"These people will groan for a time beneath the yoke of despotism; they will then sacrifice one of their kings upon the scaffold of freedom, in order that they may sell themselves to his successors for gold and titles. In hell there is very little respect paid to these gloomy islanders, who would suck the marrow from all the carcasses in the universe, if they thought to find gold in the bones. They boast of their morality, and despise all other nations; yet if you were to place what you call virtue in one scale, and vice, with twopence, in the other, they would forget their morality, and pocket the money. They talk of their honour and integrity, but never enter into a treaty but with a firm resolution of breaking it as soon as a farthing is to be gained by so doing. After death, they inhabit the most pestilential marsh of the kingdom of darkness, and their souls are scourged without mercy. None of the other damned will have any communication with them. If the inhabitants of the Continent could do without sugar and coffee, the sons of proud England would soon return to the state in which they were when Julius Caesar, Canute of Denmark, or William the Conqueror, did them the honour to invade their island." _Faustus_. For a devil, thou knowest history passably well. Hereupon he led him to Milan, where they saw the Duke Galeas Sforza murdered on St. Stephen's day in the cathedral; Faustus having previously heard the assassins loudly beseeching St. Stephen and St. Ambrose to inspire them with the courage necessary for so noble a deed. In Florence, the seat of the Muses, they saw the nephew of the great Cosmo, the father of his country, murdered in the church of Santa Reparata, at the altar, just at the moment when the priest raised the host in his hands; for the Archbishop of Florence, Salviati, had informed the murderers that this was to be the signal. He had been bribed to assist in this enterprise by the Pope, who was determined to annihilate the Medicis, in order to rule sole sovereign in Italy.