To the worshipful and most virtuous gentlewoman mistress Anne Willoughby, daughter of the right worshipful and ever to be honoured, Henry Willoughby of Risley, in the county of Derby Baronet.

Worthiest and noble Mistress,

This infant received breath and being under your noble father’s roof, my ever honoured master, and therefore as an air-lover belonging to that hospitable fabric, it properly prostrates itself to you for a patroness. The title of it said ignorant censurers (those critical Momes that have no language but satiric calumny) sounds gross and ignorant, expressing small wit and less judgment, in the author to dedicate a vow-breaker under the protection of a lady of your candour, beauty, goodness and virtues, against those fool-mouthed detractors, who as much as in their venomous hearts lay, sought to vilify an unblanched lawn, a vestal purity, a truth like innocence, a temple of sanctity, the altar of real goodness. Against those brainless Momes, I comply myself with Pliny’s natural simile of the almond tree: pick of the rind, crack the shell, yet set the kernel upright in earth and by nature’s help it regains maturity and growth. So have your noble virtues, even with the diamond, eclipsed darkness and from obscurity gained greater lustre even then when the two eldest sons of sin, envy and malice, sought to obscure them. But she that hath not left the earth, divine Astraea, sacred justice, the eye and soul of the law, hath vindicated those fool mouthed detractors. As you are great in goodness, so shine there still and let the sunrise of your virtues ever yield honoured hatchments and portments to your most noble father and his honoured families of whom you are a principal column. Continue ever in that noble pedigree of virtues, which your virgin purity hitherto hath justly maintained. Heaven keep you from fanning parasites and busy gossips and send you a husband and a good one, else may you never make a holiday for hymen, as much happiness as tongue can speak, pen write, heart think, or thoughts imagine, ever attend on you, your noble father and all his families, to whom I ever rest, as my bounden duty,

A faithful servant,

William Sampson.