"This custodian is a very great heretic, who for three years past has been in this house with no other duty than to spy out those who come to see me, for the purpose of accusing me. I have put up with it for all this time, although at great inconvenience to myself, so as to avoid having disputes with them on a matter of this description. When the Marshal made this demand, however, I answered him that for twenty years the Ambassadors here had been allowed to reside in the royal houses, nearly all those sent by your Majesty and the Emperor having done so, and they had invariably been accustomed to hold the keys of the houses wherein they lived. I said that it was not right that an innovation should be made in my case after my four years' residence here, especially on so slight a pretext as this matter, in which I was not at all to blame, and considering that this is the first case of the sort that has happened since I have been here, it cannot be said that my house is an habitual refuge for criminals. I would, however, go and give the Queen an account of the matter, which I endeavoured to do." But the Queen would not see him either that day or the next. She was too busy she said; and on the following day, which was Twelfth Day, just as people were coming to Mass, some locksmiths came in a boat to the water-gate and put a new lock on, notwithstanding the protest of the Bishop's {280} household, and the keys of all the gates were now held by the Queen's officers. The Bishop was in a towering rage, and said, that as the Queen imprisoned him in his own house, and made a goal of it, he demanded the keys back, or else that she should find him another residence where he might be free. A long account of the solemn conference between the Bishop and the Council is given in the Calendar of State Papers (Foreign), the 7th of January, 1563, and the Bishop's version is now published in the Spanish State Papers of Elizabeth, vol. i. According to both accounts, the Bishop got decidedly the worst of it. Cecil was the spokesman, and, instead of taking up a defensive position about the keys, he turned the tables by piling up all the complaints which his spies had accumulated for the last two years, and the poor Bishop found himself the accused rather than the injured party. The escape of the criminal by the water-gate was made the most of--such a thing in law-abiding England had never been heard of before--but after all this was a bagatelle to the other charges.