The Mirror and the Light

As Parliament meets, so too bishops meet in Convocation. They rustle and grumble, censure and debate – old bishops, new bishops – my bishops, as Anne used to call them. They wrangle dawn till dusk about the sacraments of the church, their nature and number; which ceremonies are laudable, which idolatrous; who should be allowed to read the gospel, and in what language. He, Lord Cromwell, is enthroned among them as Henry’s deputy, Vicegerent of the church under God and the king; where once, in Archbishop Morton’s day, he was the littlest and the lowest of the boys who scrubbed vegetables in the kitchen at Lambeth Palace. Gregory exclaims, ‘To think my father is over all the bishops!’

‘I am not over them, I am only –’ He stops. ‘True. I am over them.’

Since the week of the lady’s death, his archbishop has been elusive. Now, trapped in a side room, Cranmer makes himself busy, pulls out a bundle of writing. The papers are inked with amendments. ‘Look,’ he says, ‘where Bishop Tunstall has written all over me. So now,’ he picks up a quill, ‘I am going to write all over Bishop Tunstall.’

‘You do that,’ Hugh Latimer pats his archbishop’s shoulder. ‘Cromwell, how is it that Richard Sampson has been made a bishop? He has so papist a flavour I think I am chewing the Bishop of Rome himself.’

Cranmer says, ‘He made speed with the king’s annulment, that is why, it is his reward. Though I wish the king … I wish he had elected a period of reflection, between the two …’ his voice fades, ‘… before the new …’ He puts the papers down. He rubs the corners of his eyes. ‘I cannot bear it,’ he says.

‘Anne was our good lady,’ Hugh says. ‘So we thought. We were much misled.’

‘I heard her last confession,’ Cranmer says.

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘And?’

‘Cromwell, you do not expect me to tell you what she said?’

‘No. But I thought your face might tell me.’

Cranmer turns away.

Latimer says, ‘Confession is not a sacrament. Show me where Christ ordained it.’

Cranmer says, ‘You will not get the king to agree.’

Henry likes to utter his sin and be forgiven. He is sincerely sorry, he will not do it again. And in this case perhaps he will not. The temptation to cut off your wife’s head does not arise every year.

‘Thomas …’ the archbishop says. He pauses. His face mirrors an inner struggle. ‘Thomas … about the manor at Wimbledon …’

Hugh stares at him. Whatever he thought Cranmer was going to say, it wasn’t that.

‘Since it pertains to your new title,’ Cranmer says, ‘you will want it, I suppose. At present it belongs to me – to the archdiocese, I should say.’

‘And the house at Mortlake,’ he says. ‘If you would. The king will compensate you.’

Hugh Latimer says, ‘You can hardly demur, Cranmer. You owe Cromwell money.’

The bishops mean to beat out some statement of common faith, which will stand against the malice of ill-wishers and the misconstructions of fools; which will please the German divines, with whom they wish to come into concord, but will also assuage the fears of the king, who distrusts novelty, and German novelty above all. They mean to issue a statement, if it takes them till next Easter to do it. Considering the differences they have to reconcile, and the parties they wish to please, you would be surprised if they could contrive it before the sun goes out and the earth grows cold.

We need the counsel of dead men, Hugh Latimer says. Father Thomas Bilney should be here with us. He taught us the way and the truth. He opened our insensate hearts. But Little Bilney was burned in a ditch in Norwich, and his bones thrown to dogs: and whenever you think about it, you can hear Thomas More, chuckling.

It is Latimer, as Bishop of Worcester, whose sermon opens the session. ‘Define me first these three things: what prudence is; what is the world; what light; and who be the children of the world, who of the light.’

Latimer smells of burning too. The air sparks around him as he walks.

The king, bearing in mind his daughter’s care for her status, orders the Duke of Norfolk to visit her at Hunsdon and get her compliance; Norfolk, after young Richmond, ranks highest in the land.

Norfolk calls him in, to complain of a fool’s errand. But the duke is, he points out, lucky to have any errand at all. In the days after his niece’s death, as Norfolk admits, he did not know which way to run; except that he did good service at her trial, he thinks that Henry would have banished him and taken his title away. Now, fuming with impatience, he rattles as he paces. About his neck is a heavy gold chain, where the emblems of the Howards alternate with the Tudor rose. Under his shirt, in a filigree case, he wears the relics of saints, faded hairs and splinters of bone; on his sword hand, a stout gold band, set with a greyish diamond like a chipped tooth. ‘I told Henry,’ he says, ‘look here, I have no parlour manners, I am no man for sweet-talk with some little coquette. If Mary were mine – but no use to think of it.’ As if restraining an impulse, the duke folds one fist into the other.