Still, bring the gear, it may make his Grace laugh, and if so I'll give you a gold piece, who have had enough of oaths and scoldings, aye," he added, with a sour grin, "and of blows too.

Now follow me into the Presence, and speak only when you are spoken to, nor dare to answer if he rates you." They went from the room down a passage and through another door, where the guards on duty looked suspiciously at Bolle and his sack, but at a word from Cromwell let them through into a large room in which a fire burned upon the hearth.

At the end of this room stood a huge, proud-looking man with a flat and cruel face, broad as an ox's skull, as Thomas Bolle said afterwards, who was dressed in some rich, sombre stuff and wore a velvet cap upon his head.

He held a parchment in his hand, and before him on the other side of an oak table sat an officer of state in a black robe, who wrote upon another parchment, whereof there were many scattered about on the table and the floor.
"Knave," shouted the King, for they guessed that it was he, "you have cast up these figures wrong.

Oh, that it should be my lot to be served by none but fools!" "Pardon, your Grace," said the secretary in a trembling voice, "thrice have I checked them." "Would you gainsay me, you lying lawyer," bellowed the King again.