it pleased you to
admonish me, and yet I cannot be quit of you. I avow to God I shall be
anes [once] revenged." And with these words scarcely could Marnock,
her secret chamber-boy, get napkins to hold her eyes dry for the
tears; and the owling, besides womanly weeping, stayed her speech.

The said John did patiently abide all the first fume, and at
opportunity answered: "True it is, Madam, your Grace and I have been
at diverse controversies, into the which I never perceived your Grace
to be offended at me. But when it shall please God to deliver you from
that bondage of darkness and error, in the which ye have been
nourished, for the lack of true doctrine, your majesty will find the
liberty of my tongue nothing offensive. Without the preaching-place,
Madam, I think few have occasion to be offended at me, and there,
Madam, I am not master of myself, but man [must] obey Him who commands
me to speak plain, and to flatter no flesh upon the face of the
earth."

"But what have ye to do," said she, "with my marriage?"

"If it please your majesty," said he, "patiently to hear me, I shall
shew the truth in plain words. I grant your Grace offered me more than
ever I required; but my answer was then, as it is now, that God hath
not sent me to await upon the courts of princesses, nor upon the
chambers of ladies; but I am sent to preach the evangel of Jesus
Christ to such as please to hear it; and it hath two parts--repentance
and faith. And now, Madam, in preaching repentance, of necessity it
is, that the sins of men be so noted, that they may know wherein they
offend; but so it is, that the most part of your nobility are so
addicted to your affections, that neither God, His word, nor yet their
commonwealth, are rightly regarded. And therefore, it becomes me so
to speak that they may know their duty."

"What have ye to do," said she, "with my marriage? Or what are ye
within this commonwealth?"

"A subject born within the same," said he, "Madam. And, albeit I
neither be earl, lord, nor baron within it, yet has God made me--how
abject that ever I be in your eyes--a profitable member within the
same. Yea, Madam, to me it appertains no less to forewarn of such
things as may hurt it, if I foresee them, than it does to any of the
nobility; for both my vocation and conscience craves plainness of me.
And therefore, Madam, to yourself I say that which I speak in public
place: whensoever that the nobility of this realm shall consent t