time to your Majesty this most humble oblation of
myself. I may truly say with the psalm, _Multum incola fuit anima
mea_, for my life hath been conversant in things wherein I take
little pleasure. Your Majesty may have heard somewhat that my
father was an honest man, and somewhat you may have seen of myself,
though not to make any true judgement by, because I have hitherto
had only _potestatem verborum_, nor that neither. I was three of my
young years bred with an ambassador in France, and since I have
been an old truant in the school-house of your council-chamber,
though on the second form, yet longer than any that now sitteth
hath been upon the head form. If your Majesty find any aptness in
me, or if you find any scarcity in others, whereby you may think it
fit for your service to remove me to business of State, although I
have a fair way before me for profit (and by your Majesty's grace
and favour for honour and advancement), and in a course less
exposed to the blasts of fortune, _yet now that he is gone, quo
vivente virtutibus certissimum exitium_, I will be ready as a
chessman to be wherever your Majesty's royal hand shall set me.
Your Majesty will bear me witness, I have not suddenly opened
myself thus far. I have looked upon others, I see the exceptions,
I see the distractions, and I fear Tacitus will be a prophet,
_magis alii homines quam alii mores_. I know mine own heart, and I
know not whether God that hath touched my heart with the affection
may not touch your royal heart to discern it. Howsoever, I shall at
least go on honestly in mine ordinary course, and supply the rest
in prayers for you, remaining, etc."

This is no hasty outburst. In a later paper on the true way of
retrieving the disorders of the King's finances, full of large and wise
counsel, after advising the King not to be impatient, and assuring him
that a state of debt is not so intolerable--"for it is no new thing for
the greatest Kings to be in debt," and all the great men of the Court
had been in debt without any "manner of diminution of their
greatness"--he returns to the charge in detail against Salisbury and the
Great Contract.

"My second prayer is, that your Majesty--in respect to the hasty
freeing of your state--would not descend to any means, or degree of
means, which carrieth not a symmetry with