tis mine
uttermost sorrow that I should covenant with one at Hackney to meet with
me this even, and I must right woefully deny me the ease that it should
do me to abide with his Highness.' An honest preferment, to be his sick
nurse, by Saint Lawrence his gridiron! Nay, by Saint Zachary his
shoe-strings, but there were two words to that bargain!"

"Then what did your Grace, Uncle?" said Isabel in her cool, grown-up
style.

"Did? Marry, little cousin, I rade down to Norwich House, and played a
good hour at the cards with my Lord's Grace of Norwich; and then I lay
me down on the settle and gat me a nap; and after spices served, I
turned back to Westminster, and did her Grace to wit that it were rare
cold riding from Hackney."

"Is your Grace yet shriven sithence, Uncle?" inquired young Richard
rather comically.

"The very next morrow, lad, my said Lord of Norwich the confessor. I
bare it but a night, nor it did me not no disease in sleeping."

"Maybe it should take a heavy sin to do that, fair Uncle," said Isabel
with a sneer.

"What wist, such a chick as thou?" returned York, holding out his goblet
to the dispenser of Malvoisie.

A little lower down the table, Sir Bertram Lyngern and Master Hugh
Calverley were discussing less serious subjects in a more sober and
becoming manner.

"Truly, our new King hath well begun," said Hugh. "My Lord of March is
released of his prison, and shall be wed this next summer to the Lady
Anne of Stafford, and his sister the Lady Alianora unto my Lord of Devon
his son; and all faithful friends and servants of King Richard be set in
favour; and 'tis rumoured about the Court that your Lady shall receive
confirmation of every of his father's grants made unto her."

"I trust it shall so be verily," said Bertram.

"And further yet," pursued Hugh, slightly dropping his voice, "'tis said
that the King considereth to take unto the Crown great part of the
moneys and lands of the Church."

"Surely no!"

"Ay, so far as my judgment serveth, 'tis so soothly."

"But that were sacrilege!"

"Were it?" asked Hugh coolly.

For the extreme Lollards, of whom he was one, looked upon the two
political acts which we have learned to call disestablishment and
disendowment, as not only permissible, but desirable. In so saying, I
speak of the political Lollards. All political Lollards, however, were
not religious ones, nor were all religious Lollards sharers in these
political views. John o