Thomas had said: “There is no man in England who could carry out this task with greater skill. But I wanted Lily for my children.”
Colet laughed gleefully. “I got there first, Thomas,” he cried. “I have secured him for my children.”
Now that Margaret was aware of the clouds coming nearer to her home she thought often of Dr. Colet's escape from the King's wrath. This had happened a few years before, and they had trembled for the fate which might overtake this beloved friend. The same cloud must have darkened Colet's house then as it now did that of the Mores.
Why must these great men always express their views with such careless unconcern for the consequences? Why could they not be content to talk in private with their friends, and enjoy the happy lives they had built up for themselves out of their goodness? Dr. Colet had his school—the great wish of a lifetime fulfilled— yet when the King planned war with France, he must get into his pulpit and preach a sermon on the folly and wickedness of war.
It was inevitable that he should be called before an angry King; it was by a miracle that he had escaped with his life. But was it a miracle? What a plausible tongue had this great man, what a way with words!
He came to the house afterward to tell them about it; and he and her father had laughed together until Margaret had feared they would make themselves ill with such immoderate laughter which in her wisdom, she understood was partly the laughter of relief.
“But, Your Grace,” Colet had said to the King, “it is true that I preached against war. Aye, and would do so again. I said: ‘Few die well who die in battle, for how can they charitably dispose of anything when blood is the argument? Men must follow Christ, the King of Peace … not the kings of war.’ Those were my words, Sire.”
“I know your words, sirrah!” the King cried angrily. “And I like them not.”
“But, Your Grace,” was the reply, “I but preached against dishonorable war … unjust war … and Your Grace must agree with me that there can be no good in unjust war.”
It was at this point, when telling the story, that Colet was overcome with helpless mirth. “And Thomas, the King looked at me, his little eyes suspicious. Then, suddenly, that tight mouth slackened. He laughed; he slapped my shoulder. ‘I see, friend Colet,’ he said. ‘You spoke not of this just war I would wage against the enemies of England. You spoke of the unjust wars that my enemies would wage on me?’ I bowed my head. I feared he might see the laughter in my eyes. For, this King of ours, Thomas, is a King who believes he is God Himself. He believes in all simplicity, in all sincerity, that he himself could not be unjust, could not be dishonorable. The very fact that he acts in a certain way makes that action honorable. What a man! What a King!”
“How easy life must be for him!” mused Thomas. “He has but to adjust his conscience to his desires.”
“Exactly. And this is what he did. He told himself that his Dr. Colet had not spoken against his war; he had spoken against unjust war, as he himself would speak, for is he not a just King? He led me out of his privy chamber, his arm about me. You would have been amused to see the faces of his courtiers. They had expected me to appear between two halberdiers, and here I was—His Grace's arm through mine. He embraced me before them all, and he cried: ‘Let every man favor his own doctor. This Dr. Colet is the doctor for me.…’”
They might laugh; but such encounters terrified Margaret. But for a turn of phrase John Colet might not be with them at this time.
Erasmus had stayed in the house during those years, and of all the scholars who came to the house, Alice liked him least.
A “finicky” man, she declared he was—picking at his food, talking Latin to her husband, laughing with him. Alice was not at all sure that they were not laughing at her. “And here's a pretty state of affairs when a woman does not know what is being said before her face.”
The climax came when he dropped a ring in the rushes and on recovering it looked at it with such distaste, and wiped it so carefully on a kerchief before restoring it to his finger, that Alice's indignation could not be suppressed.
“So, Master Desiderius Erasmus, you find my house not clean enough for you? You sniff at my rushes, do you, sir? There is one answer to that, and I will give it. If you like not my house, why stay in it? Why not go back to your hovel… your native country where houses are so clean that they make you turn up your foreign nose at ours!”
He had tried to placate her, as all tried to placate Alice; but his arguments did not move her. She disliked him, and that was the blunt fact. All the learned tutors—the absent-minded Master Gunnel and the guttural-voiced Master Kratzer, she would endure; but not the sickly, watery-eyed, sarcastically smiling Erasmus. And indeed Erasmus had left England soon after that. He had told Margaret, of whom he was very fond: “I am a little tired of England, my child; and your stepmother is very tired of me.”
Soon after the great scholar had left them there had occurred the terrible rising of apprentices in the City, and, as Under-Sheriff, her father had played a great part in quelling the rebellion. The rising had come about on account of the citizens' dissatisfaction with the foreigners who lived therein and who, said the citizens, took their livings from Englishmen in their native land. These foreigners brought silks, cloth of gold and merchandise into London and sold them cheaply. Dutchmen brought over timber and leather, baskets and stools, tables and saddles, already wrought; and these they sold in such numbers that there was little work for those who had previously made such goods for their own countrymen.
So it was that during the month of April people gathered in the streets to discuss this matter, and they asked themselves how they could best rid themselves of the foreigners. Thomas Wolsey, now Cardinal, Pope's Legate, Archbishop of York, Chancellor of England and Prime Minister of State, sent for the chief aldermen of the City and told diem that it was the King's wish that the foreigners should not be molested, as they brought much trade to die country; but the aldermen, after listening respectfully to Thomas Wolsey, went away and assured each other that their first allegiance was to the City of London, and if the citizens had decided to rid themselves of die foreigners there was nothing they could do about it.
Then came that “Evil May Day” when the apprentices, with the people behind them, rose and rioted through the streets, sacking and burning the houses of foreigners.
Thomas, as Under-Sheriff, had been able to restore order to some parts of the City. The Cardinal, foreseeing how matters would go, ordered troops to close in on London, and several of the rioters were taken prisoner.
These men and boys were condemned as traitors, but only one of them was executed in the terrible manner—hanging, drawing and quartering—which was the lot of traitors. This one was to prove an example to the people; as for the rest, they provided die King with an opportunity to stage one of those little plays he so loved, die ending of which was supposed to be a surprise, but which all except the most simple of men knew to be inevitable.
Henry, gloriously clad, a mighty man in sparkling jewels, sat on a lofty dais in Westminster Hall, while before him were brought the condemned men, with ropes about their necks. The Queen must kneel before him—a foreigner herself—-and beg the King for leniency since some of the offenders were so young; she asked this as a favor to herself.
The sullen little mouth became less sullen. The King raised the Queen and said that for her sake he would consider pardoning these wretches.