“Remove this prating Puritan and let the next case be called,” said the Archbishop, harshly.
And as Dr. Harford and Gabriel moved away, the court rang with the clerk’s stentorian voice shouting, “Mary Boswood, on a charge of refusing to wear a white veil when returning thanks after childbirth.”
As they passed down the gangway they met the unlucky matron with flushed face and tearful eyes making her way to the place they had quitted, and deeming it a very hard thing that she, who had been a virtuous wedded wife for years, should be dragged into court for refusing to wear, as she expressed it, “a thing as like as two peas to the white sheet in which bad women did penance.”
Gabriel gave a gasp of relief when once more they breathed the fresh outer air. He ran to Joyce and patted her neck and fondled her soft ears before mounting. Then in silence the father and son rode away together, not speaking at all until they had left the city and had had a good gallop over the broad strip of grass that bordered the road to Brampton Bryan.
“That has refreshed you, lad,” said the doctor, glancing at the grave face beside him, “and yet you look as though you had something on your mind.”
“Father,” said Gabriel, vehemently, “I hate Archbishop Laud with my whole heart! Yet you said he was a good man!”
“Indeed I believe him to be a very good man, but he hath more zeal than discretion, and forgets that ‘the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart.’ Dr. Laud will one day find that he is making a great mistake. He is trying with all his might to make folks better by outward observances, by making clean the cup and the platter; that is to put the cart before the horse. You must first make them pure within, or you will but breed up a generation of ceremonious hypocrites and Pharisees.”
“It is because of the discourteous way he spoke to you, sir, that I hate him,” said Gabriel, fiercely.
“Nay, hate him not; I fared much better than I should have done had I been a parson. They tell me that twenty clergy have been deprived of their livings, only for this refusal to bow. As for the Archbishop’s discourtesy, which makes him so much disliked by the gentry of the land, that is not altogether his fault, perhaps, for he had neither good birth nor good breeding. He said that ‘Knowledge puffeth up,’ and I was much minded to quote him the rest of the verse--‘but love buildeth up.’ Depend on it, my son, ’tis that love alone which can save our unhappy country in these difficult times.”