“’Tis over-late,” said Waghorn, bitterly; “he lies sick of a wasting fever, and his limbs are stiff and useless with rheumatism. Yet his end may perchance be eased by a skilled physician.”
At that moment Dr. Harford came out from the vicarage, and Peter Waghorn, anxious to lose no more time, hastened forward to meet him. In close conversation they walked down the village street, and Gabriel returned to his place on the steps of the cross.
“How you do hate Archbishop Laud,” said Hilary, with a gleam of amusement in her eyes as she looked at him. “For my part, if the older Waghorn is like the younger I think he can have been no great loss to the Church. Come, why vex yourself thus over the misfortunes of this poor vicar? I thought you had no great liking for parsons.”
Her tone jarred on him. “I don’t understand,” he said, “how you can be so little moved by a tale like that. It makes one’s blood boil; and ’tis not only parsons who suffer. Remember how Mr. Shirfield, a bencher of Lincoln’s Inn, was treated by the Star Chamber.”
“Merely that as Recorder of Salisbury he permitted the taking down of a blasphemous window in St. Edmund’s Church--its removal had been agreed to by a vestry when six justices of the peace were present.”
“But a window cannot be blasphemous,” said Hilary, looking perplexed.
“Indeed it can,” replied Gabriel. “Why, this one had seven pictures of God the Father in the form of a little old man in a blue and red coat, with a pouch by his side and an elbow chair. The people used to bow to this as they went in and out. Merely to speak of it sickens one.”
Hilary still looked puzzled. She could not feel that it mattered much. “And what did Dr. Laud do to Mr. Shir-field?” she asked, anxious to understand why Gabriel’s indignation was so hot.
“He stood up and moved the Court that the Recorder should be fined £1,000, removed from the Recordership and thrown into the Fleet Prison till the fine was paid. And still worse was the fate of my father’s friend Gellibrand, Professor of Astronomy at Trinity College, Oxford, who, for encouraging the printing of an almanack in which the names of the martyrs from Foxe’s book were mentioned and the black letter saints omitted, was literally hounded to death by Dr. Laud. My father was present at the trial in the Court of High Commission, and the Professor was acquitted by Archbishop Abbott and the whole Court except Dr. Laud, who was full of wrath at the acquittal, and urged that the Queen desired him to prosecute the author and to suppress the book. Then when the Court still persisted in acquitting the accused, Dr. Laud turned upon him in fury, saying that he ought to be punished for making a faction in the Court, and vowing that he would sit in his skirts, for he heard that he kept conventicles at Gresham College after his lectures. Afterwards a second prosecution in the High Commission was ordered, and this so affected the Professor’s health and spirits that it brought a complaint on him, of which he afterwards died.”