Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 4.djvu/111

1544.] his Highness was contented, for the sake of amity, to relax those terms—you can pretend that it is with his Majesty's consent that he finds himself thus left alone. You profess to have reported his very expressions; but your father has taken so many of those expressions as make for his convenience, and, incredible and absurd as they are if divided from the remainder of the message, he claims in them a justification of his own and his master's conduct. I marvel he is not ashamed so to trifle with your master's credit as to make you responsible for a story which all men know to be a lie, which we, for our own sake, are bound to expose and protest against. Sorry am I, for the credit of our order, that you should have borne a part in this farce at a time when, if there be a knavish action performed anywhere, a bishop is ever suspected of having played a chief hand in it.'

Gardiner could lay on the lash; but also Arras could endure without flinching. The council met again and again to listen to the protests of the ambassadors, but Arras gave no sign, and Granvelle received the thrusts which were aimed at him with impenetrable indifference. 'They thought,' and 'they believed,' and 'they would consider.' 'Consider!' Gardiner at last passionately exclaimed, 'if you would consider well,