To the Queen.

    It may please your Majesty,
    It were great simplicity in me to look for better, than that your Majesty should cast away my letter as you have done me; were it not that it is possible your Majesty will think to find somewhat in it whereupon your displeasure may take hold; and so indignation may obtain that of you which favour could not. Neither mought I in reason presume to offer unto your Majesty dead lines, myself being excluded as I am; were it not upon this only argument or subject, namely to clear myself in point of duty. Duty, though my state lie buried in the sands, and my favours be cast upon the waters, and my honours be committed to the wind, yet standeth surely built upon the rock, and hath been, and ever shall be, unforced and unattempted. And therefore, since the world out of error, and your Majesty I fear out of art, is pleased to put upon me that I have so much as any election or will in this my absence from attendance, I cannot but leave this protestation with your Majesty; that I am and have been merely a patient, and take myself only to obey and execute your Majesty's will. And indeed, Madam, I had never thought it possible that your Majesty could have so disinteressed yourself of me; nor that you had been so perfect in the art of forgetting; nor that after a quintessence of wormwood, your Majesty would have taken so large a draught of poppy; as to have passed so many summers without all feeling of my sufferings. But the only comfort I have is this, that I know your Majesty taketh delight and contentment in executing this disgrace upon me. And since your Majesty can find no other use of me, I am glad yet I can serve for that. Thus making my most humble petition to your Majesty, that in justice (howsoever you may by strangeness untie, or by violence cut asunder all other knots), your Majesty would not touch me in that which is indissoluble; that is point of duty; and that your Majesty will pardon this my unwarranted presumption of writing, being to such an end: I cease in all humbleness;
Your Majesty's poor, and never so unworthy servant,     
ESSEX.  


 

    The letter above was "Written by Mr. Bacon for my Lord of Essex" (Rawley, Resuscitatio, Supplement, p. 94).
    "And I drew for him by his appointment some letters to her Majesty; which though I knew well his Lordship's gift and style to be far better than mine own, yet because he required it, alleging that by his long restraint he was grown almost a stranger to the Queen's present conceits, I was ready to perform it: and sure I am that for the space of six weeks or two months it prospered so well, as I expected continually his restoring to his attendance" (Bacon, Apology).
[@ Works IX, 192-4]

 


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