But our secrets do not keep us. They worry at us; they wear us away, from the inside out.
John More, Gregory Cromwell, what have we done to our sons? Made them into idle young gentlemen – but who can blame us for wanting for them the ease we didn’t have?
High spirits are a foolish waste in those destined for the chain gang of marriage and the mill.
Nobody knows how long the arrests wil go on and who else will be taken. He feels even he does not know, and he is in charge of it.
Hans nods emphatically, lips pressed together, eyes bright and taunting, like a dog who steals a handkerchief so you will chase.
This relentless bonhomie of yours, I knew it would wear out in the end. It is a coin that has changed hands so often. And now the small silver is worn out and we see the base metal.
Elijah told Ahab that the dogs would lick his blood, and so it came to pass, as you would imagine, since only the successful prophets are remembered.
But Christendom was overturned for the Boleyn marriage, to put the ginger pig in the cradle;.
Audley pats his arm. He wants to console him. But who can begin to do it? He si the inconsolable Master Cromwell: the unknowable, the inconstruable, the probably indefeasible Master Cromwell.
Death is your prince, you are not his patron; when you think he is engaged elsewhere, he will batter down your door, walk in and wipe his boots on you.
If a king cannot have a son, if he cannot do that, it matters not what else he can do. The victories, the spoils of victory, the just laws he makes, the famous courts he holds, these are as nothing.’ It is true. To maintain the stability of the realm: this is the compact a king makes with his people. If he cannot have a son of his own, he must find an heir, name him before his country falls into doubt and confusion, faction and conspiracy. And who can Henry name, that will not be laughed.
My conscience holds with the majority, which makes me know it does not speak false. “Against Henry’s kingdom, I have all the kingdoms of Christendom. Against each one of your bishops, I have a hundred saints. Against your one parliament, I have all the general councils of the church, stretching back for a thousand years.
He can see that, in the years ahead, treason will take new and various forms. When the last treason act was made, no one could circulate their words in a printed book or bill, because printed books were not thought of. He feels a moment of jealousy toward the dead, to those who served kings in slower times than these; nowadays the products of some bought or poisoned brain can be disseminated through Europe in a month.
Troubled men both, he thinks, Wriothesley and Riche, and alike in some ways, sidling around the peripheries of their own souls, tapping at the walls: oh, what is that hollow sound?
The order goes to the Tower, ‘Bring up the bodies.’ Deliver, that is, the accused men, by name Weston, Brereton, Smeaton and Norris, to Westminster Hall for trial. Kingston fetches them by barge; it is 12 May, a Friday.
Rouge, also, had a peculiar function as caste-mark. It was applied with a heavy hand and in a circular pattern. It was worn most lavishly on the day of a woman’s debut, when she was obliged to simulate the flush of the contrived orgasm bestowed by royal favour.
Repetition of false teachings does not make them true.
The king has great power, but he has no power to know me, except through what I say and what I do.
You know what you meant. I only know what you said.
Tom Truth says, ‘I do not know if I wrote this verse.’ ‘You have forgot it,’ he says. ‘As would any man of sense. Yet in the fifth stanza you write, Pardon me, your man, Tom Truth. Which you rhyme, unfortunately, with growth.’ Christophe sniggers. ‘Even I know better, and I am French.