30 LETTERS FROM STEPHENS. 



To the King. 

 It may please your Majesty, 



It hath pleased God for these three days past, to visit me 

 with such extremity of headach upon the hinder part of my 

 head, fixed in one place, that I thought verily it had been 

 some imposthumation ; and then the little physic that I 

 have told me that either it must grow to a congelation, and 

 so to a lethargy, or to break, and so to a mortal fever or 

 sudden death ; which apprehension, and chiefly the anguish 

 of the pain, made me unable to think of any business. 

 But now that the pain itself is assuaged to be tolerable, I 

 resume the care of my business, and therein prostrate my 

 self again, by my letter, at your majesty s feet. 



Your majesty can bear me witness, that at my last so 

 comfortable access, I did not so much as move your majesty 

 by your absolute power of pardon, or otherwise, to take 

 my cause into your hands, and to interpose between the 

 sentence of the house. And according to my desire, your 

 majesty left it to the sentence of the house by my Lord 

 Treasurer s report. 



But now if not per omnipotentiam, as the divines say, but 

 per pot est at em siiaviter disponentem, your majesty will gra 

 ciously save me from a sentence, with the good liking of the 

 house, and that cup may pass from me, it is the utmost of 

 my desires. This I move with the more belief, because I 

 assure myself, that if it be reformation that is sought, the 

 very taking away of the seal, upon my general submission, 

 will be as much in example, for these four hundred years, 

 as any further severity. 



The means of this I most humbly leave unto your 

 majesty, but surely I should conceive, that your majesty 

 opening yourself in this kind to the Lords, Counsellors, and 

 a motion of the Prince, after my submission, and my Lord 

 Marquis using his interest with his friends in the house, 

 may affect the sparing of the sentence ; I making my hum 

 ble suit to the house for that purpose, joined with the 

 delivery up of the seal into your majesty s hands. This is 

 my last suit that I shall make to your majesty in this 

 business, prostrating myself at your mercy-seat, after fifteen 

 years service, wherein I have served your majesty in my 

 poor endeavours, with an entire heart. And, as I presume 

 to say unto your majesty, am still a virgin, for matters that 

 concern your person or crown, and now only craving that 

 after eight steps of honour, I be not precipitated alto 

 gether. 



