but my answer
was, that if her majesty would revoke my commission, I would cast both
it and myself at her majesty's feet. But if it pleased her majesty that
I should execute it, I must work with my own instruments. And from this
profession and protestation I never varied; whereas if I had held myself
barred from giving my lord of Southampton place and reputation some way
answerable to his degree and expense, there is no one, I think, doth
imagine, that I loved him so ill as to have brought him over. Therefore
if her majesty punish me with her displeasure for this choice, _poena
dolenda venit_. And now, my lords, were now, as then it was, that I were
to choose, or were there nothing in a new choice but my lord of
Southampton's disgrace and my discomfort, I should easily be induced to
displace him, and to part with him. But when, in obeying this command, I
must discourage all my friends, who now, seeing the days of my suffering
draw near, follow me afar off, and are some of them tempted to renounce
me; when I must dismay the army, which already looks sadly, as pitying
both me and itself in this comfortless action; when I must encourage the
rebels, who doubtless will think it time to hew upon a withering tree,
whose leaves they see beaten down, and the branches in part cut off;
when I must disable myself for ever in the course of this service, the
world now perceiving that I want either reason to judge of merit, or
freedom to right it, disgraces being there heaped where, in my opinion,
rewards are due; give just grief leave once to complain. O! miserable
employment, and more miserable destiny of mine, that makes it impossible
for me to please and serve her majesty at once! Was it treason in my
lord of Southampton to marry my poor kinswoman, that neither long
imprisonment, nor any punishment besides that hath been usual in like
cases, can satisfy and appease? Or will no kind of punishment be fit for
him, but that which punisheth, not him, but me, this army, and this poor
country of Ireland? Shall I keep the country when the army breaks? Or
shall the army stand when all the volunteers leave it? Or will any
voluntaries stay when those that have will and cause to follow are thus
handled? No, my lords, they already ask passports, and that daily." &c.

In spite of all this earnestness, in spite of the remaining affection
of the queen for her favorite, she still persisted in requiring that he
should displace his friend, and even