18 UNION OF ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND. 



secrets and mysteries of our laws, merely new unto 

 you, and quite out of the path of your education, 

 reading, and conference : wherein, nevertheless, upon 

 a spark of light given, your majesty took in so dex- 

 trously and profoundly, as if you had been indeed 

 &quot; anima legis,&quot; not only in execution, but in under 

 standing : the remembrance whereof, as it will never 

 be out of my mind, so it will always be a warning to 

 me to seek rather to excite your judgment briefly, 

 than to inform it tediously ; and if in a matter 

 of that nature, how much more in this, wherein your 

 princely cogitations have wrought themselves, and 

 been conversant, and wherein the principal light 

 proceeded from yourself. 



And therefore my purpose is only to break this 

 matter of the union into certain short articles and 

 questions, and to make a certain kind of anatomy or 

 analysis of the parts and members thereof: not that 

 I am of opinion that all the questions which I now 

 shall open, were fit to be in the consultation of the 

 commissioners propounded. For I hold nothing so 

 great an enemy to good resolution, as the making of 

 too many questions ; especially in assemblies which 

 consist of many. For princes, for avoiding of dis 

 traction, must take many things by way of ad 

 mittance ; and if questions must be made of them, 

 rather to suffer them to arise from others, than to 

 grace them and authorise them as propounded from 

 themselves. But unto your majesty s private consi 

 deration, to whom it may be better sort with me 

 rather to speak as a remembrancer than as a coun- 



