‘Yes, and all the stout vagabonds are being cleared from the city. The beggars will be gone from the Minster tomorrow. Poor caitiffs. Security is tight.’ Wrenne hesitated, then added, ‘You must know, sir, the King is not popular up here. Not among the gentry, though now they bow and scrape, and even less among the common people.’

I remembered Cranmer’s scathing words about northern papists. ‘Because of the religious changes, that caused the rebellion?’

‘Ay.’ Wrenne clasped his hands round his goblet. ‘I remember the rebellion. The King’s agents were closing the small monasteries and assessing church property. Then suddenly the commons erupted all over Yorkshire. It was like a wildfire.’ He waved a large, square hand where a fine emerald ring glinted. ‘They elected Robert Aske leader and within a week he had marched into York at the head of five thousand men. The City Council and the Minster authorities were terrified. This was an explosive crowd of rough peasants who had turned themselves into an army. So they agreed to obey Aske; the church authorities held a celebratory Mass for him in the Minster.’ He nodded at the window. ‘I watched the rebels processing into the Mass from there; thousands of them, all with swords and pikes.’

I nodded reflectively. ‘And they thought they could make the King agree to reverse the religious changes.’

‘Robert Aske was a naïve man for a lawyer. But if the King had not tricked them into disbanding his army I believe they could have taken the whole country.’ He looked at me seriously. ‘The discontent in the north goes back a very long way. To the Striving between the Two Roses last century. The north was loyal to King Richard III and the Tudors have never been popular. The rebellion was about more than religion, too. The Dalesmen sent round tracts by a “Captain Poverty” full of complaints about high rents and tithes. When the religious changes came -’ he spread his big hands – ‘it was the straw that broke the camel’s back.’

‘King Richard?’ Barak asked. ‘Yet he seized the throne, and murdered the rightful heirs. The Princes in the Tower.’

‘There are those who say it was the King’s father that killed them.’ He paused. ‘I was a boy when King Richard processed through York after his coronation. You should have seen the city then. People hung their best carpets from the windows all along the way, petals were showered on him as he rode by. It is different today. The common folk are reluctant even to lay gravel before their doors to smooth King Henry’s way, for all the council have ordered it.’

‘But the quarrels of the Two Roses can hardly have meaning today,’ I said. ‘The Tudors have been on the throne near sixty years.’

‘No?’ Wrenne inclined his head. ‘They say after the conspiracy was uncovered this spring, the old Countess of Salisbury and her son were executed in the Tower.’

I recalled the story of the aged countess’s dreadful death; it had circulated in London that summer. Imprisoned without charge, she had been led to the block where an inexperienced boy had hacked at her head and shoulders; the King’s executioner had been busy in York, despatching the conspirators.

‘She was the last Yorkist heir,’ Wrenne said quietly. ‘Was that not done because the King still fears the name Plantagenet?’

I sat back. ‘But surely the conspiracy this year was mainly about religion, like the Pilgrimage of Grace?’

‘Old loyalties played their part too. The King killed the countess and her son to make sure.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘And they say his young children have disappeared into the Tower?’

‘No one knows.’

‘More Princes in the Tower.’

I nodded slowly. I remembered Cranmer saying, ‘This time they called him tyrant; many meant to overthrow him.’

‘I see more clearly now why there is such tight security for this visit,’ I said. ‘And yet, the house of Tudor has brought safety and security to England. No one can deny that.’

‘Very true.’ Wrenne leaned back in his chair with a sigh. ‘And for the King to come and set his stamp on the north is an intelligent plan. I only say, sir, do not underestimate the currents that run here.’

I looked at the old man, wondering where his sympathies lay. I guessed that like many an aged student of the world’s affairs, he was past feeling any great passion. I changed the subject.

‘It seems we will be present at the King’s reception on Friday. Sir William Maleverer confirmed it to me yesterday at St Mary’s. We are to hand over the petitions.’

‘Yes, I have had a message. We are to take the petitions to the Office of the Great Chamberlain tomorrow. He will see us at nine and take us through our paces for the meeting with the King. He wants me to bring the petitions and the summary half an hour early so he can go through them. So I will start early for St Mary’s, and see you there at nine.’

‘I hope we will be properly rehearsed.’

‘I am sure we will. The Council will want everything to go with perfect smoothness.’ Wrenne smiled and shook his head. ‘By Jesu, to see the King at my age. That will be a strange thing.’

‘I confess I am not looking forward to it.’

‘We have only to perform our little duty. The King will barely notice us. But to see him. And that wondrous train of wagons a mile long. They’ve been bringing in hay to feed the horses from as far as Carlisle.’

‘It is very well organized. They even have a girl going round the town buying sweet doucets for the Queen.’ I told him of our encounter with Tamasin Reedbourne. Wrenne winked at Barak.

‘Pretty, was she?’

‘Fine enough, sir.’

Something struck me then. I remembered the girl had told me she had given her servant leave to choose some cloth for a new doublet from a shop. Yet he had come back empty-handed. I put the thought aside.

‘Well,’ Wrenne said, ‘we should begin work. The summaries need only be brief. We can start now and go on till we finish.’

‘Yes. I would not like to annoy the Chamberlain’s office. Nor Sir William Maleverer.’

Wrenne frowned. ‘Maleverer is a boor, for all he comes of an old Yorkshire family. He is like many of those appointed to the Council of the North since the Pilgrimage of Grace. Gentry who did not join the rebellion and now proclaim their loyalty to reform, but have no real religion beyond their own advancement. Ruthless and ambitious men. But tell me, sir, what did you see of the building at St Mary’s?’

‘It is extraordinary. Hundreds of carpenters and artists, building great pavilions. By the way, when was the monastery put down?’

‘Two years since. Abbot Thornton wrote to Cromwell asking for the monastery to be saved, or if it could not that he be granted lands and a pension. Which he was.’ The old man laughed cynically.

‘The abbots of the large houses were corrupt and greedy men.’

‘And now St Mary’s is the King’s, the abbot’s house renamed King’s Manor.’ Wrenne rubbed his hand across his cheek thoughtfully. ‘Perhaps we shall have an announcement the Queen is with child.’

‘The King would certainly welcome a second son.’

‘The royal succession.’ He smiled. ‘The bloodline of God’s anointed rolling down the ages. The head and soul of the realm, the peak of the chain of degree that binds man to man and keeps all safe.’

‘And where we lawyers hang somewhere in the middle, hoping to rise and fearing to fall.’

‘Ay.’ Wrenne laughed and waved a hand round the room. ‘See my table on its dais, nearest the fire, so that when the household servants lay their own table to dine they are lower down and further from the heat. All part of the great chain of earthly rank, this world’s great theatre. Well, so it must be, or we should have chaos.’ He winked conspiratorially. ‘Though I allow Madge to sit close to the fire, that she may warm her old bones.’