558
REIGN OF HENRY THE EIGHTH.
[ch. 13.
shall prove more honourable than with a little hasty forwardness to jeopard both our honour and October 25.your lives. 'For we assure you,' he said, 'we would neither adventure you our cousin of Norfolk, nor you our cousin of Shrewsbury, or other our good and true subjects, in such sort as there should be a likelihood of wilful casting of any of you away for all the lands and dominion we have on that side Trent.'
The Duke of Norfolk, on his way down, had written from Welbeck, 'all desperately.' By any means, fair or foul, he had said that he would crush the rebels; 'he would esteem no promise that he would make to them, nor think his honour touched in the breach of the same.'[1]
To this Henry replied, 'Albeit we certainly know that ye will pretermit none occasion wherein by policy or otherwise ye may damage our enemies, we doubt not, again, but in all your proceedings you will have such a temperance as our honour specially shall remain untouched, and yours rather increased, than, by the certain grant of that you cannot certainly promise, appear in the mouths of the worst men anything defaced.' Finally, he concluded, 'Whereas you desire us, in case any mischance should happen unto you, to be good lord unto your children, surely, good cousin, albeit we trust certainly in God that no such thing shall fortune, yet we would you should perfectly know that if God should take you out of this transitory life before us, we should not fail so to remember your children, being your lively- ↑ State Papers, vol. i. p. 519.
