"In the name of GOD! [=most certainly]," said I: and so went with him, requiring [inquiring of] him, "If I might understand the cause."
He said, "He knew none."
"This needed not, then," said I; "any one messenger might have fetched me unto them": suspecting the cause to be, as it was indeed, the ballet.
On the morrow [5th of August, 1553], the Sheriff, seeing me nothing dismayed, thinking it to be some light matter, went not with me himself: but sent me unto the Tower with two of his men, waiting upon me with two bills [men with halberts], prisoner-like, who brought me unto the Council Chamber; being commanded to deliver me unto Secretary Bourne.
Thus standing waiting at the Council Chamber door, two or three of my fellows, the Pensioners, and my cousin-german Gilbert Wynter, Gentleman Usher unto the Lady Elizabeth [see p. 120], stood talking with me.
In the meantime, cometh Sir Edward Hastings [see Vol. III. p. 147], newly made Master of the Horse to the Queen, and seeing me standing there prisoner, frowning earnestly upon me, said, "Are you come? We will talk with you or your party, I warrant you!" and so went into the Council.
With that, my fellows and kinsman shrank away from me, as men greatly afraid.
I did then perceive the said Sir Edward bare in remembrance the controversy that was betwixt him and me in talk and questions of religion at Calais, when the Right Honourable the Earl of Huntingdon, his brother, went over, General of 6,000 men: with whom I went the same time, and was Controller of the Ordnance.
The Earl being visited with sickness when he came thither, for that I went over in his company, and could play and sing to the lute, therewith to pass away the time, on the nights being long, for we went over in Christmas [1552], would have me with him in his chamber; and had also a great delight to hear his brother reason with me in matters of religion. Who would be very hot, when I did overlay him with the texts of the Scripture concerning the natural presence of Christ in the sacrament of the altar; and would swear great oaths, specially, "by the Lord's foot!" that after the words spoken by the priest there remained no bread, but the natural body that Mary bare.
"Nay, then, it must needs be so," would I say, "and [if] you prove it with such oaths!"