“My principal end being to do your Majesty service, I crave leave to make at this 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 your Majesty and greatness. He is gone from whom those courses did wholly flow. To have your wants and necessities in particular as it were hanged up in two tablets before the eyes of your lords and commons, to be talked of for four months together; To have all your courses to help yourself in revenue or profit put into printed books, which were wont to be held arcana imperii; To have such worms of aldermen to lend for ten in the hundred upon good assurance, and with such entreaty (?) as if it should save the bark of your