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The quaint old report begins in Latin, but "the pleadings" are set forth in the language of the day, as follows: "Agnes Archer, is that thy name? which answered, yes.... Thou art endyted that thou.... feloney moderiste her with a knyff fyve tymes in the throte stekyng, throwe the wheche stekyng the saide Alys is deed.... I am not guilty of thoo dedys, ne noon of hem, God help me so.... How wylte thou acquite the?... By God and by my neighbours of this town."

The next day, being the 9 of August, in the morning so early that it was yet darke, we landed neere the dwelling place of our enemies, and very secretly conueyed our selues through the woods, to that side, where we had their houses betweene vs and the water: and hauing espied their fire, and some sitting about it, we presently set on them: the miserable soules herewith amazed, fled into a place of thicke reedes, growing fast by, where our men perceiuing them, shot one of them through the bodie with a bullet, and therewith we entered the reedes, among which we hoped to acquite their euill doing towards vs, but we were deceiued, for those Sauages were our friends, and were come from Croatoan to gather the corne and fruit of that place, because they vnderstood our enemies were fled immediatly after they had slaine George Howe, and for haste had left all their corne.

No bitter word ever breaks the calm of his verse save when it touches on the perils with which Catholicism was environing England, perils before which his knight must fall "were not that Heavenly Grace doth him uphold and steadfast Truth acquite him out of all." But it is yet more in the temper and aim of his work that we catch the nobler and deeper tones of English Puritanism.

Here we haue to note the lacke of conscience and religion, not onlie in the pretended successor of Peter in giuing a dispensasion for an oth, but also in his good ghostlie sonne, who was no lesse forward in reuolting from his oth, than the other was willing to acquite him from the force thereof.