J knew how to bait his mother. ‘And he will be drinking and dining and living at a Papist court. I doubt that there will be any church where he can say his prayers. He will come home crossing himself and needing a priest to pray for him.’

She went white at that. ‘He will not,’ she said faintly.

‘They say Buckingham himself is inclining that way,’ J went on. ‘His mother is turned Papist, or witch, or something.’

Elizabeth dropped her head and was silent for a moment. ‘Our Lord will keep him safe,’ she said. ‘And he is a godly man. He will come home safe, to his home, to his faith.’

J tired of the sport of teasing his mother’s piety. ‘When I am a man I shall call no man master,’ he asserted.

She smiled at him. ‘Then you will have to earn more money than your father has ever done! Every man has his better, every dog a master.’

‘I shall never follow a man as my father follows the duke,’ J said boldly. ‘Not the King of England himself. I shall work for my own good, I shall go on my own travels. I shall not be ordered to one place and then summoned away.’

Elizabeth put out her hand in a rare gesture of tenderness and touched his cheek. ‘I hope you will live in a country where great men do not exercise their power in such a way,’ she said. It was the closest he had ever heard her come to any sort of radical thought. ‘I hope you will live in a country where great men remember their duty to the poor, and to their servants. But we do not live in such a world yet, my J. You have to choose a master and become his man and do his bidding. There is no-one who does not serve another, whether you’re the lowest ploughboy or the greatest squire. There is always another above you.’

Instinctively he lowered his voice. ‘England will have to change,’ he said softly. ‘The lowest ploughboy is questioning if his master has a God-given right to rule over him. The lowest ploughboy has a soul which is as welcome in heaven as the greatest squire. The Bible says that the first shall become last. That’s not the promise that nothing can ever change.’

‘Hush,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Time enough to speak like that when things have changed, if they ever do.’

‘Things are changing now,’ J insisted. ‘This king will have to deal with the people of the country. He will have to listen to Parliament. He cannot cheat on honest, good men, as his father did. We are tired of paying for a court which shows us nothing but luxury and sin. We will not be allied to Papists, we will not be brothers to heretics!’

She shook her head, but she did not stop him.