[CHAPTER XXV.]
April 30.
MY Lord and Lady have come, with all their train, and we have been up to the great house to pay our visit. Having never seen my Lady Stanton, I was naturally curious about her. My mother told me that she was very beautiful, and gentle, and highly accomplished; but I was as much amazed at her beauty as if I had never heard a word. Truly I never saw anything so lovely. She made me think of nothing so much as of a white musk rose, fairest of flowers to look upon, and shedding sweetness around; but alas, too soon fading and easily shaken to pieces, even in its freshest bloom. She was overjoyed to see my stepmother, and welcomed me with a grace and warmth which made me feel at home with her directly. She would have us stay and spend the day with her, and sent for my father and Harry to come to supper.
Of course she and my mother had a hundred matters to discuss, of which I knew nothing; but I was quite content to listen while they talked over the news of the Court, especially when the matter of the King's divorce came up. It seems quite decided that there is to be a divorce by some means or other, though the Pope throws difficulties in the way. Meantime my dear Mistress is no more treated by the King as his wife, and hardly hath she honor as Queen, while Mistress Anne, forsooth, hath her ladies in waiting, and her levees, with the King dining with her and making hunting and hawking parties with her, and all paying their court, as though she were already Queen. It made my blood boil but to hear of her, and my mother was sterner than ever I saw or heard her, in reprobation of Mistress Anne's treacherous and light conduct.
"Yet they say my Lady Marchioness is well affected toward the new doctrines, and those who hold them!" said my Lady.
"So much the worse for the doctrines," answered my mother. "The truth hath no such enemies as they who hold it in unrighteousness. But what of the new doctrines?"
"They spread wondrously, no one knows how!" answered my Lady. "Copies of Master Tyndale's New Testament make their way in all quarters, even in the Court itself; and all men's minds are in a ferment. The Greek learning is more in favor than ever in some quarters, and more bitterly opposed in others. We heard a furious sermon against it in Salisbury, where we stayed a few days. The preaching friar said that Hebrew was the language of unbelieving Jews, and Greek of idolatrous infidels and schismatics; while Latin was the tongue of the Church and the Pope, and more fit to hold the Holy Scriptures than the vulgar tongue, which was used for all base purposes."
"I suppose Latin must have been the vulgar tongue with the Romans," I ventured to say. "Doubtless the Roman ladies scolded their maids and their children, and gave orders about meat, and wine, and spinning, just as we do in English."
"You are right, cousin," answered my Lady; "and when St. Jerome translated the Scripture into Latin, he put it in the vulgar tongue, as its name signifies."