contrived that the court might not only hear, but see, if they
pleased, their sentence executed.

A sight so unexpected, and withal so unpleasing, gave me no
encouragement either to rest or indeed to enter at all there; till
looking earnestly I espied, on the opposite side, a door, which
giving me hopes of a farther progress, I adventured to step hastily
to it, and opened it.

This let me into one of the fairest rooms that, so far as I
remember, I was ever in, and no wonder, for though it was now put to
this mean use, it had for many ages past been the royal seat or
palace of the kings of England, until Cardinal Wolsey built
Whitehall, and offered it as a peace offering to King Henry the
Eighth, who until that time had kept his court in this house, and
had this, as the people in the house reported, for his dining-room,
by which name it then went.

This room in length (for I lived long enough in it to have time to
measure it) was threescore feet, and had breadth proportionable to
it. In it, on the front side, were very large bay windows, in which
stood a large table. It had other very large tables in it, with
benches round; and at that time the floor was covered with rushes,
against some solemn festival, which I heard it was bespoken for.

Here was my nil ultra, and here I found I might set up my pillar;
for although there was a door out of it to a back pair of stairs
which led to it, yet that was kept locked. So that finding I had
now followed my keeper's direction to the utmost point, beyond which
I could not go, I sat down and considered that rhetorical saying,