“Because we know that the father slept at Oxford last night with store of troops, and that he will be here this night with a royal warrant to enforce his right to the bestowal of his child; and he hath already promised her to the leader of the malignant Papists.”
“And are we here to resist the king’s soldiers and the mandate of the king?”
“Yea, to the death!” he said, and sank into gloomy thoughts and said no more.
I looked around among the assembly, and recognised no other faces that I knew, and in a short space the great lady, having finished her colloquy with her next neighbour, rose up and said—“My lords, I believe ye be all of kin to this house, and the other gentlemen be its friends—a falling house, as represented by a feeble woman of fourscore years and five. Yet in the greatness of the cause, may we securely expect a gift of strength even to so frail an instrument as I am. I have consulted with you all, and finally I have taken counsel with my kind cousin and sweet friend, the Earl of Fitzoswald, now at my side, and he hath agreed to what I have proposed. It now, then, but remains to carry our project into effect; and for that purpose I have summoned hither a good man and excellent divine, Master Willis of this neighbourhood, to be efficacious in that behalf.”
I started up, and said in great agitation—“Oh, my lady!”——but had not proceeded further when I was broken in upon by a voice of thunder—
“Silence, I say! What, is it for the frailness of a reed like you that such noble enterprise must perish? Make no remonstrance, sir, but do what is needed, or——”
Although the great lady did not finish her words, I felt an assurance steal like ice over my soul that my hours were numbered if I hesitated, and I bowed low, while Mr William Snowton did privily pull me down into my seat by the hinder parts of my cassock.
“You—you, Master Willis, of all men, should least oppose this godly step. For the noise thereof will sound unto the ends of the earth, and make the old Antichrist on his seven hills quake and tremble, and shake the pitiful spirit of the apostate of Whitehall. Say I not well, my lords?”
“You say well,” ran round the room in a murmur of consent.
“And you—you, Master Willis,” she went on, “least of all, should object to keep a lamb within the true fold—yea, a lamb which you did see with your own eyes introduced into the same. Remember you nought of godly Master Waller’s in Berkshire, or of the scene you saw in a certain chamber, where the baptismal waters were poured forth, and murmured like a pleasant fountain in the dying ears of a devout Christian woman?”