"Because that God," he
says, "because that God now in His mercy hath put an end to
the battle of my dear mother, Mistress Elizabeth Bowes,
before that He put an end to my wretched life, I could not
cease but declare to the world what was the cause of our
great familiarity and long acquaintance; which was neither
flesh nor blood, but a troubled conscience upon her part,
which never suffered her to rest but when she was in the
company of the faithful, of whom (from the first hearing of
the word at my mouth) she judged me to be one. . . . Her
company to me was comfortable (yea, honourable and
profitable, for she was to me and mine a mother), but yet it
was not without some cross; for besides trouble and fashery
of body sustained for her, my mind was seldom quiet, for
doing somewhat for the comfort of her troubled conscience."
(1) He had written to her years before, from his first exile
in Dieppe, that "only God's hand" could withhold him from
once more speaking with her face to face; and now, when God's
hand has indeed interposed, when there lies between them,
instead of the voyageable straits, that great gulf over which
no man can pass, this is the spirit in which he can look back
upon their long acquaintance. She was a religious
hypochondriac, it appears, whom, not without some cross and
fashery of mind and body, he was good enough to tend.
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