88 MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS. 



better content yourself: which your exceeding favour you 

 have not since varied from, both in pleading the like signi 

 fication into the hands of some of my best friends, and 

 also in an honourable and answerable nomination and 

 commendation of me to her majesty. Wherein I hope your 

 lordship, if it please you to call to mind, did find me neither 

 overweening in presuming too much upon it, nor much 

 deceived in my opinion of the event for the continuing it 

 still in yourself, nor sleepy in doing some good offices to 

 the same purpose. 



Now upon this matter I am to make your lordship three 

 humble requests, which had need be very reasonable, coming 

 so many together. First, that your lordship will hold and 

 make good your wishes towards me in your own time, for 

 no other I mean it, and in thankfulness thereof, I will pre 

 sent your lordship with the fairest flower of my estate, 

 though it yet bear no fruit, and that is the poor reversion, 

 which of her majesty s gift I hold ; in the which I shall be 

 no less willing Mr. John Egerton,* if it seem good to you, 

 should succeed me in that, than I would be willing to suc 

 ceed your lordship in the other place. 



My next humble request is, that your lordship would 

 believe a protestation, which is, that if there be now against 

 the next term, or hereafter, for a little bought knowledge 

 of the court teacheth me to foresee these things, any heav 

 ing or palting at that place upon my honesty and troth, 

 my spirit is not in, nor with it; I for my part, being resolutely 

 resolved not to proceed one pace or degree in this matter 

 but with your lordship s foreknowledge and approbation. 

 The truth of which protestation will best appear, if by any 

 accident, which I look not for, I shall receive any further 

 strength. For as I now am, your lordship may impute it 

 only to policy alone in me, that being without present hope 

 myself, I would be content the matter sleep. 



My third humble petition to your lordship is, that you 

 would believe an intelligence, and not take it for a fiction 

 in court ; of which manner I like Cicero s speech well, who, 

 writing to Appius Claudius, saith ; Sin autem qua tibi ipsi 



* Second son of the Lord Keeper, whose eldest son, Sir Thomas, knighted at 

 Cadiz upon the taking it in 1596 by the Earl of Essex, died in Ireland, whither 

 he attended that Earl in 1599, as Mr. John Egerton likewise did, and was 

 knighted by his Lordship, and at the Coronation of King James was made 

 Knight of the Bath. He succeeded his father in the titles of Baron of Ellesmere 

 and Viscount Brackley, and on the 17th of May was created Earl of Bridge- 



