Lambeth House had been lately restored by Parker, and was now a very beautiful and well-kept place. Among other repairs and buildings he had re-roofed the great hall that stood just within Morton’s gateway; he had built a long pier into the Thames where the barge could be entered easily even at low tide; he had rebuilt the famous summerhouse of Cranmer’s in the garden, besides doing many sanitary alterations and repairs; and the house was well kept up in Grindal’s time.
Anthony soon added a great affection and tenderness to the awe that he felt for the Archbishop, who was almost from the first a pathetic and touching figure. When Anthony first entered on his duties in November ’76, he found the Archbishop in his last days of freedom and good favour with the Queen. Elizabeth, he soon learnt from the gossip of the household, was as determined to put down the Puritan “prophesyings” as the popish services; for both alike tended to injure the peace she was resolved to maintain. Rumours were flying to and fro; the Archbishop was continually going across the water to confer with his friends and the Lords of the Council, and messengers came and went all day; and it was soon evident that the Archbishop did not mean to yield. It was said that his Grace had sent a letter to her Majesty bidding her not to meddle with what did not concern her, telling her that she, too, would one day have to render account before Christ’s tribunal, and warning her of God’s anger if she persisted.
Her Majesty had sworn like a trooper, a royal page said one day as he lounged over the fire in the guard-room, and had declared that if she was like Ozeas and Ahab and the rest, as Grindal had said she was, she would take care that he, at least, should be like Micaiah the son of Imlah, before she had done with him. Then it began to leak out that Elizabeth was sending her commands to the bishops direct instead of through their Metropolitan; and, as the days went by, it became more and more evident that disgrace was beginning to shadow Lambeth. The barges that drew up at the watergate were fewer as summer went on, and the long tables in hall were more and more deserted; even the Archbishop himself seemed silent and cast down. Anthony used to watch him from his window going up and down the little walled garden that looked upon the river, with his hands clasped behind him and his black habit gathered up in them, and his chin on his breast. He would be longer than ever too in chapel after the morning prayer, and the company would wait and wonder in the anteroom till his Grace came in and gave the signal for dinner. And at last the blow fell.
On one day in June, Anthony, who had been on a visit to Isabel at Great Keynes, returned to Lambeth in time for morning prayer and dinner just before the gates were shut by the porter, having ridden up early with a couple of grooms. There seemed to him to be an air of constraint abroad as the guests and members of the household gathered for dinner. There were no guests of high dignity that day, and the Archbishop sat at his own table silent and apart. Anthony, from his place at the steward’s table, noticed that he ate very sparingly, and that he appeared even more preoccupied and distressed than usual. His short-sighted eyes, kind and brown, surrounded by wrinkles from his habit of peering closely at everything, seemed full of sadness and perplexity, and his hand fumbled with his bread continually. Anthony did not like to ask anything of his neighbours, as there were one or two strangers dining at the steward’s table that day; and the moment dinner was over, and grace had been said and the Archbishop retired with his little procession preceded by a white wand, an usher came running back to tell Master Norris that his Grace desired to see him at once in the inner cloister.
Anthony hastened round through the court between the hall and the river, and found the Archbishop walking up and down in his black habit with the round flapped cap, that, as a Puritan, he preferred to the square head-dress of the more ecclesiastically-minded clergy, still looking troubled and cast down, continually stroking his dark forked beard, and talking to one of his secretaries. Anthony stood at a little distance at the open side of the court near the river, cap in hand, waiting till the Archbishop should beckon him. The two went up and down in the shade in the open court outside the cloisters, where the pump stood, and where the pulpit had been erected for the Queen’s famous visit to his predecessor; when she had sat in a gallery over the cloister and heard the chaplain’s sermon. On the north rose up the roof of the chapel. The cloisters themselves were poor buildings—little more than passages with a continuous row of square windows running along them the height of a man’s head.
After a few minutes the secretary left the Archbishop with an obeisance, and hastened into the house through the cloister, and presently the Archbishop, after a turn or two more with the same grave air, peered towards Anthony and then called him.
Anthony immediately came towards him and received orders that half a dozen horses with grooms should be ready as soon as possible, who were to receive orders from Mr. Richard Frampton, the secretary; and that three or four horses more were to be kept saddled till seven o’clock that evening in case further messages were wanted.
“And I desire you, Mr. Norris,” said the Archbishop, “to let the men under your charge know that their master is in trouble with the Queen’s Grace; and that they can serve him best by being prompt and obedient.”
Anthony bowed to the Archbishop, and was going to withdraw, but the Archbishop went on:
“I will tell you,” he said, “for your private ear only at present, that I have received an order this day from my Lords of the Council, bidding me to keep to my house for six months; and telling me that I am sequestered by the Queen’s desire. I know not how this will end, but the cause is that I will not do her Grace’s will in the matter of the Exercises, as I wrote to tell her so; and I am determined, by God’s grace, not to yield in this thing; but to govern the charge committed to me as He gives me light. That is all, Mr. Norris.”