Note 372 — Chapter XV
Reading edition
“We be daily instructed by our nobles and council to use short expelition in the determination of our marriage, for to get more increase of issue, to the assurance of our succession; and upon their oft admonition of age coming fast on, and (seeing) that the time flyeth and slippeth marvellously away, we be minded no longer to lose time as we have done, which is of all losses the most irrecuperable.”—Henry VIII. to Sir T. Wriothesley: State Papers, Vol. VIII. p. 116.
“Unless his Highness bore a notable affection to the Emperor, and had a special remembrance of their antient amity, his Majesty could never have endured to have been kept thus long in balance, his years, and the daily suits of his nobles and council well pondered.”—Wriothesley to Cromwell: ibid, p. 160.