John Aylmer (bishop)

"For the safeguard of your country, if you be called to the wars, grutch [complain] not nor groan at it. Go with good wills and lusty courages to meet them in the field rather than to tarry till they come home to you and hang you at your own gates. Play not the milksops in making curtsy who shall go first, but Show yourselves true Englishmen in readiness, courage, and boldness. And be ashamed to be the last. Fear neither French nor Scot. For first you have God and all his army of angels on your side [a marginal note observes "God is English"]. You have right and truth, and seek not to do them wrong but to defend your own right. Think not that God will suffer you to be foiled at their hands, for your fall is his dishonor. If you lose the victory, he must lose the glory. For you fight not only in the quarrel of your country but also and chiefly in defense of his true religion and of his dear son Christ....What people be they with whom we shall match. Are they giants? Are they conquerors or monarchs of the world? No, good Englishman, they be effeminate Frenchmen, stout in brag but nothing in deed. They be such as you have always made to take to their heels..., saving that William of Normandy crept in among us through the civil war of two brethren, Harold and Tostig. And yet, what did he? He left his posterity to reign which were rather by time turned to be English than the noble English to become French, as our tongue and manners at this day declareth, which differeth very little from our ancestors the Saxons....Thus have we nothing to dismay us but all things to encourage us. God to fight for us, the strength of our land, the courage of our men, the goodness of our soil....Now, therefore, it is our duties to be in every wise obedient....Do you not hear how lamentably your natural mother, your country of England, calleth upon you for obedience?...I have been and am glad of you. I delight and rejoice in you above all over nations. In declaration whereof I have always spued out and cast from me Danes, French, Norwegians, and Scots. I could brook none of them for the tender love that I bare unto you, of whom I have my name. I never denied to minister to you by my singular commodities which God hath lent me for you, as corn and cattle, land and pasture, wool and cloth, lead and tin, flesh and fish, gold and silver, and all my other treasures. I have poured them out among you and enriched you above all your neighbors....Besides this, God hath brought forth in me the greatest and excellentest treasure that he hath for your comfort and all the world’s. He would that out of my womb should come that servant of his, your brother John Wyclif, who begat [John] Hus, who begat [Martin] Luther, who begat truth. What greater honor could you or I have than it pleased Christ, as it were in a second birth, to be born again of me among you? [A marginal note comments: "Christ's second birth in England"]. And will you now suffer me, or rather by your disobedience purchase me, to be a mother without my children?...Stick to your mother as she sticketh to you. Let me keep in quiet and feed, as I have done, your wives, your children, and your kinsfolks. Obey your mistress and mine which God hath made lady [queen] over us, both by nature and law. You cannot be my children, if you be not her subjects....?Thus good, truehearted Englishmen, speaketh your country unto you, not in word but in deed. Wherefore give no dull ear to hear, nor hearken to any vain blasts or voices which may draw you from the love of your country and the defense of your sovereign...."