dear love, I
know, if she knew I were writing, but she is in her chamber, and the
messenger must go with this. Jesu have you in His blessed keeping!"

Ralph wrote back that he knew no reason against Christopher's
profession, except what might arise from the exposure of the Holy Maid
on whose advice he had gone to Lewes, and that if his father and brother
were satisfied on that score, he hoped that Christopher would follow
God's leading.

At the same time that he wrote this he was engaged, under Cromwell's
directions, in sifting the evidence offered by the grand visitors to
show that the friars refused to accept the new enactments on the subject
of the papal jurisdiction.

* * * * *

On the other hand, the Carthusians in London had proved more submissive.
There had been a struggle at first when the oath of the succession had
been tendered to them, and Prior Houghton, with the Procurator, Humphrey
Middlemore, had been committed to the Tower. The oath affirmed the
nullity of Queen Katharine's marriage with the King on the alleged
ground of her consummated marriage with Henry's elder brother, and
involved, though the Carthusians did not clearly understand it so at the
time, a rejection of the Pope's authority as connected with the
dispensation for Katharine's union with Henry. In May their scruples
were removed by the efforts of some who had influence with them, and the
whole community took the oath as required of them, though with the
pathetic addition of a clause that they only submitted "so far as it
was lawful for them so to do." This actual submission, to Cromwell's
mind and therefore to Ralph's, was at first of more significance than
was the uneasy temper of the community, as reported to them, which
followed their compliance; but as the autumn drew on this opinion was
modified.

It was in connection with this that Ralph became aware for the first
time of what was finally impending with regard to the King's supremacy
over the Church.

He had been sitting in Cromwell's room in the Chancery all through one
morning, working at the evidence that was flowing in from all sides of
disaffection to Henry's policy, sifting out worthless and frivolous
charges from serious ones. Every day a flood of such testimony poured in
from the spies in all parts of the country, relating to the deepening
dissatisfaction with the method of government; and Cromwell, as the
King's adviser, came in for much