“I know it, friend,” replied John, so sadly that her mirth vanished in a moment. “It is a woeful blow to the Gospel. Isoult, the Duke of Somerset and my Lord Grey de Wilton are committed to the Tower.”
“The Duke of Somerset again!” she cried. “But my Lord Grey de Wilton!—what hath he done?”
“Served the King well in Cornwall,” answered John; “I know of nothing worse.”
“’Tis that idiot, knave, dolt, and dizard (fool) of a Northumberland,” cried Dr Thorpe in great indignation. “I would the whole Dudley race had never been born! Knavery runs in their blood—’twill not out of them!”
“There are a few honest men in England—but a few,” said John, mournfully, “and two of the foremost shall lie this night in the Tower of London. And for what? Is it because my Lord Grey hath many times shed his blood for England (the royal blood of England herself which runneth in his veins (Note 3)), that now England herself shall shed it on Tower Hill? Is it because my Lord of Somerset hath given her the best laws she had for many a day, that now she will needs strain her laws to condemn him? Shame upon England if it be so! She shall not be held guiltless for it either before God or men.”
“And yestereven,” continued Dr Thorpe, “was my Lady of Somerset sent also to the Tower, for the great crime, I take it, of being wife unto her husband. And with her a fair throng of gentlemen—what they have done I wis not. Maybe one of them sent the Duke a peacock, and another doffed his bonnet to the Lord Grey.”
“The Duchess, too!” exclaimed John, turning to him. “I heard not of her committal. What can they lay to her charge?”
“Marry, she must have trade on the tail (train) of my Lady of Northumberland last Garter day,” scornfully answered Dr Thorpe. “Were not this a crime well deserving of death?”
“Surely,” said Isoult, “my Lady of Warwick (Note 4) will plead for her own father and mother with her father of Northumberland?”
“Plead with the clouds that they rain not!” said he, “or with a falling rock that it crush you not. Their bosoms were easier to move than John Dudley’s heart of stone.”