Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 3.djvu/541

1542.] forceth us, for the preservation of our honour and right, to use our power against him. The like unkindness hath been heretofore showed in other semblable cases against God's law, man's law, and all humanity; but the oftener it chanceth, the more it is to be abhorred.

'It hath been very rarely and seldom seen before that a king of Scots had had in marriage a daughter of England. We cannot, we will not reprehend the King our father's act therein; but lament and be sorry it took no better effect. The King our father minded love, amity, and perpetual friendship between the posterity of both, which how soon it failed, the death of the King of Scots, as a just punishment of God for his invasion into this our realm, is and shall be a perpetual testimony. And yet in that time could not the unkindness of the father extinguish in us the natural love of our nephew his son, being then in the miserable age of tender youth; but we then, forgetting the displeasure that should have worthily provoked us to invade that realm, nourished and brought up our nephew to achieve his father's Government, wherein he now so unkindly behaveth him towards us. Our chief grief and displeasure is that, under a colour of fair speech and flattering words, we be indeed so injured, contemned, and despised, as we ought not with sufferance to pass over. Words, writings, letters, messages, embassies, excuses, allegations could not be more pleasantly, more gently, nor more reverently devised and sent than hath been made on the King of Scots' behalf to us; and ever we trusted the tree would bring forth good fruit, that was of the