"Daughter, I conjure you to hear what this vile Richard Calle sayeth to you. Tell me that it is false—tell me that he is a bold liar, when he affirmeth that you are contracted, and you shall at once have all freedom and reasonable pleasure; but if not——"
"Mother, I listen."
"Hear, then, what this abominable bill imports. Sir James, please to read."
"'To Mistress Margery Paston:
"'Mine own lady and mistress, and before God very true wife, I, with heart full, very sorrowfully recommend me unto you, as he that cannot be merry, nor nought shall be, till it be otherwise with us than it is yet; for this life that we lead now is neither pleasure to God nor to the world, considering the great band of matrimony that is made betwixt us, and also the great love that hath been, and as I trust yet is, betwixt us, and as on my part never greater. Wherefore I beseech Almighty God comfort us as soon as it pleaseth Him; for us that ought of very right to be most together, are most asunder. Meseemeth it is a thousand years ago that I spake with you——"
Margery here bursts into a passion of tears; and her mother, almost weeping too, ejaculates, "My poor child!" The priest looks at the lady somewhat spitefully, and proceeds:——
"'I had liever than all the good in the world I might be with you. Alas! alas! good lady full little remember they what they do that keep us thus asunder. Four times in the year are they accursed that let matrimony——'"
"Accursed are they?" exclaims the priest. "Ban and anathema against us, my worshipful lady! But there are others, I wot, that the Church holds accursed; and this base mechanical be one of them, if I mistake not. Did I not once hear him say—for the varlet ever had privilege to speak in this house, when his betters held their peace—did I not hear him once say that his father had told him that he had seen the heretic priest, John Waddon, burnt at Framlingham, and that he (shame that such an unbeliever might presume to speak upon matters of the Church!) thought that the knowledge of the truth was not advanced by such terrors, and that those who lit the fires for the Lollards had no sanction in the Gospel of Christ. For mine own part, I well believe that he has seduced our daughter from her obedience by his false and damnable opinions. Mistress Margery, did he never open in your presence the book of that arch heretic, John Wiclif, which is called, 'The Book of the New Law'—the book which, in the Constitution of Archbishop Arundel, was forbidden to be read, under pain of the greater excommunication?"
The maiden answers not. The priest, looking earnestly at Mistress Margaret Paston, asks her if she did not think that there was a possibility of such a devilish corruption having gone forward; and Mistress Margaret, her cheek coloring a deep red, and then having an ashy paleness, speaks no more for good or evil to her daughter, but quails before the priest. He has her secret. There is a treasured volume in that house, which has been carefully locked up for half a century, to be looked upon in the secret hour, when prying eyes are sleeping, and in the hour of tribulation, when careful eyes are waking. With Richard Calle, Mistress Margaret had often spoken of this book; although even to possess it was to risk a charge of "Lollardie," with all its penalties. The priest sees his triumph; and proceeds to make an end of as much of the letter as he chooses to read:——
"'I understand, lady, ye have had as much sorrow for me as any gentlewoman hath had in the world, as would God all that sorrow that ye have had had rested upon me, and that ye had been discharged of it; for I wis, lady, it is to me a death to hear that ye be entreated otherwise than ye ought to be; this is a painful life that we lead. I cannot live thus without it be a great displeasure to God.'"