When Mr Rose was gone, John said, his voice a little broken,—“Will he be a martyr?”
“God avert it!” cried Isoult.
“Child!” said Dr Thorpe, solemnly, “’tis of such stuff as his that martyrs be made.”
But the King’s work was not yet quite finished. He recovered from his double illness.
The Londoners were terrified in the beginning of June by what they regarded as a fearful sign from Heaven—a shower of what is commonly known as “red rain.” In their eyes it was blood, and a presage of dreadful slaughter. The slaughter followed, whatever the shower might mean. The last year of rest was at hand.
“What say you to my Lord of Northampton?” suddenly inquired John Avery of Mr Rose, one morning when they met in the Strand.
It was an odd and abrupt beginning of conversation: but Mr Rose understood its meaning only too well. The thoughts of the Gospellers were running chiefly now on the dark future, and their own disorganised condition.
“What had Nehemiah said in the like accident to Sanballat?” was his suggestive answer.
The Papists, who were not disorganised, and had no reason to fear the future, were busy catching dolphins,—another portent—which made their appearance at London Bridge in August.
The new service-book, as its contemporaries called it—the second Prayer Book of Edward the Sixth, as we call it—was used for the first time in Saint Paul’s Cathedral, on All Saints’ Day, November 1, 1552. Bishop Ridley’s voice was the first that read it, and he took the whole duty himself; and preached in the choir, habited only in his rochet. In the afternoon he preached at the Cross,—what was then called a long sermon—about three hours. My Lord Mayor, who ought to have been present, was conspicuous by his absence. When remonstrated with, that dignitary observed that “Bishop Ridley’s sermons were alway so long, that he would be at no more, for he was aweary of so long standing.” Wherein my Lord Mayor anticipated the nineteenth century, though it sits out the sermon on cushions, and rarely is called upon to lend its ears for one-third of the time which he was expected to do. Dr Thorpe was not far wrong in the conclusion at which he arrived:—that “my Lord Mayor’s heart passed his legs for stiffness.”