"Aye, that I did, and a very gracious lady she was, Master Commendone. I will tell thee of her, and thy house in those days, at supper. My sister will be well pleased to hear it also. Meanwhile"—he sipped at the white liqueur which the servant had brought, and motioned Johnnie towards his own thin green glass with little golden spirals running through it—"meanwhile, tell me how like you the Court life?"
Johnnie started. They were the exact words of his father. "I am getting on very well," he said in reply.
"So I hear, and am well pleased," the Alderman answered. "You have everything in your favour—a knowledge of Spanish, a pleasant presence, and trained to the usage of good society. But, though you may not think it, I have influence, even at Court, though it is in no ways apparent. Tell me something of your aims, and your views, and I shall doubtless be able to help your advancement. There are ticklish times coming, be certain of that, and my experience may be of great service to you. Her Grace, God bless her! is, I fear—I speak to you as man to man, Mr. Commendone—too keen set and determined upon the Papal Supremacy for the true welfare of this realm. I am Catholic. I have always been Catholic. But doctrine, and a purely political dominion from Rome, aye, or from Spain either, is not what we of the City, and who control the finances of the kingdom much more than less, desire or wish to see. After all, Mr. Commendone, I trust I make myself clearly understood to you, and that you are of the same temper and mind as your father and myself; after all is loudly set and perchance badly done, we have to look to the upholding of the realm, inside and out, rather than to be fine upon points of doctrine."
He leant forward in his seat with great earnestness, clasped his right hand, upon the little finger of which was a great ring, with a cut seal of emerald, and brought it down heavily upon the table by his side.
"I believe," he said, "in the Mass, and if I were asked to die for my belief, that would I do. I would do it very reluctantly, Master John. I would evade the necessity for doing it in every way I knew. But if I were set down in front of judges or eke inquisitors, and asked to say that when the priest hath said the words of consecration, the elements are not the very true body of Our Lord Jesus, then I would die for that belief. And of the Invocation of Saints, and of the greatest saint of all—Our Lady—I see no harm in it, but a very right and pleasant practice. For, look you, if these are indeed, as we believe and know clustering around the throne of God, which is the Holy Trinity, then indeed they must hear our prayers, if we believe truly in the Communion of Saints; and hearing them, being in high favour in heaven, their troubles past and they glorified, certes, we down here may well think their voices will be heard around the Throne. That is true Catholic doctrine as I see it. But of the power of the Bishop of Rome to direct and interfere in the honest internal affairs of a country—well, I snap my fingers at it. And of the power of the priesthood, which is but part of the machinery by which His Holiness endeavoureth to accrue to himself all earthly power, at that also I spit. From my standpoint, a priest is an ordained man of God; his function is to say Mass, to consecrate the elements, and so to bring God near to us upon the altar. But of your confessions, your pryings into family life, your temporal dominion, I have the deepest mistrust. And also, I think, that the cause of Holy Church would be much better served if its priests were allowed—for such of them as wished it—to be married men. A man is a man, and God hath given him his natural attributes. I am not really learned, nor am I well read in the history of the world, but I have looked into it enough, Master Commendone, to know that God hath ordained that men should take women in marriage and rear up children for the glory of the Lord and the welfare of the State. Mark you"—his face became striated with lines of contempt and dislike—"mark you, this celibacy is to be the thing which will destroy the power of the sacrificing priest in the eyes of all before many hundred years have passed. I shall not see it, thou wilt not see it. We are good Church of England men now, but what I say will come to pass, and then God himself only knoweth what anarchs and deniers, what blasphemers and runagates will hold the world.
"Her Grace," he went on, "believeth that as Moses ordered blasphemers to be put to death, so she thinketh it the duty of a Christian prince to eradicate the cockle from the fold of God's Church, to cut out the gangrene that it may not spread to the sounder parts. But Her Grace is a woman that hath been much sequestered all her life till now. She cometh to the throne, and is but—I trust I speak no treason, Mr. Commendone—a tool and instrument of the priests from Spain, and the man from Spain also who is her lord. Why! if only the Church in this realm could go on as King Henry started it—not a new Church, mind you, but a Church which hath thrown off an unnecessary dominion from Italy—if it could go on as under the reign of the little King Edward was set out and promised very well, 'twould be truly Catholic still, and the priests of the Church would be all married men and citizens within the State, with a stake in civil affairs, and so by reason of their spiritual power and civil obligations, the very bulwark of society."
Johnnie listened intently, nodding now and then as the Alderman made a point, and as he himself realised the value of it.
"Look you, Master Commendone," His Worship continued, "look you, only yesterday a worthy clergyman, whom I knew and loved, a man of his inches, a shrewd and clever gentleman of good birth, was haled from the City down to his own parish and burnt as a heretic. Heretic doubtless the good man was. He would be living now if he had not denied the blessed and comforting truth of Transubstantiation before that blood-stained wolf, the Bishop of London. The man I speak of was a good man, and though he was mistaken on that issue, he would, under kindlier auspices, doubtless have returned to the central truth of our religion. He was married, and had lived in honourable wedlock with his wife for many years. She was a lady from Wales, and a sweet woman. But it was his marriage as much as any other thing about him that brought him to his death."
The Alderman's voice sank into something very like a whisper. "One of my men," he said, "was riding down with the Sheriff of London to Hadley, where Dr. Taylor, he of whom I speak, suffered this very morning. At five this afternoon my man was back, and told me how the good doctor died. He died with great constancy, very much, Mr. Commendone, as one of the old saints that the Romans did use so cruelly in the early years of Our Lord's Church. Yet, as something of a student of affairs—and Dr. Taylor is not the first good heretic who hath died rather than recant—I see that the married clergy suffer with the most alacrity. And why? Because, as I see it, they are bearing testimony to the validity and sanctity of their marriage. The honour of their wives and children is at stake; the desire of leaving them an unsullied name and a virtuous example, combined with a sense of religious duty. And thus the heart derives strength from the very ties which in other circumstances might well tend to weaken it.
"I am in mourning to-night, mourning in my heart, Mr. Commendone, for a good, mistaken friend who hath suffered death."