“Your assured loving friend,—
“K. Suffolk.”
The reader will need more explanation of this lively epistle than did Isoult. Anne Basset, the third of Lady Lisle’s four daughters, had been successively Maid of Honour to the four latter Queens of Henry the Eighth; during much of which period (with an interval for her Calais experience) Isoult Barry had been her bower-woman. When Isoult quitted Anne’s service for that of the Duchess of Suffolk, she begged that her old friend Annis Holland might be promoted to the vacant place,—a request readily granted by Anne. Since Isoult Barry became Isoult Avery, she had seen little of either Anne or Annis; and the transference of the latter to the Duchess’s service was no little wonder to her.
Meanwhile public news poured in on all sides. Mr Tremayne, who had occasion to journey to Exeter, came back armed at all points with fresh tidings of what was doing in the world; and as such live newspapers supplied all that was to be had, every body in Bodmin immediately asked him to dinner. Mr Tremayne declined the majority of the invitations; but he accepted that from Bradmond, which included his family also. So he, in a brown velvet suit, and Custance in the gravest drab, and Arbel with some bright blue ribbons neutralising her sober “sad-coloured” dress, and Robin, whose cap bore a white feather stuck in it in a style not suggestive of Quakerism, walked up to Bradmond one Thursday afternoon, to four-hours.
It is scarcely needful to explain that four-hours was a meal taken at four p.m., and in style and custom corresponding to the “afternoon tea” now in vogue. It may be more desirable to indicate of what it consisted, seeing that tea and coffee were yet mysteries of the future. There were cakes of all varieties; there was clotted cream; and of course there was junket. There were apple puffs, and syllabubs, and half-a-dozen different kinds of preserves. In the place which is now occupied by the tea-pot was a gallon of sack, flanked by a flagon of Gascon wine; beside which stood large jugs of new milk and home-brewed ale. One thing at least was evident, there was no fear of starvation. When the ladies had finished a little private conference, and all the party were gathered round the table, Mr Tremayne was requested to open his budget of news.
It was glad news for the Gospellers, for the grand item which in their eyes overwhelmed every other, was that Bishop Gardiner had left Court—not exactly in disgrace, yet with a tacit understanding that his stay was no longer welcome—and that the King’s uncle, the Earl of Hertford, now created Duke of Somerset, was placed at the head of public affairs. Somerset was a Lutheran, but just emerging from the twilight of Lutheranism into the full Gospel day.
After the great subject came the smaller ones. The knighting of the young King by his uncle Somerset; the creation of a large batch of peers,—Somerset himself and his brother, the brother of Queen Katherine (made Marquis of Northampton), the half-brother of Lady Frances Basset (created Earl of Warwick), and Wriothesley the persecutor, who was made Earl of Southampton. These were only a few of the number, but of them we shall hear again. Then came the account of the coronation on Shrove Sunday: how that grave, blue-eyed child of nine years old, had been crowned and anointed in the venerable Abbey, by Archbishop Cranmer, in the presence of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal; and how he had sat in the throne at the coronation-feast in the Hall, with the crown of England on the little head, and all the nobles at separate tables below. (Note 10.) And throughout England rang the cry, “God bless him!” for England’s hope was all in God and him.
Note 1. Arabella; originally spelt Orabele or Orabilia, now Arbel or Arbella.
Note 2. Constance, at this time pronounced Custance.