The Armourer's Prentices, Charlotte M. Yonge [large screen ebook reader TXT] 📗

I know whatever concerns musty books goes deeper with thee than thy brother,” replied Stephen, turning away much mortified.

Ambrose’s warm nature was awakened. He held his brother by the arm and declared himself anything but indifferent to him, but he owned that he did not love noise and revelry, above all on Sunday.

“Thou art addling thy brains with preachings!” said Stephen. “Pray Heaven they make not a heretic of thee. But thou mightest for once have come to mine own feast.”

Ambrose, much perplexed and grieved at thus vexing his brother, declared that he would have done so with all his heart, but that this very Easter Sunday there was coming a friend of Master Hansen’s from Holland; who was to tell them much of the teaching in Germany, which was so enlightening men’s eyes.

“Yea, truly, making heretics of them, Mistress Headley saith,” returned Stephen. “O Ambrose, if thou wilt run after these books and parchments, canst not do it in right fashion, among holy monks, as of old?”

“Holy monks!” repeated Ambrose. “Holy monks! Where be they?”

Stephen stared at him.

“Hear uncle Hal talk of monks whom he sees at my Lord Cardinal’s table! What holiness is there among them? Men, that have vowed to renounce all worldly and carnal things flaunt like peacocks and revel like swine—my Lord Cardinal with his silver pillars foremost of them! He poor and mortified! ’Tis verily as our uncle saith, he plays the least false and shameful part there!”

“Ambrose, Ambrose, thou wilt be distraught, poring over these matters that were never meant for lads like us! Do but come and drive them out for once with mirth and good fellowship.”

“I tell thee, Stephen, what thou callest mirth and good fellowship do but drive the pain in deeper. Sin and guilt be everywhere. I seem to see the devils putting foul words on the tongue and ill deeds in the hands of myself and all around me, that they may accuse us before God. No, Stephen, I cannot, cannot come, I must go where I can hear of a better way.”

“Nay,” said Stephen, “what better way can there be than to be shriven—clean shriven—and then houselled, as I was ere Lent, and trust to be again on next Low Sunday morn? That’s enough for a plain lad.” He crossed himself reverently, “Mine own Lord pardoneth and cometh to me.”

But the two minds, one simple and practical, the other sensitive and speculative, did not move in the same atmosphere, and could not understand one another. Ambrose was in the condition of excitement and bewilderment produced by the first stirrings of the Reformation upon enthusiastic minds. He had studied the Vulgate, made out something of the Greek Testament, read all fragments of the Fathers that came in his way, and also all the controversial “tractates,” Latin or Dutch, that he could meet with, and attended many a secret conference between Lucas and his friends, when men, coming from Holland or Germany, communicated accounts of the lectures and sermons of Dr. Martin Luther, which already were becoming widely known.

He was wretched under the continual tossings of his mind. Was the entire existing system a vast delusion, blinding the eyes and destroying the souls of those who trusted to it; and was the only safety in the one point of faith that Luther pressed on all, and ought all that he had hitherto revered to crumble down to let that alone be upheld? Whatever he had once loved and honoured at times seemed to him a lie, while at others real affection and veneration, and dread of sacrilege, made him shudder at himself and his own doubts! It was his one thought, and he passionately sought after all those secret conferences which did but feed the flame that consumed him.

The elder men who were with him were not thus agitated. Lucas’s convictions had not long been fixed. He did not court observation nor do anything unnecessarily to bring persecution on himself, but he quietly and secretly acted as an agent in dispersing the Lollard books and those of Erasmus, and lived in the conviction that there would one day be a great crash, believing himself to be doing his part by undermining the structure, and working on undoubtingly. Abenali was not aggressive. In fact, though he was reckoned among Lucas’s party, because of his abstinence from all cult of saints or images, and the persecution he had suffered, he did not join in their general opinions, and held aloof from their meetings. And Tibble Steelman, as has been before said, lived two lives, and that as foreman at the Dragon court, being habitual to him, and requiring much thought and exertion, the speculations of the reformers were to him more like an intellectual relaxation than the business of life. He took them as a modern artisan would in this day read his newspaper, and attend his club meeting.

Ambrose, however, had the enthusiastic practicalness of youth. On that which he fully believed, he must act, and what did he fully believe?

Boy as he was—scarcely yet eighteen—the toils and sports that delighted his brother seemed to him like toys amusing infants on the verge of an abyss, and he spent his leisure either in searching in the Vulgate for something to give him absolute direction, or in going in search of preachers, for, with the stirring of men’s minds, sermons were becoming more frequent.

There was much talk just now of the preaching of one Doctor Beale, to whom all the tradesmen, journeymen, and apprentices were resorting, even those who were of no special religious tendencies. Ambrose went on Easter Tuesday to hear him preach at St. Mary’s Spitall. The place was crowded with artificers, and Beale began by telling them that he had “a pitiful bill,” meaning a letter, brought to him declaring how aliens and strangers were coming in to inhabit the City and suburbs, to eat the bread from poor fatherless children, and take the living from all artificers and the intercourse from merchants, whereby poverty was so much increased that each bewaileth the misery of others. Presently coming to his text, “Cœlum cœli Domini, terram autem dedit filiis hominis” (the Heaven of Heavens is the Lord’s, the earth hath He given to the children of men), the doctor inculcated that England was given to Englishmen, and that as birds would defend their nests, so ought Englishmen to defend themselves, and to hurt and grieve aliens for the common weal! The corollary a good deal resembled that of “hate thine enemy” which was foisted by “them of the old time” upon “thou shalt love thy neighbour.” And the doctor went on upon the text, “Pugna pro patriâ,” to demonstrate that fighting for one’s country meant rising upon and expelling all the strangers who dwelt and traded within it. Many of these foreigners were from the Hanse towns which had special commercial privileges, there were also numerous Venetians and Genoese, French and Spaniards, the last of whom were, above all, the objects of dislike. Their imports of silks, cloth of gold, stamped leather, wine and oil, and their superior skill in many handicrafts, had put English wares out of fashion; and their exports of wool, tin, and lead excited equal jealousy, which Dr. Beale, instigated as was well known by a broker named John Lincoln, was thus stirring up into fierce passion. His sermon was talked of all over London; blacker looks than ever were directed at the aliens, stones and dirt were thrown at them, and even Ambrose, as he walked along the street, was reviled as the Dutchkin’s knave. The insults became each day more daring and outrageous. George Bates and a skinner’s apprentice named Studley were caught in the act of tripping up a portly old Flanderkin and forthwith sent to Newgate, and there were other arrests, which did but inflame the smouldering rage of the mob. Some of the wealthier foreigners, taking warning by the signs of danger, left the City, for there could be no doubt that the whole of London and the suburbs were in a combustible condition of discontent, needing only a spark to set it alight.

It was just about this time that a disreputable clerk—a lewd priest, as Hall calls him—a hanger-on of the house of Howard, was guilty of an insult to a citizen’s wife as she was quietly walking home through the Cheap. Her husband and brother, who were nearer at hand than he guessed, avenged the outrage with such good wills that this disgrace to the priesthood was left dead on the ground. When such things happened, and discourses like Beale’s were heard, it was not surprising that Ambrose’s faith in the clergy as guides received severe shocks.