To this, Henry had no objection, now that he had their money; for had not the statute of the six articles just declared that vows of celibacy were binding until death; a piece of cruel sarcasm, when everything which could render them _tolerable_, had been taken away, so far as the power of the crown extended.
During the supper, all were silent, while one of the brethren read a homily of S. Augustine; but the meal ended, Sir Walter beckoned to his _son_ to follow him into the study.
But it is time that we drop the mask, and explain ourselves.
Cuthbert Trevannion, now so called, _was_ our Cuthbert; Sir Walter was that Ambrose, the bearer of the ring, who had received him into his care, as related at the conclusion of the former part of this tale; where he had passed six eventful years: years which had witnessed the dastardly end of the life of the “malleus monachorum,” Cromwell;[28] the divorce of one queen, the execution of another, and had seen the tyrant pass into the last stage of his sanguinary reign--burning the Reformers, and butchering the Romanists who would not acknowledge his supremacy; the only tyrant upon record, who had the privilege of persecuting both sides at once.
The inn-keeper’s account of Sir Walter was true so far as it went; we will supply the necessary details.
He was the second son of Sir Arthur Trevannion, the head of an old Devonian family, but against the will of his father he had assumed the Benedictine habit, and become the Prior of the famous Abbey of Furness, in the far north, under the name of Ambrose, so that his father and he did not meet for many many years.
Under that name he became implicated in the rising called the Pilgrimage of Grace, and when his Abbey was dissolved found refuge abroad, where the news of his elder brother’s death reached him. It was then thought expedient that he should return home in the guise of a layman, where owing to the fact that he had taken the monastic vows under an assumed name, his identity with the Father Ambrose of Furness, proscribed by the government, was not suspected, and he was received by his father as a returned prodigal, fresh from abroad.
The old knight only survived his return a few months, and for the sake of offering a home to the poor houseless Benedictines whom he gathered round him, Father Ambrose accepted the facts of his position, and became, without question, Sir Walter Trevannion of Becky Hall, and the protector of Cuthbert, to whom he had conceived so great an attachment (which the lad well deserved) that he adopted him as his son, whereas his first intention had been to place him in a more subordinate position until he should shew himself worthy of higher promotion.