“Why,” said she, “what name gave they them?”
“Forsooth,” replied he, “‘ragged staffs;’ and thou wist what that meaneth.”
“What, a quip on my Lord of Northumberland’s arms?” answered Isoult.
“Yea, justly,” said he; “and this sweet companion loveth not to have his arms spoke about. So here is a proclamation—come out of the Court of Fools, as I live!—that no man henceforward shall speak evil of the new coin upon penalty. Didst ever hear such a piece of folly?”
“Ay,” interposed John, who sat reading in the chimney-corner, “and heard you how Master Latimer hath offended? Some time agone, preaching before the King, he chanced to repeat the device of the new shilling (that coming pat, I take it, to his matter) to wit, ‘Timor Domini fons vitae.’ And here quoth he, ‘We have now a pretty little shilling, in deed a very pretty one. I have but one, I think, in my purse; and the last day I had put it away almost for an old groat.’ And so plucked it out of his purse, and read the device to the people, with the signification thereof. Now (would you crede it?) there was murmuring against Mr Latimer of my Lord of Northumberland’s following, that he had reviled the new shilling, and contemned it for no better than an old groat.”
“I do protest!” cried Dr Thorpe, “the world is gone mad!”
“Saving you and me,” said John, gravely.
“I scantly know, Jack,” answered he, shaking his white head. “Methinks I shall not save you nor me long.”
One of the strangest things in this strange world is the contrasts perpetually to be found in it. While Somerset lay thus under sentence of death, the Lord of Misrule passed through London. He was George Ferris, an old friend of the Hot Gospeller, and a warm Protestant himself; yet it would be a tolerably safe guess to assert that Ferris was a Lutheran. Scarcely would a Gospeller have filled that position on that day.
Perhaps the relics of Dr Thorpe’s Lutheranism were to blame for his persistent determination to have Twelfth Day kept with all the honours. He insisted on cake and snap-dragon, and was rewarded for his urgency by drawing the king, while Kate was found to be his queen. Their mimic majesties were seated in two large chairs at one end of the parlour, the white-haired king laughing like a child, while the little queen was as grave as a judge. The snap-dragon followed, for which a summary abdication took place; and greatly amused was the old man to find Walter in abject fear of burning his fingers, while Kate plunged her hand into the blue flaming dish with sufficient courage for any knight in Christendom. The evening closed with hot cockles, after which Esther took possession of the children, declaring, with more earnestness than was her wont, that they must and should not stay up another minute.