Editorial note — Chapter VII
Reading edition
In a poet, this was a fair employment of his art; but the partiality of Burnet towards Henry VIII. is less warrantable; and he should have blushed to excuse, by absurd and unworthy sophistry, the punishment of those who refused to swear to the king's supremacy. P. 351.
After all, Henry was every whit as good a king and man as Francis I., whom there are still some, on the other side of the Channel, servile enough to extol; not in the least more tyrannical and sanguinary, and of better faith towards his neighbours.