyes like two live coals, slipped quietly through the crowd and made his way to his father’s side, craving to be as near him as possible.
“Will you solemnly undertake never again to offend in this matter?” was the next question.
“Your Grace,” replied the doctor, “I can undertake nothing of the sort, but do claim my right to stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath set us free, and not to be entangled again in the yoke of bondage.”
“Then every time you do not bow at the sacred Name be well assured that you will be fined,” was the sharp retort, and sentence of the Court with the amount of fine was duly pronounced.
Gabriel breathed more freely. It was not a question of earcropping; but his heart burned with wrath at the way in which the Archbishop rebuked his father, and drawing nearer to him, he caught his hand in his and kissed it with a devotion and reverence that touched more than one spectator.
“Your own son teaches you that outward ceremonies are not valueless,” said the Archbishop.
“Your Grace,” said Dr. Harford, looking up with an unusual light in his quiet eyes, “should I value my little son’s demonstration if there were compulsion in it—if it were a ceremony performed at fixed moments? And would it be worth aught to me if he were fined so many shillings for omitting it? Pardon my outspokenness, but your Grace, though a learned man, knows naught of fatherhood.”
“Remove this prating Puritan and let the next case be called,” said the Archbishop, harshly.
And as Dr. Harford and Gabriel moved away, the court rang with the clerk’s stentorian voice shouting, “Mary Boswood, on a charge of refusing to wear a white veil when returning thanks after childbirth.”
As they passed down the gangway they met the unlucky matron with flushed face and tearful eyes making her way to the place they had quitted, and deeming it a very hard thing that she, who had been a virtuous wedded wife for years, should be dragged into court for refusing to wear, as she expressed it, “a thing as like as two peas to the white sheet in which bad women did penance.”