"Sir, said he, I have commandment from the council to apprehend you and bring you unto them.

"Why, said I, it is now ten of the clock at night; you cannot now carry me unto them.

"No, sir, said he, you shall go with me to my house in London, where you shall have a bed, and to-morrow I will bring you unto them in the Tower.

"In the name of God, quoth I, and so went with him, requiring him if I might understand the cause. He said he knew none."

Underhill, however, conjectured that it was the ballad. He "was nothing dismayed;" and in the morning went readily to the Tower, where he waited in the presence chamber talking to the pensioners.

Sir Edward Hastings passed through, and as he saw him, "frowned earnestly." "Are you come?" said Hastings, "we will talk with you ere you part, I warrant you." They were old acquaintances. Underhill had been controller of the ordnance at Calais when Lord Huntingdon was in command there. The earl being in bad health, his brother Sir Edward was with him, assisting in the duties of the office; and Underhill, being able to play and sing, had been a frequent visitor at the Government House. The earl, moreover, "took great delight to hear him reason" with Sir Edward, on points of controversy—chiefly on the real presence—where the controller of the ordnance (according to his own account) would quote Scripture, and Sir Edward would "swear great oaths," "especially by the Lord's foot;" on which Underhill would say, "Nay, then, it must needs be so, and you prove it with such oaths," and the earl would laugh and exclaim, "Brother, give him over, Underhill is too good for you."

Hastings, it seemed, could not forgive these passages of wit, and Underhill was too smart for them. While he stood waiting, Secretary Bourne came in, "looking as the wolf at the lamb," and seeing the man that he had sent for, carried him off into the council room. Hastings was gone, Bedford sat as President, "and Bedford," says Underhill, "was my friend, for that my chance was to be at the recovery of his son, my Lord Russell, when he was cast into the Thames by Lymehurst, whom I received into my house, and gate him to bed, who was in great peril of his life, the weather being very cold."

Bedford, however, made no sign of recognition. Bourne read the ballad; on which Underhill protested that there was no attack on the queen's title in it. No! Bourne said, but it maintains the queen's title with the help of an arrant heretic, Tyndal. Underhill used the word Papist. Sir John Mason asked what he meant by that: "Sir," he says that he replied, "I think, if you look among the priests in Paul's, you shall find some old mumpsimusses there.

"Mumpsimusses, knave, said he, mumpsimusses! Thou art an heretic knave, by God's blood!

"Yea! by the mass, said the Earl of Bath, I warrant him an heretic knave indeed.

"I beseech your honours," Underhill said, "speaking to the Lords that sat at the table (for those others stood by and were not of the council), be my good Lords. I have offended no laws. I have served the Queen's Majesty's father and brother long time, and spent and consumed my living therein. I went not forth against her Majesty, notwithstanding I was commanded."

He was interrupted by Arundel, who said that, "by his writing," "he wished to set them all by the ears." Hastings re-entered at the moment, telling the council that they must repair to the queen, and the Hot Gospeller was promptly ordered to Newgate.

The sheriff led him through the streets, his friend Joy "following afar off, as Peter followed Christ." He wrote a few words to his wife at the door of Newgate, asking her to send him "his nightgown, his Bible, and his lute;" and then entered the prison, his life in which he goes on to describe.

In the centre of Newgate was "a great open hall." "As soon as it was supper time," the board was covered in the same hall. The keeper, whose name was "Alisander," with his wife, came and sat down, and half a dozen prisoners that were there for felony, Underhill "being the first that for religion was sent unto that prison." One of the felons had served with him in France. "After supper," the story continues, "this good fellow, whose name was Bristow, procured me to have a bed in his chamber, who could play well upon a rebeck. He was a tall fellow, and after one of Queen Mary's guard; yet a Protestant, which he kept secret, for else, he said, he should not have found such favour as he did at the keeper's hands and his wife's, for to such as loved the gospel they were very cruel. Well, said Underhill, I have sent for my Bible, and, by God's grace, therein shall be my daily exercise; I will not hide it from them. Sir, said he, I am poor; but they will bear with you, for they see your estate is to pay well; and I will shew you the nature and manner of them; for I have been here a good while. They both do love music very well. Wherefore you with your lute, and I to play with you on my rebeck, will please them greatly. He loveth to be merry, and to drink wine, and she also. If you will bestow upon them, every dinner and supper, a quart of wine and some music, you shall be their white son, and have all the favour they can shew you."