Of course my husband bought on his own account. God knows, everyone in England was buying land on his own account, and at the most desperate prices. It was like the herring fleet coming in, all at once. We were like fishwives on the harbor wall, reveling in a glut. We were all mad to get our hands on our share of the old church lands. It was a banquet of land grabbing. No one questioned William as he valued for the Crown and then bought and sold for himself. It was expected by everyone that he should supplement his fees by trading on his own account, and besides, he took no more than was customary.

How did he do it? He valued land low in his own favor, sometimes for the benefit of others. Sometimes he received gifts, and sometimes secret bribes. Of course! Why not? He was doing the king’s work and furthering the reform of the church. He was doing God’s work in expelling corrupt priests. Why should he not be richly rewarded? We were replacing a rotten old church with one in the true image of His son. It was glorious work. Was my husband not on God’s own work, to destroy the old bad ways of the Papist church? Was he not absolutely right, directed by God Himself, to take wealth away from the corrupt Papal church and put it into our hands, we who would use it so much better? Is that not the very meaning of the sacred parable of the talents?

And all the while I was his apprentice, as well as his wife. I came to him a girl with a burning ambition to own my own property and to be secure in the world. Never again would I be a poor relation in the house of a richer cousin. He taught me how I could do it. God bless him.

Then I told him that the Chatsworth estate was for sale, near to my old home of Hardwick in Derbyshire, that I knew it well and it was good land, that the original owner was my cousin but he had sold it to spite his family, that the new owner, frightened by claims against the freehold, was desperate for a sale, that we could make a sharp profit if we were not too particular at taking advantage of a fool in trouble. William saw, as I did, the profit that could be made from it, and he bought it for me at a knockdown price and swore it would be the greatest house in the North of England, and it would be our new home.