Robin Tremayne: A Story of the Marian PersecutionHolt, Emily Sarah
History
Robin Tremayne: A Story of the Marian Persecution
Holt, Emily Sarah
Great Britain -- Church history -- 16th century -- Fiction; Historical fiction
The first news which reached the Lamb in 1554, was the startling
information--if any information can be called startling in that age of
sudden and shocking events--that the night before, Mr Ive had been
hastily apprehended and committed to the Marshalsea. He was soon
released, unhurt; but this occurrence quickened Mr Underhill's tardy
movements. He had already made up his mind to remove from the
Limehurst, where his abode was too well-known to the enemy; the arrest
of his friend and neighbour determined him to go at once. He took "a
little house in a secret corner at the nether end of Wood Street,"
Cheapside. About Epiphany was born Susan Bertie, the only daughter of
the Duchess of Suffolk. Shortly before this the Emperor's Ambassadors
came over to treat concerning the Queen's marriage, and were pelted with
snowballs by children in the streets of the City. The vacant sees were
filled up by Popish divines; Cardinal Pole was invited to return to
England (from which he had been so many years exiled), in the capacity
of Legate; the Queen dissolved the Court of First Fruits, and commanded
that the title of "Head of the Church in earth" should be omitted from
the enumeration of her titles in all future documents. Permission
granted to Lady Jane to walk in the Queen's garden and on Tower Hill
revived for a moment the hopes of the Protestants so far as concerned
her. No harm would come to her, they sanguinely repeated, if the Queen
were left to herself. Possibly they were fight. But what likelihood
was there that Gardiner would so leave her? and--a question yet more
ominous--what might Philip of Spain require in this matter? Men not yet
sixty years of age could remember the time when, previous to the
marriage of Katherine of Aragon, the Earl of Warwick, last surviving
male of the House of York, had been beheaded on Tower Hill. Once
before, the royal blood of England had been shed at the demand of Spain:
might the precedent not be repeated now? The only difference being,
that the victim then was a tercel gentle, and now it would be a white
dove.
In the middle of January, before his removal from the Limehurst, and
when he was sufficiently recovered to "walk to London an easy pace," Mr
Underhill made his appearance one afternoon in the Minories. He came
with the evident intention of telling his own story.
"And would you," said he, "hear the tale of my examination and
imprisonment?"
"That would we, and with a right good will," answered Dr Thorpe,
speaking for all. "We do know even what Mr Ive could tell us, but
nothing further."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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