This cruel King, Henry the Seventh cut off; and was therein (no doubt) the immediate instrument of God’s justice.  A politic Prince he was if ever there were any, who by the engine of his wisdom, beat down and overturned as many strong oppositions both before and after he wore the Crown, as ever King of England did:  I say by his wisdom, because as he ever left the reins of his affections in the hands of his profit, so he always weighed his undertakings by his abilities, leaving nothing more to hazard than so much as cannot be denied it in all human actions.  He had well observed the proceedings of Louis the Eleventh, whom he followed in all that was royal or royal-like, but he was far more just, and begun not their processes whom he hated or feared by the execution, as Louis did.

He could never endure any mediation in rewarding his servants, and therein exceeding wise; for whatsoever himself gave, he himself received back the thanks and the love, knowing it well that the affections of men (purchased by nothing so readily as by benefits) were trains that better became great kings, than great subjects.  On the contrary, in whatsoever he grieved his subjects, he wisely put it off on those, that he found fit ministers for such actions.  Howsoever the taking off of Stanley’s head, who set the Crown on his, and the death of the young Earl of Warwick, son to George, Duke of Clarence, shows, as the success also did, that he held somewhat of the errors of his ancestors; for his possession in the first line ended in his grandchildren, as that of Edward the Third and Henry the Fourth had done.

Now for King Henry the Eighth; if all the pictures and patterns of a merciless prince were lost in the world, they might all again be painted to the life, out of the story of this king.  For how many servants did he advance in haste (but for what virtue no man could suspect) and with the change of his fancy ruined again; no man knowing for what offence?  To how many others of more desert gave he abundant flowers from whence to gather honey, and in the end of harvest burnt them in the hive?  How many wives did he cut off, and cast off, as his fancy and affection changed?  How many princes of the blood (whereof some of them for age could hardly crawl towards the block) with a world of others of all degrees (of whom our common chronicles have kept the account) did he execute?  Yea, in his very death-bed, and when he was at the point to have given his account to God for the abundance of blood already spilt, he imprisoned the Duke of Norfolk the father; and executed the Earl of Surrey the son; the one, whose deservings he knew not how to value, having never omitted anything that concerned his own honor, and the King’s service; the other never having committed anything worthy of his least displeasure:  the one exceeding valiant and advised; the other no less valiant than learned, and of excellent hope.  But besides the sorrows which he heaped upon the fatherless and widows at