The Francis Bacon Mysteries by Anna Castle

Author:Anna Castle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: elizabethan mysteries, mysteries with barristers, spymaster mysteries, philosopher sleuth, mysteries set in england, christmas mysteries
Publisher: Anna Castle
Published: 2016-05-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Clarady:

Our mutual friend is impatient for results. We still do not know whether the synod is planned for July or September, nor do we have any knowledge of the proposed agenda. We hear rumors of a secret assembly in Warwickshire planned with similar intent; this cancer in the body of our Church is spreading. Time grows short. Our friend’s resources are stretched thin. He will need weeks to coordinate a response sufficiently finely tuned to extract the principal malefactors without casting the whole county into disarray.

You must move more quickly. Hasten your way into the inner circle. Your supposition regarding Wingfield seems sound. If he is not at the center of the web, he is near it. Do not let your friendship with his children deter you. Measures can be taken to protect them. Study Job: “Remember, I pray thee, whoever perished, being innocent? Or where were the righteous cut off?”

Use your influence with the Wingfield children to contrive an invitation to dinner. Listen for talk of “a church within a church.” This is one of their more pernicious strategies, to establish their presbytery within our established episcopacy. They will divide the churches of England into separate islands of conformity and nonconformity, laying their eggs in our nests like cuckoos. “They hatch cockatrice eggs, and weave the spider’s web: he that eateth of their eggs dieth, and that which is crushed breaketh out into a viper.” Isaiah 59:4-6.

Press harder. Work faster. You must snare the instigator before he drags your friends to their destruction.

From Gray’s Inn, 13 May 1587

Fra. Bacon

P.S. There is a new instrument for writing called a pencil. They may have some at the university bookseller’s. They’re square and somewhat messy but more portable than quill and inkhorn. See if you can acquire one. It may facilitate the recording of notes when away from your desk. The lists are good. Keep sending them. Daniel 10:21: “But I will shew thee that which is noted in the scripture of truth.”

P.P.S. While I appreciate your heightened sense of discretion, I beg you not to use Law French as any sort of code. At least I think those were attempts at Law French. That specialist language is not suited for general purposes, nor do you have even the most basic understanding of its grammar. Plain English will do for your letters, with care in their handling.

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