Simon Peter: His Early Life and Times (1894)

We talk of our hardy forefathers; and rightly. But they were hardy, just as the savage is usually hardy, because none but the hardy lived. They may have been able to say of themselves–as they do in a State paper of 1515, now well known through the pages of Mr. Froude: What comyn folk of all the world may compare with the comyns of England, in riches, freedom, liberty, welfare, and all prosperity?