of peace with
pillage and robbery. Now, if these men have
defeated the law and outrun native punishment,
though they can outstrip men, they have no wings to
fly from God: war is his beadle, war is vengeance;
so that here men are punished for before-breach of
the king's laws in now the king's quarrel: where
they feared the death, they have borne life away;
and where they would be safe, they perish: then if
they die unprovided, no more is the king guilty of
their damnation than he was before guilty of those
impieties for the which they are now visited. Every
subject's duty is the king's; but every subject's
soul is his own. Therefore should every soldier in
the wars do as every sick man in his bed, wash every
mote out of his conscience: and dying so, death
is to him advantage; or not dying, the time was
blessedly lost wherein such preparation was gained:
and in him that escapes, it were not sin to think
that, making God so free an offer, He let him
outlive that day to see His greatness and to teach
others how they should prepare.
'Tis certain, every man that dies ill, the ill upon
his own head, the king is not to answer it.
But I do not desire he should answer for me; and
yet I determine to fight lustily for him.
I myself heard the king say he would not be ransomed.
Ay, he said so, to make us fight cheerfully: but
when our throats are cut, he may be ransomed, and we
ne'er the wiser.
If I live to see it, I will never trust his word after.
You pay him then. That's a perilous shot out of an
elder-gun, that a poor and private displeasure can
do against a monarch! you may as well go about to
turn the sun to ice with fanning in his face with a
peacock's feather. You'll never trust his word
after! come, 'tis a foolish saying.
Your reproof is something too round: I should be
angry with you, if the time were convenient.
Let it be a quarrel between us, if you live.
I embrace it.
How shall I know thee again?
Give me any gage of thine, and I will wear it in my
bonnet: then, if ever thou darest acknowledge it, I
will make it my quarrel.
Here's my glove: give me another of thine.
There.
This will I also wear in my cap: if ever thou come
to me and say, after to-morrow, 'This is my glove,'
by this hand, I will take thee a box on