Aubrey laughed rather significantly. "Why," asked his mother, "is the King's Majesty somewhat given that way?" "Well, I have heard it said that when the King of Denmark was here, their two Majesties went not to bed sober every night of the week: marry, 'tis whispered all the Court ladies kept not so steady feet as they might have done." "Alack the day! not the Queen, I hope?" "Nay, I heard no word touching her." "Ah, friends!" said Mr Marshall with a sigh, "let me ensure you that England's mourning is not yet over for Queen Elizabeth, and we may live to lament our loss of her far sorer than now we do. Folks say she was something stingy with money, loving not to part with it sooner than she saw good reason: but some folks will fling their money right and left with no reason at all. The present Court much affecteth masques, plays, and such like, so that now there be twenty where her late Majesty would see one." "Mr Marshall," asked Edith, "is it true, as I have heard say, that King James is somewhat Papistically given?" "Ay and no," said he. "He is not at all thus, in the signification of obeying the Pope, or suffering himself to be ridden of priests: in no wise. But he hates a Puritan worse than a Papist. Mind you not that in his speech when he opened his first Parliament, he said that he did acknowledge the Roman Church to be our mother Church, though defiled with some infirmities and corruptions?" "Yet he said also, if I err not, that he sucked in God's truth with his nurse's milk." "Ay. But what one calls God's truth is not what an other doth. All the Papistry in the world is not in the Roman Church; and assuredly she is in no sense our mother." "Truly, I thought Saint Austin brought the Gospel hither from Rome." "Saint Austin brought a deal from Rome beside the Gospel, and he was not the first to bring that. The Gallican Church had before him brought it to Kent; and long ere that time had the ancient British Church been evangelised from no sister Church at all, but right from the Holy Land itself, and as her own unchanging voice did assert, by the beloved Apostle Saint John." "That heard I never afore," said Lady Louvaine, who seemed greatly interested. "Pray you, Mr Marshall, is this true?" "I do ensure you it is," replied he; "that is, so far as the wit of man at this distance of time may discern the same." "Was the French Church, then, lesser corrupted than that of Rome?" queried Edith. "Certainly so," he said: "and it hath resisted the Pope's usurpations nigh as much as our own Church of England. I mean not in respect of the Reformation, but rather the time before the Reformation, when our kings were ever striving with the Pope concerning his right to appoint unto dignities and livings. Yet the Reformation itself began first in France, and had they in authority been willing to aid it as in England, France had been a Protestant country at this day."