But the man was not angry this time. ‘Then he must have seen sense himself,’ he said joyfully. ‘Those who call him a fool will have me to reckon with. He has promised me my captaincy. I shall retire a captain and that is worth something to a poor man, Mr Tradescant.’

‘I am glad of it,’ John said heavily.

‘I shall never fight again,’ Felton declared. ‘It was a bad campaign, badly planned, badly led, cruelly hard. There were times when I wept like a baby. I thought we would never get off that accursed island.’

John nodded.

‘He will never do it again, will he?’ Felton asked. ‘The French can fight their own battles now. They don’t need the pain of Englishmen. We should be as we were with the old queen – defenders of our own shores and our own counties. Safe behind our own sea. What are the French and their worries to me?’

‘I feel that too,’ John said. They had reached the end of the quay. He turned and held out his hand to Felton. ‘God be with you, Felton.’

‘And with you, Mr Tradescant. Now we are home, maybe the duke will think of the people at home. There’s much poverty. It is pitiful to see the children in my village. They have neither school nor play, and the common land has been enclosed so they have neither milk nor meat nor honey. And bread itself is scarce.’

‘Maybe he will.’

The two men shook hands, but still Felton lingered. ‘If I were the duke and could advise the king, I would tell him to stop the enclosing of land and free it for the people,’ he said. ‘So that every man can have his strip for vegetables or to keep a pig. Like it used to be. If I were advising the king, I would tell him that before he moves the communion table rightwise or sidewise or anywise in the church he should feed the people. We need bread before a mouthful of communion wine.’

John nodded, but he knew, as Felton could not know, that the king never saw the beggars in the streets, never saw the hungry children. He went in his carriage from great country seat to hunting lodge. He went on his royal barge from one riverside palace to another. And besides, the permission granted to a landlord to enclose common land brought revenue into the royal coffers, while a refusal would benefit only the poor and leave the king as short of cash as ever.

‘He is a merciful king?’ Felton queried. ‘And Buckingham is a great duke, a good man, is he not?’