Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 4.djvu/499

1549.] consideration of their honour, discretions, and continued truth unto the Crown, we believe the same so assuredly as no other argument may dissuade us from the contrary. And for our own parts we trust your Grace doubteth not but that as we have, and will, and must have a special regard and consideration of our duties of allegiance unto the King's Majesty, so shall we not be negligent to do our parts like faithful subjects, for the surety of his Highness accordingly, beseeching your Grace that his Majesty in anywise be put in no fear; and that your Grace would so conform yourself as these private causes redound not to an universal displeasure of the whole realm.

Would God all means were used rather than any blood be shed; which, if it be once attempted, and the case brought to that misery that the hands of the nobility be once polluted with each other's blood, the quarrel once begun will never have an end till the realm be descended to that woeful calamity that all our posterity shall lament the chance. Your Grace's proclamations and billets sent abroad for the raising of the commons we mislike very much. The wicked and evil-disposed persons shall stir as well as the faithful subjects; and we and those other gentlemen who have served, and others of worship in these counties where the same have been published, do incur by these means much infamy, slander, and discredit. Thus we end, beseeching Almighty God the matter