Then came death, for the first time nearly touching and affecting
the youth, and making his soul yearn after further depths, which he
might yet have found in the peace of the good old men, and the holy
rites and doctrine that they preserved; but before there was time
for these things to find their way into the wounds of his spirit,
his expulsion from home had sent him forth to see another side of
monkish and clerkly life.

Father Shoveller, kindly as he was, was a mere yeoman with nothing
spiritual about him; the monks of Hyde were, the younger, gay
comrades, only trying how loosely they could sit to their vows; the
elder, churlish and avaricious; even the Warden of Elizabeth College
was little more than a student. And in London, fresh phases had
revealed themselves; the pomp, state, splendour and luxury of
Archbishop Wolsey's house had been a shock to the lad's ideal of a
bishop drawn from the saintly biographies he had studied at
Beaulieu; and he had but to keep his ears open to hear endless
scandals about the mass priests, as they were called, since they
were at this time very unpopular in London, and in many cases
deservedly so. Everything that the boy had hitherto thought the way
of holiness and salvation seemed invaded by evil and danger, and
under the bondage of death, whose terrible dance continued to haunt
him.

"I saw it, I saw it;" he said, "all over those halls at York House.
I seemed to behold the grisly shape standing behind one and another,
as they ate and laughed; and when the Archbishop and his priests and
the King came in it seemed only to make the pageant complete! Only
now and then could I recall those blessed words, 'Ye are free
indeed.' Did he say from the bondage of death?"