94 MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS. 



Again, whereas in the course of her service, though you 

 confess the weakness of your own judgment, yet true zeal, 

 not misled with any mercenary nor glorious respect, made 

 you light sometimes upon the best and soundest counsels ; 

 you had reason to fear, that the distaste particular against 

 yourself made her majesty farther off from accepting any 

 of them from such a hand. So as you seemed, to your 

 deep discomfort, to trouble her majesty s mind, and to foil 

 her business ; inconveniences, which, if you be minded as 

 you ought, thankfulness should teach you to redeem, with 

 stepping down, nay throwing yourself down, from your 

 own fortune. In which intricate case, finding no end of 

 this former course, and therefore desirous to find the be 

 ginning of a new, you have not whither to resort, but unto 

 the oracle of her majesty s direction. For though the true 

 introduction ad tempora meliora be by an amnestia of that 

 which is past, except it be in the sense, that the verse 

 speaketh, Olim hac meminisse juvabit, when tempests past 

 are remembered in the calm ; and that you do not doubt 

 of her majesty s goodness in pardoning and obliterating 

 any of your errors and mistakings heretofore; refreshing 

 the memory and contemplations of your poor services, or 

 any thing that hath been grateful to her majesty from you ; 

 yea, and somewhat of your sufferings, so though that be, 

 yet you may be to seek for the time to come. For as you 

 have determined your hope in a good hour not willingly to 

 offend her majesty, either in matter of court or state, but to 

 depend absolutely upon her will and pleasure, so you do 

 more doubt and mistrust your wit and insight in finding 

 her majesty s mind, than your conformities and submission 

 in obeying it ; the rather because you cannot but nourish a 

 doubt in your breast, that her majesty, as princes hearts 

 are inscrutable, hath many times towards you aliud in ore, 

 et aliud in corde. So that you, that take her secundum 

 literam, go many times farther out of your way. 



Therefore your most humble suit to her majesty is, that 

 she will vouchsafe you that approach to her heart and 

 bosom, et ad scrinium pectoris, plainly, for as much as con- 

 cerneth yourself, to open and expound her mind towards 

 you, suffering you to see clear what may have bred any 

 dislike in her majesty; and in what points she would have 

 you reform yourself; and how she would be served by you. 

 Which done, you do assure her majesty, she shall be both 

 at the beginning and the ending of all, that you do, of that 

 regard, as you may presume to impart to her majesty. 



