Fans of Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall trilogy will recall Gage appearing as a religious conservative and yet dependable enforcer for Henry VIII, as Constable of the Tower and Privy Counsellor. But new research suggests a bold act of subterfuge by Gage, in which he shielded a treasured Catholic text from the very destruction the king ordered him to enforce.

Archival sleuthing by researchers from the University of Sussex and the University of Cambridge has reunited six fragile pages in The Keep archive in Brighton, England, with a manuscript held 3,500 miles (5,600 kilometers) away at Yale University in the United States: Nicholas Love's early 15th-century Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ.

Dr. Katie Walter from the University of Sussex and Dr. James Wade from Girton College, Cambridge, overcame a cataloging puzzle that had frustrated scholars for nearly a century, leaving the fragment "hiding in plain sight." Their study is published today in the journal Notes and Queries.

A trail of clues left by various archivists and scholars eventually led Wade and Walter to a digitized manuscript known as "Takamiya MS 20" held by the Beinecke Library at Yale University. Scrolling through it, they found the gap where The Keep pages belonged—just before a controversial passage on the importance of oral confession to a priest—and matched the scribe's handwriting and the content of the missing passage to prove the connection. On the final page of the Yale manuscript, among a list of names of likely owners, including those of two religious women, is Gage's signature.