Tristram considers the charge of a critic (his usual accuser) that he has trampled on many people with his horse (his hobby-horse, the book he is writing), even on a king. He denies it and tells the story of King Francis I of France. The king, hoping to make friends of the Swiss, offers them the honor of being godfather to his latest son; when they want to name the child "Shadrach, Mesech, and Abed-nego" — all three — the king demurs. Since there is no money in the royal treasury to buy them off and soothe their feelings, the king decides to go to war with them.
The author says that he is ashamed to ask the reader to take him seriously now after his "fanciful guise of careless disport," but seriously, he is not writing against King Francis I or against any of a host of other things. "If 'tis wrote against any thing, — 'tis wrote, an' please your worships, against the spleen," that is, against bad humor. His intention is to "drive the gall and other bitter juices from the gall bladder, liver, and sweet-bread of his majesty's subjects . . . down into their duodenums."
