tokens that shall,
by the scripture, come a good while before that. And among others,
the coming in of the Jews and the dilating of Christendom again
before the world come to that strait. So I say that for mine own
mind I have little doubt that this ungracious sect of Mahomet shall
have a foul fall, and Christendom spring and spread, flower and
increase again. Howbeit, the pleasure and comfort shall they see
who shall be born after we are buried, I fear me, both twain. For
God giveth us great likelihood that for our sinful wretched living
he goeth about to make these infidels, who are his open professed
enemies, the sorrowful scourge of correction over evil Christian
people who should be faithful and who are of truth his falsely
professing friends.

And surely, cousin, albeit that methinketh I see divers evil tokens
of this misery coming to us, yet can there not, to my mind, be a
worse prognostication of it than this ungracious token that you
note here yourself. For undoubtedly, cousin, this new manner of
men's favourable fashion in their language toward these ungracious
Turks declareth plainly not only that their minds give them that
hither shall he come, but also that they can be content both to
live under him and, beside that, to fall from the true faith of
Christ into Mahomet's false abominable sect.

VINCENT: Verily, mine uncle, as I go about more than you, so must
I needs hear more (which is a heavy hearing in mine ear) the manner
of men in this matter, which increaseth about us here--I trust that
in other places of this realm, by God's grace, it is otherwise. But
in this quarter here about us, many of these fellows who are fit
for the war were wont at first, as it were in sport, to talk as
though they looked for a day when, with a turn to the Turk's faith,
they should be made masters here of true Christian men's bodies and
owners of all their goods. And, in a while after that, they began
to talk so half between game and earnest--and now, by our Lady, not
far from fair flat earnest indeed.

ANTHONY: Though I go out but little, cousin, yet hear I
sometimes--when I say little!--almost as much as that. But since
there is no man to whom we can complain for redress, what remedy is
there but patience, and to sit still and hold our peace? For of
these two who strive which of them both shall reign over us--and
each of them calleth himself king, and both twain put the people to
pain--one is, as you know well, too f