First that his friend Mr. Audrey, whom he had always looked upon with
reverence and a kind of terror because of his hotness in matters of
politics and religion, had capitulated to the enemy and was to go to
church at Easter. Mr. Manners himself had something of timidity in his
nature: he was conservative certainly, and practised, when he could
without bringing himself into open trouble, the old religion in which he
had been brought up. He, like the younger generation, had been educated
at Derby Grammar School, and in his youth had sat with his parents in
the nave of the old Cluniac church of St. James to hear mass. He had
then entered his father's office in Derby, about the time that the
Religious Houses had fallen, and had transferred the scene of his
worship to St. Peter's. At Queen Mary's accession, he had stood, with
mild but genuine enthusiasm, in his lawyer's gown, in the train of the
sheriff who proclaimed her in Derby market-place; and stood in the
crowd, with corresponding dismay, six years later to shout for Queen
Elizabeth. Since that date, for the first eleven years he had gone, as
did other Catholics, to his parish church secretly, thankful that there
was no doubt as to the priesthood of his parson, to hear the English
prayers; and then, to do him justice, though he heard with something
resembling consternation the decision from Rome that compromise must
cease and that, henceforth, all true Catholics must withdraw themselves
from the national worship, he had obeyed without even a serious moment
of consideration. He had always feared that it might be so,
understanding that delay in the decision was only caused by the hope
that even now the breach might not be final or complete; and so was
better prepared for the blow when it came. Since that time he had heard
mass when he could, and occasionally even harboured priests, urged
thereto by his wife and daughter; and, for the rest, still went into
Derby for three or four days a week to carry on his lawyer's business,