Three weeks later they were married at the parish church. They walked up the narrow path to the church door hand in hand; John could not stop himself noticing the yew trees, which were extraordinarily fine. One was growing like a castle with pretty pinnacle towers, the branches of the other fell like layers of cloth in a deep green dress. Elizabeth saw the direction of his gaze and smiled and patted his arm.

Her stepfather George Lance and Gertrude her mother were witnesses. Elizabeth wore a new gown of white, instead of her usual grey, and John wore a new suit of brown with white and crimson slashings in the sleeve. The sunlight through the stained-glass windows dappled the tiles on the floor with splashes of additional colour. John stood tall and made his responses in a firm voice, and felt with pleasure Elizabeth’s little hand resting lightly on his arm.

There were those waiting outside the flint-walled church to see the couple who complained that the bridegroom was dressed too fine for a working man. They murmured that he was getting above his station and that the slashings in his sleeve were made of silk as if he thought himself to be a gentleman. But then the wedding ale at the back door of the farmhouse was strong and sweet, and the grumblings gave way to a roar of ribald jokes by mid-afternoon.

Gertrude had laid on a grand wedding dinner with three different sorts of cooked meats and half a dozen puddings. John found himself beside the vicar, the Reverend John Hoare, at the dinner table and took his compliments and accepted a toast and then tried to make stilted conversation.

‘You serve a great lord,’ the vicar commented.

John warmed at once. ‘None greater.’

The Reverend Hoare smiled at his loyalty. ‘And he has put you in charge of the gardens of his new palace?’

John nodded. ‘He has done me that honour.’

‘Will you have to live at Hatfield? Or shall you keep a house at Meopham?’

‘I shall keep the house here,’ John said. ‘But I shall be much with my lord. My wife knows that his service must come first. Anyone who has the honour to serve a great man knows that his lord comes before everything.’

The vicar assented. ‘The master comes before the man.’

‘I wonder if you can tell me one thing though, vicar?’ John asked.

The vicar at once looked cautious. These were not the times for theological enquiry. Sensible men confined themselves to the catechism and the commandments and left questions to heretics and papists who would have to pay with their lives if they got their answer wrong. ‘What thing?’ he asked.