s, being,
as I have formerly said to him, but as a bucket and cistern to that
fountain--a bucket to draw forth, a cistern to preserve." He is not
afraid of the apparent slight to the censure passed on him by
Parliament. "For envy, it is an almanack of the old year, and as a
friend of mine said, _Parliament died penitent towards me_." "What the
King bestows on me will be further seen than on Paul's steeple." "There
be mountebanks, as well in the civil body as in the natural; I ever
served his Majesty with modesty; no shouting, no undertaking." In the
odd fashion of the time--a fashion in which no one more delighted than
himself--he lays hold of sacred words to give point to his argument.

"I may allude to the three petitions of the Litany--_Libera nos
Domine_; _parce nobis, Domine_; _exaudi nos, Domine_. In the first,
I am persuaded that his Majesty had a mind to do it, and could not
conveniently in respect of his affairs. In the second, he hath done
it in my fine and pardon. In the third, he hath likewise
performed, in restoring to the light of his countenance."

But if the King did not see fit to restore him to public employment, he
would be ready to give private counsel; and he would apply himself to
any "literary province" that the King appointed. "I am like ground
fresh. If I be left to myself I will graze and bear natural philosophy;
but if the King will plough me up again, and sow me with anything, I
hope to give him some yield." "Your Majesty hath power; I have faith.
Therefore a miracle may be wrought." And he proposes, for matters in
which his pen might be useful, first, as "active" works, the recompiling
of laws; the disposing of wards, and generally the education of youth;
the regulation of the jurisdiction of Courts; and the regulation of
Trade; and for "contemplative," the continuation of the history of Henry
VIII.; a general treatise _de Legibus et Justitia_; and the "Holy War"
against the Ottomans.

When he wrote this he had already shown what his unquelled energy could
accomplish. In the summer and autumn after his condemnation, amid all
the worries and inconveniences of that time, moving about from place to
place, without his books, and without free access to papers and records,
he had written his _History of Henry VII_. The theme had, no doubt, been
long in his head. But the book was the first attempt at philosophical
history in the language, and it at once takes rank wi