ce. It maketh this T. Culpepper
lieutenant of barges and lighters in the town and port of Calais. It
enjoineth upon him to stay diligently there and zealously to
persevere in these duties.'

Cromwell neither started nor moved; he stood looking down at the floor
for a minute space; then he held out his hand for the parchment,
considered the seal and the subscription, let his eyes course over the
lines of Throckmorton's handwriting that made a black patch on the
surface soiled with sea-water and sweat, and uttered composedly:

'Why, it is well; it is monstrous well that you have saved this
parchment from coming to evil hands.'

He rolled it neatly, placed it in his belt, and four times stamped his
foot on the floor.

There came in at this signal, Viridus, the one of his secretaries that
had first instructed Katharine Howard as to her demeanour. Since then,
he had had among his duties the watching over Thomas Culpepper. Calm,
furtive, with his thin hands clasped before him, the Sieur Viridus
answered the swift, hard questions of his master. He was more attached
and did more services to the Chancellor of the Augmentations, whom he
kept mostly mindful of such farms and fields as Privy Seal intended
should be given to benefit his particular friends and servants; for he
had a mind that would hold many details of figures and directions.

Thus, he had sent two men to Calais and the road Paris-ward with
injunctions to meet Thomas Culpepper and tell him tales of Katharine
Howard's lewdness in the King's Court; to tell him, too, that the
farms in Kent, promised him as a guerdon for ridding Paris of the
Cardinal Pole, were deeded and signed to him, but that evil men sought
to have them away.

'Ye sent no boy to stay him at Calais with lieutenancy of barges?'
Cromwell asked, swiftly and hard in voice.

'No boy ne no man,' Viridus answered.

He had acted by the card of Privy Seal's injunctions; men were posted
at Calais, at Dover, at Ashford, at Maidstone, at Sandwich, at
Rochester, at Greenwich, at all the landing places of London. Each
several one was instructed to tell Thomas Culpepper some new story
that, if Culpepper were not already hastening to Hampton, should make
him mend his paces. If he were hastening to Hampton they were to leave
him be. All these things were done as Privy Seal had directed.

'What witnesses have ye here from Lincolnshire?' Cromwell asked.

In his monotonous sing-song Viridus named these people