248 LETTERS FROM STEPHENS. 



against his good: but your majesty I must obey; and 

 besides, I shall conceive that your majesty, out of your 

 great wisdom and depth, doth see those things which I 

 see not. 



Now therefore, not to hold your majesty with many words, 

 (which do but drown matter) let me most humbly desire 

 your majesty to take into your royal consideration, that the 

 state is at this time not only in good quiet and obedience, 

 but in good affection and disposition. Your majesty s pre 

 rogative and authority having risen some just degrees above 

 the horizon more than heretofore, which hath dispersed 

 vapours: your judges are in good temper, your justices 

 of peace (which is the body of the gentlemen of England 

 grow to be loving and obsequious, and to be weary of the 

 humour of ruffling ; all mutinous spirits grow to be a little 

 poor and to draw in their horns, and not the less for your 

 majesty s disauctorizing the man I speak of. Now then I 

 reasonably doubt, that if there be but an opinion of his 

 coming in with the strength of such an alliance, it will give 

 a turn and relapse in men s minds into the former state of 

 things hardly to be holpen, to the great weakening of your 

 majesty s service. 



Again, Your majesty may have perceived, that as far as 

 it was fit for me in modesty to advise, I was ever for a 

 parliament, (which seemeth to me to be Car do rerum or 

 summa summarum for the present occasions). But this my 

 advice was ever conditional, that your majesty should go 

 to a parliament with a counsel united and not distracted ; 

 and that your majesty will give me leave never to expect, 

 if that man come in. Not for any difference of mine own, 

 (for I am omnibus omnia for your majesty s service), but 

 because he is by nature unsociable, and by habit popular, 

 and too old now to take a new ply. And men begin already 

 to collect, yea, and to conclude, that he that raiseth such a 

 smoke to get in will set all on fire when he is in. 



It may please your majesty now I have said, I have done : 

 and as I think I have done a duty not unworthy the first 

 year of your last high favour, I most humbly pray your ma 

 jesty to pardon me, if in any thing I have erred; for my 

 errors shall always be supplied by obedience: and so I 

 conclude with my prayers for the happy preservation of 

 your majesty s person and estate. 



Your Majesty s most humble, bounden, 



and most devoted Servant, 



From Gorhambury, FR * ^ACON, C. S. 



this 25th of July, 1617. 



