302 DECLARATION OF THE TREASONS 



So likewise those points of popularity which 

 every man took notice and note of, as his affable 

 gestures, open doors, making his table and his bed 

 so popularly places of audience to suitors, denying 

 nothing when he did nothing, feeding many men in 

 their discontentments against the queen and the 

 state, and the like ; as they were ever since Absa 

 lom s time the forerunners of treasons following, so 

 in him were they either the qualities of a nature 

 disposed to disloyalty, or the beginnings and con 

 ceptions of that which afterwards grew to shape and 



form. 



But as it were a vain thing to think to search the 

 roots and first motions of treasons, which are known 

 to none but God that discerns the heart, and the 

 devil that gives the instigation ; so it is more than to 

 be presumed, being made apparent by the evidence 

 of all the events following, that he carried into Ire 

 land a heart corrupted in his allegiance, and preg 

 nant of those or the like treasons which afterwards 

 came to light. 



For being a man by nature of an high imagina 

 tion, and a great promiser to himself as well as to 

 others, he was confident that if he were once the 

 first person in a kingdom, and a sea between the 

 queen s seat and his, and Wales the nearest land 

 from Ireland, and that he had got the flower of the 

 English forces into his hands, which he thought so 

 to intermix with his own followers, as the whole 

 body should move by his spirit, and if he might have 

 also absolutely into his own hands &quot; potestatem vitae 



