Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [424]
For the king, the closing of these often decrepit religious houses was chiefly a means of raising money and rewarding his friends. Amesbury went to the family of Jane Seymour; Wilton, with its huge and ancient estates, to a man rapidly rising in the royal service, Sir William Herbert.
But the effect on an area could be considerable. It was at Sarum. For centuries, when men looked west, they had seen the rich tracts around Wilton and known – those are the abbey lands. Passive, sleepy since Saxon times, one could be certain that, whatever else was happening, the old abbey estates would not change much. But look west now, and one saw the seat of a new and vigorous family power; for come what may, Sir William intended that the family of Herbert should be a mighty power in the land.
The second change was less obvious, but would have profounder consequences. This was the order, in Bishop Shaxton’s time, that every church in the diocese must buy one of the newly printed English bibles, translated by Coverdale and Tyndale. Henry had come to doubt the wisdom of this piece of Protestantism too. Late in the reign he decreed that only nobles and the gentry might read them aloud in their own homes – and that ordinary women and the lower orders were not to read a translated Bible at all.
But it was too late. The damage was done. Even Henry VIII could not close his subjects’ minds, once they had been opened.
Edward Shockley had read his Bible.
He had lied. That was the trouble.
When he was in love.
It did not seem such a lie at the time. And anyway, he and Katherine Moody were meant for each other. Even her parents said so.
He and Katherine made a good-looking couple. Seen side by side, they seemed to fit together like two halves of a single entity, so that, once they were betrothed, old John Shockley his father had laughed, remarking that it was hard to imagine how they had ever been apart. They complemented each other in every way – her thick, light brown hair to his thin, yellow locks; her eyes were pale azure, his startling, deep blue. And his easy belief in himself, as the sole heir to the Shockley mill, was perfectly matched by her almost submissive desire to please.
It was two years before old King Harry died and he was doing business in the western city of Exeter when he first saw her. Both of them felt an instant attraction that had fortunately never left them since; and it was not long before he discovered that her father was a clothier, that she and her brother would each inherit a modest fortune, that she was unsure of herself, and that, in every way, she suited him admirably. He had fallen in love. He was twenty-one and she was seventeen.
There was only one problem: the Moodys were Catholic.
He was not surprised. He knew very well that in Wessex, the further one travelled into the hinterland, the more people clung to the old ways. If the Moodys, far to the west in their village near Exeter, longed for their Church to return to Rome, it was only to be expected.
It did not seem so important. His own parents, though they grudgingly accepted the king’s break with Rome, were certainly no Protestants. His father John had once called the reforming Bishop Shaxton a heretic to his face; and there were still Roman missals to be found in many a Wiltshire church. He supposed his parents and Katherine’s would find little to disagree about.
And what of his own views? He supposed that as long as he went to whatever Church the king ordered, no one should find fault with him. It was true that in private, he personally found much to support the Protestants in his Bible readings; if he liked to hear the service in English and thought that men like Cranmer and Shaxton had been right to attack the old