"Thou hast most unwisely and unjustly permitted Sir David Lindesay of the Mount, George Buchanan, and others, to satirize the bishops and orders of clergy: yet, in the name of the latter, I have this day approached your majesty, to offer an annual subsidy of fifty thousand crowns from the rents of the kirk, to enable you to defend yourself more ably against England and her allies the Portuguese."
"This is well! the crowns are right welcome."
"An ambassador——"
"What—another?"
"Is coming from Rome, with a consecrated sword, which with his own sacred hands his Holiness has whetted on the altar-stone of St. Peter—yea, whetted against the English people and their king, whose fleet is now out on the high seas to intercept the envoy and his gift."
"Indeed!"
"Thou seest how far these English will dare."
"If the ambassador is taken before Barton can reach the Downs, then, d—n England—we'll go to war with her! and here into your hands I commit the books written by Henry, and brought hither by the Welsh bishop of St. David's, wherein he defends so boldly the principles of Luther."
"Good; I shall burn them on the first occasion, before my gate at St. Andrew's," replied the cardinal, as he threw them outside the chamber door to his page who waited in the gallery.
"With thy advice I broke off the meeting which Henry proposed at York; so we may now prepare for war in earnest—a war that will pour forth our Scottish blood like water; but on the plains of our hereditary foe. The Scottish people should be ever like a drawn sword—the king being the hilt, his subjects the blade."