And that you may understand that there hath not been, nor is in her, learning only without nature, and knowledge without towardness to practice; I will tell what hath been heard of her first schoolmaster [John Aylmer], a man very honest and learned: who reported of her, to a friend of his, that "He learned every day more of her, than she of him." Which when it seemed to him a mystery, as indeed it was, and he therefore desired to know his meaning therein, he thus expounded it: "I teach her words," quoth he, "and she, me things. I teach her the tongues to speak; and her modestly and maidenly life teacheth me words to do. For," saith he, "I think she is the best inclined and disposed of any in all Europe."
It seemed to me a goodly commendation of her, and a witty saying of him.
Likewise [Castiglione] an Italian, which taught her his tongue (although that nation lightly praise not out of their own country), said once to the said party, that "He found in her two qualities, which are never lightly yokefellows in one woman; which were a singular wit, and a marvellous meek stomach."
If time and leisure would serve to peruse her whole life past, many other excellent and memorable examples of her princely qualities and singular virtues might here be noted; but none, in my mind, more worthy of commendation, or that shall set forth the fame of her heroical and princely renown more to all posterity, than the Christian patience, and incredible clemency of her nature showed in her afflictions, and towards her declared enemies. Such was then the wickedness and rage of that time, wherein what dangers and troubles were among the inferior subjects of this realm of England, may be easily gathered when such a Princess, of that Estate, being a King's daughter, a Queen's sister, and Heir Apparent to the Crown, could not escape without her cross.
And therefore, as we have hitherto discoursed [of] the afflictions and persecutions of the other poor members of Christ, comprehended in this History before; so likewise, I see no cause why the communion of Her Grace's afflictions also, among the other saints of Christ, ought to be suppressed in silence: especially seeing the great and marvellous workings of GOD's glory, chiefly in this Story, appeareth above all the rest.
And though I should, through ingratitude or silence, pass over the same; yet the thing itself is so manifest, that what Englishman is he which knoweth not the afflictions of Her Grace to have been far above the condition of a King's daughter: for there was no more behind, to make a very Iphigenia of her, but her offering up upon the altar of the scaffold.
In which her storms and tempests, with what patience Her Highness behaved herself, although it be best known to them who, then being her adversaries, had the minding [imprisoning] of her. Yet this will I say, by the way, that then she must needs be in her affliction, marvellous patient: which sheweth herself now, in this prosperity, to be utterly without desire of revenge; or else she would have given some token, ere this day, of remembrance, how she was handled.
It was no small injury that she suffered, in the Lord Protector's days, by certain venomous vipers! But to let that pass! was it no wrong, think you! or small injury that she sustained, after the death of King Edward, when they sought to defeat her and her sister from their natural inheritance and right to the Crown?
But to let that pass likewise! and to come more near to the late days of her sister, Queen Mary. Into what fear, what trouble of mind, and what danger of death was she brought?