The fugitives were at first too busy to have much time for lamentation. But when the pressure of constant occupation was relaxed, and the furnishing and arranging of matters ended, they began to feel a little like ship-wrecked men, thrown upon a strange coast. Isoult Avery was astonished to find what a stranger she felt in London, where she had lived some years with Anne Basset and the Duchess of Suffolk. One afternoon in September she was peculiarly oppressed by this sense of solitude in a crowd—the most painful solitude of any—but was trying to bear up bravely. She sat at her work, with Kate at her hornbook beside her, when the door was unlatched, and Isoult heard her husband’s well-known voice say,—“Come in,—you shall see her now.”
Isoult rose to receive her unknown visitor.
He was a man of some fifty years or upwards, neither stout nor spare, but tall, and of an especially stately and majestic carriage. His face was bronzed as if with exposure to a southern sun; his hair and eyes were dark, and he had a long dark beard. Grave and deliberate in all his actions, his smile was exquisitely sweet, and his expression thoughtfully gentle.
“Isoult,” said her husband, “this is Mr Rose, an ancient friend of mine, and now parson of West Ham, nigh unto Richmond. He would be acquaint with thee, and so would his wife and daughter.”
Isoult rose and louted to the visitor, and gave him her hand; and to her surprise, Kate, who was commonly very shy with strangers, went up at once to Mr Rose, and suffered him to lift her upon his knee and kiss her.
“I knew not you were a man so much to childre’s liking,” said Avery; “methinks I never saw my little maid so friendly unto a stranger afore.”
“I love them dearly,” answered Mr Rose. “And I pray you, Mrs Avery, if it will please you to take the pain to visit my wife, that you bring this little maid withal.”
This was Isoult’s first introduction to one of the most remarkable men of the sixteenth century. Not so, perhaps, as the world sees eminence; but as God and His angels see it. Thomas Rose was a Devonshire man, and had begun to preach about the same time as Latimer. He was one of the earliest converts of the Reformation, and was constantly and consistently persecuted by the Papal party. Much of his life had been spent: abroad to escape their machinations. The entire history of this man was full of marvellous providences and hairbreadth escapes; and it was to be fuller yet. Weary of dealing in this manner, Rome had at length tried upon him those poisoned shafts which she launched at many a Gospeller—suborning false witnesses to accuse him of uncommitted crimes. Mr Rose stood the trial, and came unscathed out of it.
Isoult readily promised to visit Mrs Rose, though she was slightly dismayed on afterwards hearing from John that Mr Rose had married a foreigner.
“A Protestant, I trust?” she asked doubtfully, for she knew little of foreigners, and with the exception of a handful of Lutherans and Huguenots, thought they were all Papists—with a margin, of course, for Jews, Turks, heretics, and infidels.