Near dawn, on the same morning as the prince's disappearance, Tom Canty awakens in his royal bed. After a few moments of confusion, he calls for his sisters to come to him so that he can tell them about his strange dream. The person who comes to Tom however, is a stranger and asks what Tom's "commands" are, reminding him that he is Edward, King of England. This greatly upsets Tom, but fie manages to go back to sleep and to dream a pleasant dream about a dwarf who shows him where to dig for twelve pennies every week, enough to satisfy his father and still have some left over to give to the priest and to his mother.
In the midst of Tom's dream, he is awakened and must submit to the process of being dressed, with each item of clothing passed from one person to the next in a long line of serving men. Once dressed, he is then officially washed and dried and given over to the Hairdresser-royal. He is allowed to eat, and he is then taken into the throne room, with much ceremony and with many officers and other functionaries attending him. There, he must hear and approve many tedious reports, assisted by his "uncle," the Lord Hertford. When he learns that the king is to be buried later in the coming month, he is surprised and wonders if the body will "keep." When he learns of the expenses of the royal household for the past six months and of the fact that most of it has not been paid, he bursts out, "We be going to the dogs, 'tis plain." He then begins to outline means of economizing (taking a smaller house, releasing servants, and so forth), but he is brought up short by pressure on his arm from the Lord Hertford. The assembled company seems to notice nothing, and as business continues, Tom learns that the king made a provision in his will to raise the Lord Hertford to the ducal degree and to raise Sir Thomas Seymour, his brother, to the peerage, and that both grants were accompanied by grants of money. He is about to blurt out something about the propriety of paying the late king's debts, but a touch from his advisor saves him from such indiscretions. Finally, all of this business of state so wearies Tom that he falls asleep, letting the business of the kingdom come to a standstill for the moment.
