TO THE EXCELLENT LADY MARY,

Dowager Regent of Scotland.

The cause moving me, Right Honourable, to present this my supplication unto your Grace, enlarged and in some places explained (which being in the realm of Scotland in the month of May 1556, I caused to be presented to your Grace), is the incredible rage of such as bear the title of bishops who against all justice and equity have pronounced against me a most cruel sentence, condemning my body to fire, my soul to damnation and all doctrine taught by me to be false, deceivable and heretical. If this injury did tend to me alone, having the testimony of a good conscience, with silence I could pass the matter, being assured that such as they curse and expel their synagogues for such causes shall God bless and Christ Jesus receive in His eternal society. But considering that this their blasphemy is vomited forth against the eternal truth of Christ's Evangel (whereof it hath pleased the great mercy of God to make me a minister), I cannot cease to notify, as well to your Grace as unto them, that so little I am afraid of their tyrannical and surmised sentence that in place of the picture (if God impede not my purpose) they shall have the body to justify that doctrine which they (members of Satan) blasphemously do condemn.