John looked wearily at his son. ‘And you always bellow like a Ranter. I know you think me an old fool, J. So tell me your way. You refuse to pay the tax, the king’s men or the parish officers come and arrest you for treason. You are thrown into prison. Your wife and children go hungry. The business collapses, the Tradescants are ruined. This is a master plan, J. I applaud you.’

J looked as if he were about to burst out but then he laughed a short bitter laugh. ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘Very well. You’re in the right. But it sticks in my throat.’

‘It’ll stick in many throats,’ John predicted. ‘But they’ll pay.’

‘There will come a time when they will refuse,’ J warned his father. ‘You cannot choke a country year after year and not have to face the people at the end of it. There will come a time when good men will refuse in such numbers that the king has to listen.’

‘Maybe,’ John said thoughtfully. ‘But who can say when?’

‘If the king knew that his subjects object, that they don’t like being ordered to church and the prayers ordered for them, that they don’t like being ordered to play like children in the churchyard after the service, that there are men in the country who want to use the Lord’s Day for thought and reflection and who don’t want to practise archery and sports – if the king knew all that –’

‘Yes, but he doesn’t know that,’ John pointed out. ‘He dismissed the men who might have told him, and those left at court would never bring him bad news.’

‘You could tell him,’ J observed.

‘I’m no better than the rest of them,’ John replied. ‘I’ve learned to be a courtier. Maybe it’s late in life, but I’ve learned it now. I told the truth as I saw it to all the lords I ever served and I never flattered one of them with lies. But this king is a man who doesn’t invite the truth. I tell you, J, I cannot speak the truth to him. He is surrounded by fancy. I would not dare to be the one to tell him that he and the queen are not adored everywhere they go, I couldn’t tell him that the men he has thrown into prison are not wild men, madmen, hotheads, but men more sane and careful and honourable than the rest of us. I cannot be the one to tell him that he is in the wrong and the country is slowly coming to know it. He has made sure that the world appears as best pleases him. It would take more than me to turn it upside down.’