clean breast of it to Cecil, and things began to look bad for his late master. Dr. Wotton, a member of the Privy Council, went to Durham Place, and gravely formulated a series of complaints founded on the secretary's information. Most of these complaints were trivial, being to the effect that the Bishop had said and written various depreciatory things against the Queen: but one {276} accusation was serious, namely, than Shan O'Neil had taken the Sacrament at Durham Place, which was true, although the ecclesiastical diplomatist solemnly denied it. The Bishop was nearly beside himself with rage and chagrin, and begged plaintively to be relieved from his irksome post among heretics such as these. But all in vain. It did not suit the Queen and Cecil for the moment to perpetrate the last indignity of turning him out of the house, but after this they kept a closer watch upon him than ever and bode their time. They had not to wait long. There were four French hostages in London, held in pledge for the due fulfilment of the Treaty of Château Cambresis, and very troublesome guests they were. The most turbulent of them was a certain Nantouillet, Provost of Paris, a fanatical Catholic and partisan of the Guises. He had for some reason or another conceived a grudge against a mercenary captain called Masino, who was in the pay of the Vidame de Chartres, a Huguenot nobleman. So, in the manner of the times, he sought to have him killed, and, seeking for an instrument, he came across a young lad of bad character called Andrea, who was a servant of a lute player at Court, Alfonso the Bolognese. To this lad the Provost gave a dagger and a coat of mail, and promised a reward of a hundred crowns if he killed Masino. Andrea left his musical master and hung about the Strand door of Durham Place for several days at the beginning of January, 1563. At meal times he went into the great hall as others did and ate his fill, and then lounged outside on the benches again. {277} At last, in the dusk of the afternoon of the 3rd of January, 1563, Captain Masino came swaggering up the Strand on his way to Whitehall, and Andrea fired at him point blank, at a foot distance, with a harquebuss. But the captain's swagger saved his life, for the bullet passed between his left arm and his body, making a hole through his swinging cape and burning his doublet, and then glanced off into a shop on the other side of the way, "and came near killing an honest Englishman therein." Out came the swashbuckler's long rapier, and off ran the assassin into the outer courtyard of Durham Place, shrieking for mercy, followed by the captain and the English neighbours. The Bishop's household in the great courtyard seized their arms, and slammed the doors in the faces of the pursuers, whilst the terrified assassin fled through the great hall, through the inner courtyard and pell-mell up the stair leading to the Bishop's apartment.