LETTER TO LORDS. CCcli 



&quot; To the Right Honourable the Lords of Parliament, Letter to 

 in the Upper House assembled. Lords. 



&quot; The humble Submission and Supplication of the Lord 

 Chancellor. 



&quot; It may please your Lordships, I shall humbly crave 

 at your lordships hands a benign interpretation of that 

 which I shall now write. For words that come from wasted 

 spirits and an oppressed mind are more safe in being 

 deposited in a noble construction, than in being circled 

 with any reserved caution. 



&quot; This being moved, and, as I hope, obtained, in the 

 nature of a protection to all that I shall say, I shall now 

 make into the rest of that wherewith I shall at this time 

 trouble your lordships a very strange entrance. For, in 

 the midst of a state of as great affliction as I think a mortal 

 man can endure (honour being above life), I shall begin 

 with the professing of gladness in some things. 



&quot; The first is, that hereafter the greatness of a judge or 

 magistrate shall be no sanctuary or protection of guiltiness, 

 which (in few words) is the beginning of a golden world. 

 The next, that, after this example, it is like that judges 

 will fly from any thing that is in the likeness of corruption 

 (though it were at a great distance) as from a serpent; 

 which tendeth to the purging of the courts of justice, and 

 the reducing them to their true honour and splendour. 

 And in these two points, God is my witness, that, though 

 it be my fortune to be the anvil upon which these good 

 effects are beaten and wrought, I take no small comfort. 



&quot; But, to pass from the motions of my heart, whereof 

 God is only judge, to the merits of my cause, whereof your 

 lordships are judges, under God and his lieutenant, I do 

 understand there hath been heretofore expected from me 

 some justification; and therefore I have chosen one only 



