Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 10.djvu/342

 322 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [en. 60, Without family ties, with no near relations, and without friends save such as were loyal to her for their demands, 'hath moved her Highness to so great a misliking as she pur- poses presently to send for you and hear what account you can render for this strange dealing towards your gracious sovereign. Moreover she determines to redress the infinite injuries which of long time you have oifered her subjects. For which purpose, to be plain with your lord- ship, she has given me order to hearken to my neighbours' griefs, and likewise to prefer those com- plaints before her Majesty's privy council, for that you may be called to answer, and the parties satisfied. She has given orders for your com- ing up, which I suppose you have already received, and withal, you shall have a taste to judge how well she liketh your loving usage. ' Now to advise you, my Lord, I wish you from the bottom of my heart to shake off the yoke of your stubbornness against her Majesty's desires, to lay aside your stiffnecked determination and yield yourself to her known clemency. She is our God on earth. If there be perfec- tion in flesh and blood, undoubtedly it is in her Majesty ; for she is slow to revenge and ready to forgive. And yet, my Lord, she is right King Henry, her father, for if any strive with her, all the princes in Europe cannot make her yield. You will eay to me, you are determined to leave your bishoprick in her Ma- jesty's hands, to dispose thereof at her good pleasure, and I know that you have so reported among your friends. Your wife has also couu soiled you to be a Latimer, glorying^ as it were, to stand against your na- tural prince. My Lord, let not your wife's shallow experience carry you too far. You see that to Court you must come. The Pi-ince's good fa- vour and grace will be altered from you ; your friends will be strange. It will be no case for your age to travel in winter, and I know well how you are horsed and manned for that purpose. It will be no pleasure for you to have her Majesty and the council know how wretchedly you live, how extremely covetous, how great a grazier, how marvellous a dairyman, how rich a farmer, how great an owner. It will not like you that the world know of your de- cayed houses, of the lead and brick that you sell from them, of the leases that you pull violently from many ; of the copyholds you lawlessly enter into, of the free lands which you wrongfully possess, of the tolls and imposts which you raise, of God's good ministers which you causelessly displace. 'All this I am to prove against you, and shall be most heartily sorry to put it in execution. Wherefore, if you love place, the preservation of your credit, and the continuance of
 * being added, my Lord, to her former