It is not only children who are afraid of the dark. We all love to walk by sight. We are rarely content to see only the next step we must take; yet it is all we need see, and often all that God will show us. The darkness and the light are both alike to Him; and if only we would let Him see for us, we should act the part of wise children. It is easy, when the light comes, to cry out at our past foolishness in being afraid of the dark. We never think so while the darkness is upon us.
A few days later came Philippa Basset, full of Court news, which she had from her brother James.
“Yesterday,” said she, “came a letter or messenger from King Philip, denying his present return hither: whereupon the Queen fell into so great a chafe, that she commanded his picture borne out of the privy chamber. Thus far my brother; but Jack Throgmorton saith that she fetched a knife and scored the picture twice or thrice all the way down, and then kicked it out of the chamber. (Throgmorton denied having said this, when a judicial inquiry was held.) ‘Saint Mary worshipped might she be!’ said I to James, ‘is her Grace a woman like to do that?’ ‘Nay,’ saith he, ‘not half so like as thou shouldst be in her place.’” Whereat Philippa laughed merrily.
Isoult was in a mood for any thing rather than laughter. It was too near Easter for mirth. Easter, which should be the most blessed festival of the year, was now turned into an occasion of offence and of mourning to the servants of God.
In the evening all from the Lamb were at Mr Underhill’s farewell supper, at his house in Wood Street, whence he purposed to set out for Coventry the next day as soon as the gates were opened. He said he would not remain another Easter in London.
The last day of June came a letter to John Avery from Mr Underhill, saying that they had all arrived safely at Coventry, and he had taken a house a mile out of the city, “in a wood side,” where he trusted to keep quiet until the tyranny were overpast.
The darkness was growing thicker.
In that month of June began the procession in every church, at which the Bishop commanded the attendance of every child in London, bearing books or beads in hand, and of one adult from each house to take charge of them. “Ours are not like to go,” said Isoult, tenderly; “but ’tis harder work to set them in peril than to go therein one’s self.”
Sir John Gage died on the 18th of April, an old man full of years. It was he who had been on the Commission to Calais, and had brought Isoult to England after Lord Lisle’s arrest; and he had also endeavoured to have Mr Underhill sent to Newgate.
The search against Lutheran books was now very strict (and laughable enough in less sorrowful circumstances). Among these Lutheran books the most strictly forbidden were my Lord Chancellor’s book “De Vera Obedientia” and one written by the Queen herself when a girl, under the auspices of Katherine Parr,—a translation of a work of Erasmus.