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CHAPTER V.

STAGE THE FIFTH.

NE dark evening, late in November, 1530, an agedlooking man, very infirm, and so suffering from violent illness that he could scarcely maintain his seat on the mule which he rode, made his appearance at the outer gate of the magnificent abbey at Leicester. He was a priest, as could be plainly seen by the torchlight which was presently cast upon him; but there was little to distinguish him in appearance from other priests. He was not alone. Surrounding him were a few gentlemen and serving men, whose countenances seemed to express both anxiety and sorrow. They were giving the aged man what help they could as he leaned forward on his mule in pain and weariness, bidding him be comforted for that he had at last reached the end of his day's journey. To this he answered with a deep sigh.

There were also in the train of this aged invalid a number of guards on horseback, in the peculiar dress worn by the king's soldiers in the Tower of London. These men were armed, and were commanded by a grave officer, who was, indeed, none other than the governor or constable of the Tower. It might have been wondered by strangers what could have brought these soldiers a hundred miles or more from the fortress it was their business to guard. But there were some who knew that they had been sent all that way into the country to bring back with them a

prisoner, charged with high-treason against the king; and that this infirm and sick priest was the accused.

The arrival of this party at the Abbey gates was the signal for great commotion within. Torches were speedily lighted; and the abbot himself, attended by all the monks of the convent, with torch-bearers, hastened in procession to the gates, which were thrown open. They no sooner saw the old man on the mule that they bowed very lowlily before him.

'Father Abbot," said the prisoner, in a weak and trembling voice, which told how much he was then suffering, "I am come to lay my bones among you here." And then he passed slowly under the arched gateway, which admitted also his attendants and guards. Then the gates were closed as before.

It was Saturday evening when this arrival took place; but before long it was known throughout the town and in all the neighbourhood round, that the Lord Cardinal of York, Thomas Wolsey, who had once been so great a man in the state, but had, for some time past, been under the king's displeasure, was now in Leicester Abbey surrounded by guards, who had it in charge to take him to London as a traitor and prisoner.

Let us listen to a conversation which we may suppose to have passed in the town of Leicester that night, in a little group of townsmen seated round a blazing hearth.

"Poor old man! did you see him, neighbours, any of you?"

"I saw him," "And so did I," "And I," "And I,"

say several at the same instant. 'He looks wonderfully old, must be four-score, anyhow," adds one of them.

"You are out in your reckoning. He wants a year of being three-score," says another.

Only three-score! Why, that's under my age; and I'm not an old man yet," remarks a hale-looking burgess who is present.

"Maybe; but you have been sitting quiet all the time here in Leicester; and my lord cardinal has worn himself out with work first, and then with pleasuring, and latterly with fretting. So, no wonder he has aged so fast."

Then the conversation takes another turn.

"What has he done to be taken prisoner like that?” asks one.

Oh," says the ready informant; "it is all about that Nan Bullen1 that the king wants to marry. Says the king, 'I will have her;' says the cardinal, ‘You mustn't.' And so they got into a pretty quarrel about it, a year ago or more; and there always being plenty to fall foul of a king's favourite when he loses favour, things soon came to such a pass as could never have been dreamt of. For everybody began to make a dead set at the cardinal, poor man !”

"Ay, ay," observes one of the group, "that's easy to be understood; that's human nature, that is.”

"Just so; and so one said one thing about the cardinal, and one said another; and the king, being ready enough to listen now to anything against him,

' Anne Boleyn, Henry's second wife.