Ughtred shrugged his shoulders heavily, and the Chancellor hastened to bleat:
'No judge shall gainsay your lordship. Your lordship hath an excellent knowledge of the law.'
'Why hast thou not as good a one?' Cromwell rated him. 'I made thee since I thought thou hadst.' The Chancellor choked in his throat and waved his hands.
'Thus the law is,' Cromwell said to Ughtred. 'And if it were not so Parliament should pass an Act so to make it. For it is a scandal that a Queen's sister, an aunt of the Prince that shall be King, should lose her lands upon the death of her husband. It savours of treason that you should ask it. I have known men go to the Tower upon less occasion.'
'Well, I am a broken man,' Sir Leonard muttered.
'Why, God help you,' Cromwell said. 'Get you gone. The law takes no account of whether a man be broken, but seeketh to do honour to the King's Highness and to render justice.'
Viridus and Sadler, who was another of Cromwell's secretaries, had come in whilst Privy Seal had been speaking, and Cromwell turned upon them laughing as the knight went out, his head hanging.
'Here is another broken man,' he said, and they all laughed together.
'Well, he is another very notable swordsman,' Viridus said. 'We might well post him at Milan, lest Pole flee back to Rome that way.'
Cromwell turned upon the Chancellor with a bitter contempt.
'Find thou for this knight some monk's lands in Kent. He shall to Milan with them for a price.'
'Now we shall soon have these broken swordsmen in every town of Italy between France and Rome. Such a net Pole shall not easily break through.'
'It were well he were done with soon,' Cromwell said.
'The King shall love us much the more; and it is time.'
'Why, there will in two days be such a clamour of assassins in Paris that he shall soon bolt from there towards Rome,' Viridus answered. 'It will go hard if he escape all our Italy men. I hold it for certain that Winchester shall have reported to him in Paris that this Culpepper is on the road. Will you speak with this Howard wench?'
Cromwell knitted his brows in uncertainty.
'It was her cousin that should clamour about this murder in Paris,' Viridus reminded him.
'Is she without?' Cromwell asked. 'Have you it for certain that she hath reported to my lord of Winchester?'