tructions of your rash-advised
charge?... I never yet loved you so little as not to moan your infamous
dealings, which you are in mind, we see, that myself shall possess more
princes witness of my causeless injuries, which I should have wished had
passed no seas to testify such memorials of your wrongs. Bethink you of
such dealings, and set your labor upon such mends as best may, though
not right, yet salve some piece of this overslip; and be assured that
you deal with such a king as will bear no wrongs and endure infamy; the
examples have been so lately seen as they can hardly be forgotten of a
far mightier and potenter prince than any Europe hath. Look you not
therefore that without large amends, I may or will slupper up such
indignities. We have sent this bearer Bowes, whom you may safely credit,
to signify such particularities as fits not a letters talk. And so I
recommend you to a better mind and more advised conclusions." Dated
January 4th 1597-1598[125].

[Note 125: M.S. in Dr. Haynes's extracts from the Salisbury
collection.--I am unable to discover to what particular circumstance
this angry letter refers.]

* * * * *

From another of these letters we learn that James had addressed a
love-sonnet to the queen and complained of her having taken no notice of
it; reminding her that Cupid was a God of a most impatient disposition.

An author has the following notice respecting sir Roger Aston,
frequently the bearer of these curious epistles. "He was an Englishman
born, but had his breeding wholly in Scotland, and had served the king
many years as his barber; an honest and free-hearted man, and of an
ancient family in Cheshire, but of no breeding answerable to his birth.
Yet was he the only man ever employed as a messenger from the king to
queen Elizabeth, as a letter-carrier only, which expressed their own
intentions without any help from him, besides the delivery; but even in
that capacity was in very good esteem with her majesty, and received
very royal rewards, which did enrich him, and gave him a better revenue
than most gentlemen in Scotland. For the queen did find him as faithful
to her as to his master, in which he showed much wisdom, though of no
breeding. In this his employment I must not pass over one pretty passage
I have heard himself relate. That he did never come to deliver any
letters from his master, but ever he was placed in the lobby; the
hangings being turned towa