But as for those Christian countries that he useth not only for tributaries, as he doth Chios, Cyprus, or Crete, but reckoneth for clear conquest and utterly taketh for his own, as Morea, Greece, and Macedonia, and such others—­and as I verily think he will Hungary, if he get it—­in all those he useth Christian people after sundry fashions.  He letteth them dwell there, indeed, because they would be too many to carry all away, and too many to kill them all, too, unless he should either leave the land dispeopled and desolate or else, from some other countries of his own, should convey the people thither (which would not be well done) to people that land with.  There, lo, those who will not be turned from their faith, of which God—­lauded be his holy name!—­keepeth very many, he suffereth to dwell still in peace.  But yet is their peace for all that not very peaceable.  For he suffereth them to have no lands of their own, honourable offices they bear none; with occasions of his wars, he plucketh them unto the bare bones with taxes and tallages.  Their children he chooseth where he will in their youth, and taketh them from their parents, conveying them whither he will, where their friends never see them after, and abuseth them as he will.  Some young maidens he maketh harlots, some young men he bringeth up in war, and some young children he causeth to be gelded—­not their stones cut out as the custom was of old, but their whole members cut off by the body; how few escape and live he little careth, for he will have enough!  And all whom he so taketh young, to any use of his own, are betaken unto such Turks or false renegades to keep, that they are turned from the faith of Christ every one.  Or else they are so handled that, as for this world, they come to an evil end.  For, besides many other contumelies and despites that the Turks and the false renegade Christians many times do to good Christian people who still persevere and abide by the faith, they find the means sometimes to make some false knaves say that they heard such-and-such a Christian man speak opprobrious words against Mahomet.  And upon that point, falsely testified, they will take occasion to compel him to forsake the faith of Christ and turn to the profession of their shameful superstitious sect, or else will they put him to death with cruel intolerable torments.

VINCENT:  Our Lord, uncle, for his mighty mercy, keep those wretches hence!  For, by my troth, if they hap to come hither, methinketh I see many more tokens than one that we shall have some of our own folk here ready to fall in with them.

For as before a great storm the sea beginneth sometimes to work and roar in itself, ere ever the winds wax boisterous, so methinketh I hear at mine ear some of our own here among us, who within these few years could no more have borne the name of Turk than the name of devil, begin now to find little fault in them—­yea, and some to praise them little by little, as they can, more glad to find faults at every state of Christendom:  priests, princes, rites, ceremonies, sacraments, laws, and customs spiritual, temporal, and all.