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Ayling looked at the old man in astonishment. "Do you remember me?" he asked. The old waiter, schooled to remember at first glance if he remembered at all, looked afresh at Ayling. "I see so many faces, sir I couldn't just at the moment say " "And I suppose," said Ayling, "you've brought me whisky-and-soda here, to this very chair, no end of times. What's your name?" "Chedsey, sir."
They asked her no more. Dr Chedsey, for the sixth and last time, assumed the black cap, and read the sentence of death. "Thou shalt be taken from here to the place whence thou earnest, and thence to the place of execution, there to be burned in the fire till thou art dead." Never before had Chedsey's voice been known to falter in pronouncing that sentence.
Then the priest said: "I am somewhat feared, Master Commissioners, you shall reckon Colchester an infected place, seeing there be here so many touched with the poison of heresy." "It all comes of self-conceit," said Sir John. "Nay," answered Dr Chedsey. "Self-conceit is scarce wont to bring a man to the stake. It were more like to save him from it."
Dr Chedsey appears to have been one of this type. Let us hope that these wandering sheep came home at last in the arms of the Good Shepherd who sought them with such preserving tenderness. But the sad truth is that we scarcely know with certainty of one who did so.
"I believe it to be a substantial lie, and a real lie." "Shame! shame!" cried one of the priests on the bench. "Horrible blasphemy!" cried another. "What is it, then, that there is before consecration?" asked Dr Chedsey. "Bread." "Well said. And what is there after consecration?" "Bread, still." "Nothing more?" "Nothing more," said Elizabeth firmly.
Ursula dropped half-a-dozen courtesies in a flurried way. "Please it, your Reverence, I am a right true Catholic, and shall learn the children so to be." "Mind thou dost!" said Sir John. Dr Chedsey meanwhile had occupied himself in writing out an order for the children to be delivered to Ursula, to which he affixed the seal of the Commission.
"Yea, though I walk through death's dark vale, Yet will I fear none ill; Thy rod, Thy staff doth comfort me, And Thou art with me still." Which was the happier, do you think, that night? Dr Chedsey, who had read the sentence of death upon ten martyrs? or young Rose Allen, who was to be burned to death in five weeks?
"What, is there a lesser babe yet?" asked Dr Chedsey, laughing. "Ay, there is so: a babe in arms." "Worshipful Sirs, might it please you to hear a poor woman?" "Speak on, good wife." "Sirs," said the woman who had spoken, coming forward out of the crowd, "my name is Ursula Felstede, and I dwell at Thorpe, the next door to Johnson. The babes know me, and have been in my charge aforetime.
Helen Ewring, the miller's wife, followed: and both were condemned. Then the last of the Moot Hall prisoners, Elizabeth Foulkes, was placed at the bar. "Dost thou believe," inquired Dr Chedsey, "that in the most holy Sacrament of the altar, the body and blood of Christ is really and substantially present?" Elizabeth's reply, in her quiet, clear voice, was audible in every part of the hall.
"So she doth," said the priest: "but I misdoubt somewhat if she be not of the `halting Gospellers' whereof we heard this morrow in the Moot Hall." "Better put them in charge of the Black Sisters of Hedingham," suggested Dr Chedsey. "Come you this even, good woman, to the White Hart, and you shall then hear our pleasure. Father Tye, I pray you come with us to supper."
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