“My father’s mother and his mother were sisters, I take it,” said Arthur.
“Arthur Tremayne, how cometh it I never heard this afore?”
“I cannot tell, Jack: thou didst never set me on recounting of my pedigree, as I remember.”
“But wherefore not tell the same?”
“What matter?” quietly responded Arthur.
“‘What matter’—whether I looked on thee as a mere parson’s son, with nought in thine head better than Greek and Latin, or as near kinsman of one with very purple blood in him,—one that should be well-nigh Premier Earl of England, but for an attainder?”
Arthur passed by the slight offered alike to his father’s profession and to the classics, merely replying with a smile,—“I am glad if it give thee pleasure to know it.”
“But tell me, prithee, with such alliance, what on earth caused Master Tremayne to take to parsonry?”
The contempt in which the clergy were held, for more than a hundred years after this date, was due in all probability to two causes. The first was the natural reaction from the overweening reverence anciently felt for the sacerdotal order: when the sacerdos was found to be but a presbyter, his charm was gone. But the second was the disgrace which had been brought upon their profession at large, by the evil lives of the old priests.
“I believe,” said Arthur, gravely, “it was because he accounted the household service of God higher preferment than the nobility of men.”