'I arrest you, John Beaumont,' said the Proctor, 'for brawling and other offences against the peace and dignity of our Lady the Queen and this University.'
'At whose suit?' asked the Vice-Master.
'At Mr. Saunderson's,' he answered. 'Here is the warrant; I pray you come peaceably.'
'Oh, I will come gladly enough!' said Mr. Beaumont, 'if it were only to enjoy the discomfiture it will bring the King's Baker when Sir William Cecil hears of it. Thank God, we have a Chancellor who knows my brother and me for true men, and can make a traitor's ears tingle—ay, and his back too. Let my brother know all, Mr. Cartwright, and pray him write without delay to Sir William.'
The Proctor looked a little troubled at the mention of the great Secretary of State, but still he performed his task, and our Vice-Master was conducted to prison. And there indeed he lay till an answer came down from Sir William, with such a stinging reprimand for Dr. Baker that he was glad enough to release Mr. Beaumont and eat his humble pie, thanking God it was no worse.
Were I to speak at greater length of Cambridge as it was at that time, I should have little else to tell save ringing the changes on what happened to me in the first week of residence. Factions and contentions were our only occupation; and while the seniors quarrelled the students brawled, and grew daily more inordinate and contemptuous of rules for their orderly governance, as well in behaviour as in religion.
As for learning, it was only part and parcel with our manners. Our only philosophy was controversy concerning the ordinances of the English Church; while in grammar we studied nothing so much as how to rail in Ciceronian Latin,—and cunning professors we had, at least for the railing.
Sharing Mr. Cartwright's lodging, I was more fortunate than most. Though very earnest in the controversies, he would not neglect his scholarship nor mine. Every morning he rose between three and four, not allowing himself more than five hours' sleep, whatever happened. I rose with him, out of my love of him and learning; and pushing my trundle-bed under his standing bedstead, to make room for my stool beside him, read with him out of the books we loved so well till nigh ten o'clock, when dinner was served in the Hall.
After that the disputations in the schools began, which I always attended with him, being proud to carry the books of the most brilliant scholar and popular orator in Cambridge.
Between that and supper-time I exercised my body, as I had promised Sir Fulke, chiefly in the fencing-school. For there was newly come to Cambridge at that time an Italian master of fence, to whom all the best gentlemen in the University resorted to learn the new foining rapier play, to the great discomfiture of the teachers of sword and buckler. Moreover, I rode out continually to the artillery butts or the Gog-Magog hills, till Mr. Cartwright persuaded me to abandon the evil company that gathered there daily for pastime.