Good lack! but I thought me wise
enough.--Ay so: that do we all and alway. Good Lord, who art the Only
Wise, shake our conceits of our own wisdom!

Lack-a-daisy, but how easy is it to fall of a rut in thy journeying!
Here was I but to write my thoughts touching these maids' writings, and
after reading the same, I am fallen of their rut, and am going on to
keep the Chronicle as though I were one of them. Of a truth, there is
somewhat captivating therein: and _Edith_ saith she shall continue, for
her own diversion, to keep a privy Chronicle. So be it. Methinks, as
matter of understanding and natural turn thereto, she is fittest of the
three. _Nell_ saith she found it no easy matter, and should never think
so to do: while _Milisent_, as I guess, shall for a while to come be
something too much busied living her chronicle, to write it. For me, I
did once essay to do the same; but it went not, as I mind, beyond a week
or so. Either there were so much to do there was no time to write it;
or so little that there was nought to write. I well-nigh would now that
I had kept it up. For sure such changes in public matters as have
fallen in my life shall the world not see many times o'er again. When I
was born, in Mdxxv [1525], was King _Harry_ the Eight young and
well-liked of all men, and no living soul so much as dreamed of all the
troubles thereafter to ensue. Then came the tumult that fell of the
matter of the King's divorce. (All 'long of a man's obstinateness, for
was not my sometime Lord Cardinal [Wolsey] wont to say that rather than
miss the one half of his will, he would endanger the one half of his
kingdom? Right the man is that. A woman should know how to bend
herself to circumstances.) Then came the troubles o'er Queen _Anne_,
that had her head cut off (and by my troth, I misdoubted alway if she
did deserve the same); and then of the divorce of the Lady _Anne_ of
_Cleve_ (that no _Gospeller_ did ever think to deserve the same); and
then of Queen _Katherine_, whose head was cut off belike--eh me, what
troublous times were then! Verily, looking back, they seem worser than
at the time they did. For when things be, there be mixed with all the
troubles little matters that be easy and even delightsome: but to look
back, one doth forget all them, and think only of the great affairs.
And all the time, along with this, kept pace that great ado of religion
which fell out in the purifying of the Church men call the R