The Story of Katharine Howard. Ford Madox Ford

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      VI

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      Cromwell kept as a rule his private courts either in his house at Austin Friars, or in a larger one that he had near the Rolls. But, when the King was as far away from London as Greenwich, or when such ill-wishers as the Duke of Norfolk were in the King’s neighbourhood, Cromwell never slept far out of earshot from the King’s rooms. It was said indeed that never once since he had become the King’s man had he passed a day without seeing his Highness once at least, or writing him a great letter. But he contrived continually to send the nobles that were against him upon errands at a distance — as when Bishop Gardiner was made Ambassador to Paris, or Norfolk sent to put down the North after the Pilgrimage of Grace. Such errands served a double purpose: Gardiner, acting under the pressure of the King, was in Paris forced to make enemies of many of his foreign friends; and the Duke, in his panic-stricken desire to curry favour with Henry, had done more harrying, hanging and burning among the Papists than ever Henry or his minister would have dared to command, for in those northern parts the King’s writ did not run freely. Thus, in spite of himself the Duke at York had been forced to hold the country whilst creatures of Privy Seal, men of the lowest birth and of the highest arrogance, had been made Wardens of the Marches and filled the Councils of the Borders. Such men, with others, like the judges and proctors of the Court of Augmentations, which Cromwell had invented to administer the estates of the monasteries and escheated lords’ lands, with a burgess or two from the shires in Parliament, many lawyers and some suppliants of rank, filled the anterooms of Privy Seal. There was a matter of two hundred of them, mostly coming not upon any particular business so much as that any enemies they had who should hear of their having been there might tremble the more.

      Cromwell himself was in the room that had the King’s and Queen’s heads on the ceiling and the tapestry of Diana hunting. He was speaking with a great violence to Sir Leonard Ughtred, whose sister-inlaw, the widow of Sir Anthony Ughtred, and sister of the Queen Jane, his son Gregory had married two years before. It was a good match, for it made Cromwell’s son the uncle of the Prince of Wales, but there had been a trouble about their estates ever since.

      ‘Sir,’ Cromwell threatened the knight, ‘Gregory my son was ever a fool. If he be content that you have Hyde Farm that am not I. His wife may twist him to consent, but I will not suffer it.’

      Ughtred hung his head, which was closely shaved, and fingered his jewelled belt.

      ‘It is plain justice,’ he muttered. ‘The farm was ceded to my brother after Hyde Monastery was torn down. It was to my brother, not to my brother’s wife, who is now your son’s.’

      Cromwell turned upon the Chancellor of the Augmentations who stood in the shadow of the tall mantelpiece. He was twisting his fingers in his thin grey beard that wagged tremulously when he spoke.

      ‘Truly,’ he bleated piteously, ‘it stands in the register of the Augmentations as the worshipful knight says.’

      Cromwell cried out, in a studied rage: ‘I made thee and I made thy office: I will unmake the one and the other if it and thou know no better law.’

      ‘God help me,’ the Chancellor gasped. He shrank again into the shadow of the chimney, and his blinking eyes fell upon Cromwell’s back with a look of dread and the hatred of a beast that is threatened at the end of its hole.

      ‘Sir,’ Cromwell frowned darkly upon Ughtred, ‘the law stands thus if the Augmentation people know it not. This farm and others were given to your late brother upon his marriage, that the sister of the Queen might have a proper state. The Statute of Uses hath here no say. Understand me: It was the King’s to give; it is the King’s still.’ He opened his mouth so wide that he appeared to bellow. ‘That farm falleth to the survivor of those two, who is now my son’s wife. What judge shall gainsay that?’ He swayed his body round on his motionless and sturdily planted legs, veering upon the Chancellor and the knight in turn, as if he challenged them to gainsay him who had been an attorney for ten years after he had been a wool merchant.

      Ughtred shrugged his shoulders heavily, and the Chancellor hastened to bleat:

      ‘No judge shall gainsay your lordship. Your lordship hath СКАЧАТЬ