Darnley; or, The Field of the Cloth of Gold

by G. P. R. James

"Welcome back again, my good lord cardinal," replied the king; "you have been but a truant of late. We have in many things wanted your good counsel. But your careful letters have been received, and we have to thank you for the renewed quiet of the West Riding."

"Happily, your grace, all is now tranquil," replied the cardinal, "and the kingdom within itself blessed with profound peace; but yet, my lord, even when this was accomplished, it was necessary to discover the cause and authors of the evil, that the fire of discord and sedition might be totally extinguished, and not, being only smothered, burst out anew where we least expected it. This has been done, my liege. The authors of all these revolts, the instigators of their fellow-subjects' treason, have been discovered; and if your grace have leisure for such sad business, I will even now crave leave to lay before you the particulars of a most daring plot, which, through the activity of good Sir Payan Wileton, I have been enabled to detect."

"Without there!" cried the king, somewhat impatiently. "See that we are not interrupted. Tell Sir Osborne Maurice that we will send for him when we are free. Sit, sit, my Wolsey!" he continued. "Now, by the holy faith, it grieves me to hear such things! I had hoped that, tranquillity being restored, I should have sped over to France to meet my royal brother Francis, with nothing but joy upon my brow. However, you are thanked, my good lord, for your zeal and for your diligence. We must not let the poisonous root of treason spread, lest it grow too great a tree to be hewn down. Who are these traitors? Ha! Have you good proof against them?"

"Such proof, my liege, that, however willing I be to doubt, uncertainty, the refuge of hope, is denied me, and I must needs believe. When we have nourished anything with our grace, fostered it with kindly care, taught it to spread and become great, heaped it with favours, loaded it with bounty, we naturally hope that, having sowed all these good things, our crop will be rich in gratitude and love; but sorry I am to say, that your grace's royal generosity has fallen upon a poisoned soil, and that Edward Duke of Buckingham, who might well believe himself the most favoured man in the realm, now proves himself an arrant traitor."

"By heaven!" cried the king, "I have lately much doubted of his loyalty. He has, as you once before made me observe, much absented himself from the court, keeping, as I hear, an almost royal state in the counties; and lately, on the pretence that he is sick, that his physicians command him quiet, he refuses to accompany us to Guisnes. I fear me, I fear me, 'tis his loyalty is sick. But let me hear your reasons, my good lord cardinal. Fain would I still behold him with an eye of favour; for he is in many things a noble and a princely peer, and by nature richly endowed with all the shining qualities both of the body and the mind. 'Tis sad, indeed 'tis sad, that such a man should fall away and lose his high renown! But your reasons, Wolsey! Give me the history."

It were needless in this place to recapitulate all that we have seen, in the last chapter, advanced by Sir Payan Wileton to criminate the Duke of Buckingham. Suffice it that Wolsey related to the king the very probable tale that had been told him by the knight: namely, that Buckingham, aspiring to the throne, affected an undue degree of popularity with the commons, and by his secret agents rendered them dissatisfied with the existing government, exciting them to various tumults and revolts, of which he cited many an instance; and that, still further, he had contrived to introduce one of the most active agents of his treason into the court, and near to the king's own person.

"Whom do you aim at?" cried the king. "Quick! give me his name. I know of no such person. All about me are men of trust."

"Alas! no, my liege," answered Wolsey: "the man I mean calls himself Sir Osborne Maurice."

"Ha!" cried Henry, starting; and then, after thinking for a moment, he burst into a fit of laughter. "Nay, nay, my good Wolsey," he said, shaking his head: "nay, nay, nay; Sir Osborne saved my life no longer ago than yesterday, which looks not like treason;" and he related to the cardinal the accident that had befallen him while hawking.

Wolsey was somewhat embarrassed; but he replied, "We often see that, taken by some sudden accident, men act not as they proposed to do; and there is such a nobility in your grace's nature, that he must be a hardened traitor indeed who could see you in danger, and not by mere impulse hasten to save you. Perhaps such may have been the case with this Sir Osborne, or perhaps his master's schemes may not yet be ripe for execution: at all events, my liege, doubt not that he is a most assured traitor."