CHRIST the Prince of al Princes who hath placed you in your throne of Maiesty, vnder hym to gouerne the Church and Realme of Englād geue your royall highnes long to sit, and many yeares to raigne ouer vs, in all florishing felicitie, to his gracious pleasure, and long lasting ioy of all your subiectes. Amen.

When I first presented these Acts and Monumentes vnto your maiesty (most deare soueraigne, Queene Elizabeth, our peaceable Salome) which your maiesties rare clemency receaued in such gentle part: I well hoped that these my trauailes in this kynde of writyng had bene well at an ende: whereby I might haue returned my studies againe to other purposes, after myne owne desire, more fit then to write histories, especially in the English toūge. But certaine euil disposed persons, of intemperant tounges, aduersaries to good procedinges would not suffer me so to rest, fumyng & freatyng, and raising vp such miserable exclamations at the first appearyng of the booke, as was wonderfull to heare. A man would haue thought Christ to haue bene new borne agayne, and that Herode with all the Citie of Ierusalem had bene in an vprore. Such blustring and stirring was then against that poore booke through all quarters of England, euen to the gates of Louaine: so that no Englishe Papist almost in all the Realme thought hym selfe a perfect Catholicke, vnlesse he had cast out some word or other, to geue that booke a blow.

Whereupon considering with my selfe what should moue them thus to rage, first I began with more circūspect diligēce to ouerlooke againe that I had done. In searchyng wherof I found the fault both what it was, and where it lay: which was in dede, not so much in the booke it selfe (to say the truth) as in an other certayne priuy mystery & workyng of some: of whō Ioānes Auātinus shall tel vs, in his owne wordes, and shew vs who they be: Quibus, inquit, audiendi quæ fecerint, pudor est: nullus faciendi, quæ audire erubescunt. Illic vbi opus nihil verentur: hic vbi nihil opus est, ibi verentur. &c. Who beyng ashamed belike to heare their worthy stratagemes like to come to light, sought by what meanes they might, the stopping of the same. And because they could not worke it per brachium seculare, by publicke authoritie (the Lord of heauē long preserue your noble maiesty) they renued againe an old wōted practise of theirs doyng in like sort herein as they did some times with the holy Bible in the daies of your renowned father of famous memory K. Henry viij. who when they neyther by manifest reason could gainstād the matter cōtained in the booke, nor yet abide the comming out therof, then sought they by a subtile deuised traine to depraue the translation, notes, and prologues therof, bearyng the king in hand, and all the people, that there was in it a thousand lies, and I can not tell howe many mo: Not that there were such lies in it in very dede but because the comming of that booke should not bewray their lying falshode, therefore they thought best, to begin first to make exceptions them selues agaynst it: playing in their stage, like as Phormio did in the old Comedie: who beyng in all the fault him selfe, began first to quarel with Demipho, when Demipho rather had good right to lay Phormio by the heeles.