The appellation of John Knox from the cruel and most iniust sentence pronounced against…The appellation of Iohn Knoxe from the cruell and most iniust sentence pronounced against…

the papists practised all their fine crafts in England, Scotland, and in France, that the Gospellers should not with so strong walls be defenced, lest this one island should become a safe sanctuary, as it began to be, to all the persecuted in all places. They move sturdy stomachs, they dispense with perjuries, they work by their crafty confessions, they raise up war in the end, whereby ye (dear Brethren of Scotland) were sore plagued. Of all these traitorous sleights ye can not be ignorant. For yet it is not passed the memory of man, that your king made promise ⟨image 67⟩to have met king Henry the eighth at York▪ whose purpose (albeit in other things I do not allow him) in that case was most godly and praise worthy. For it was to make an end of that ungodly war, and cruel murder, which long had continued betwixt the two realms. Your king, I say, made promise to mete him: the breach whereof as it was the occasion of much trouble, so is it evidently known, that your Cardinal, and his clergy laboured and procured the same. For it is not unknown to some amongest you, how many thousand crowns the churchmen did promise for maintenance of the war,¹ which king Henry did denounce by the reason of that breach. Superfluous it were to me, to recite all the causes moving your pestilent priests to solicit your king to that infidelity. But this is most evident, that they feared nothing, but the fall of their glory, and the trouble of their kingdom, which then in England began to be shaken by suppressing of the abbeys. This moved your priests earnestly to labour, that your king should falsely break his promise. But what affliction ye sustained by that and other their practises, your selves can witness. For your borders were destroyed, your nobility for the most part were taken prisoners, and your king for sorrow suddenly ⟨p. 66⟩died. But these your miseries did nothing move your priests to repentance, but rather did inflame them against God, and against the profit of their native realm. For when again after the death of your king, your friendship and favours were sought, first by king Henry, and after his death by king Edward his son, and by him, who then was chosen Protector, how craftily, I say, did then your priests undermine all, ye are not ignorant.