And she, being before instructed of her mother, said, Give me here John Baptist's head in a charger.
Ver. 8. And she being before instructed, &c.] Partus sequitur ventrem, the birth follows the belly. Here was like mother like daughter, neither good bird nor good egg, as they say. Κακου κορακος κακον ωον. The mother and daughter both had an aching tooth at the Baptist, and sought an opportunity to be meet with him (ενειχεν αυτω, Mar 6:19): which now having gotten, they pursued to the utmost. The damosel came with haste to the king, saith St Mark, Mark 6:25, when once she had her lesson, as fearing, belike, she should come too late. Such another hussy as this was dame Alice Pierce, a concubine to our Edward III. For when as at a parliament in the fiftieth year of that king's reign, it was petitioned that the Duke of Lancaster, the Lord Latimer, chamberlain, and this dame Alice might be removed from court, and the petition was vehemently urged by their speaker, Sir Peter la Mare; this knight afterwards at the suit of that impudent woman (working upon the king's impotencies) was committed to perpetual imprisonment at Nottingham. And another such history we have of one Diana Valentina, mistress to Henry II, King of France, whom she had so subdued, that he gave her all the confiscations of goods made in the kingdom for cause of heresy. Whereupon many were burned in France for religion, as they said, but indeed to maintain the pride and satisfy the covetousness of that lewd woman. This was in the year 1554. And in the year 1559, Ann du Bourge, a counsellor of state, was burnt also for crime of heresy; not so much by the inclination of the judges as by the resolution of the queen, provoked against him: because, forsooth, the Lutherans gave out that the king had been slain, as he was running at tilt, by a wound in the eye, by the providence of God, for a punishment of his words used against Du Bourge, that he would see him burnt.