NOTE 4 E. 



The Substance of a Letter I now wish your Lordship should write to her 

 Majesty. 



That you desire her majesty to believe id, quod res ipsa loquitur, that it is not 

 conscience to yourself of any advantage her majesty hath towards you, otherwise 

 than the general and infinite advantage of a queen and a mistress ; nor any 

 drift or device to win her majesty to any point or particular, that moveth you to 

 send her these lines of your own mind : but first, and principally, gratitude ; 

 next a natural desire of, you will not say, the tedious remembrance, for you 

 can hold nothing tedious that hath been derived from her majesty, but the 

 troubled and pensive remembrance of that which is past, of enjoying better 

 times with her majesty, such as others have had, and that you have wanted. 

 You cannot impute the difference to the continuance of time, which addeth 

 nothing to her majesty but increase of virtue, but rather to your own misfortune 

 or errors. Wherein, nevertheless, if it were only question of your own endu 

 rances, though any strength never so good may be oppressed, yet you think you 

 should have suffocated them, as you had often done, to the impairing of your 

 health, and weighing down of your mind. But that which indeed toucheth the 

 quick is, that whereas you accounted it the choice fruit of yourself to be a con 

 tentment and entertainment to her majesty s mind, you found many times to the 

 contrary, that you were rather a disquiet to her, and a distaste. 



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 beginning of a new, you have not whither to 

 resort, but unto the oracle of her majesty s direction. For though the true intro 

 duction ad tempora meliora be by an amnestia of that which is past, except it be 

 in the sense that the verse speaketh, Olim h&c 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 hereto 

 fore ; 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 concerneth 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. 



And so that hoping that this may be an occasion of some farther serenity from 

 her majesty towards you, you refer the rest to your actions, which may verify 

 what you have written; as that you have written may interpret your actions, 

 and the course you shall hereafter take. 



Indorsed by Mr. Francis Bacon A Letter framed for 

 my Lord of Essex to the Queen. 



