“For they having the power of kings, but not the nature of kings, used the authority as men do their farms, of which they see within a year they shall go out; making the king’s sword strike whom they hated, the king’s purse reward whom they loved; and, which is worst of all, making the royal countenance serve to undermine the royal sovereignty. For the subjects could taste no sweeter fruits of having a king than grievous taxation to serve vain purposes; laws made rather to find faults than to prevent faults: the court of a prince rather deemed as a privileged place of the unbridled licentiousness than as the abiding of him, who as a father should give a fatherly example unto his people. Hence grew a very dissolution of all estates, while the great men, by the nature of ambition never satisfied, grew factious among themselves: and the underlings glad indeed to be underlings to them they hated least, to preserve them from such they hated most. Men of virtue suppressed, lest the shining should discover the others’ filthiness; and at length virtue itself almost forgotten, when it had no hopeful end whereunto to be directed; old men long nusled in corruption, scorning them that would seek reformation, young men were fault-finding, but very faulty, and so given to new-fangleness both of manners, apparel, and each thing else, by the custom of self-guilty evil, glad to change, though oft for worse; merchandise abused, and so towns decayed for want of just and natural liberty; offices even of judging souls, sold; public defences neglected; and in sum, left too long I trouble you, all awry, and, which wried it to the most wry course of all, wit abused, rather to feign reason why it should be amiss, than how it should be amended.