Note 505 — Chapter VI
Reading edition
"My faithful 3, such is now my misfortune, as I must be for this time secretary to the devil in answering your letters directed unto him. That the entering now into the matter of the subsidy should be deferred until the council's next meeting with me, I think no ways convenient, especially for three reasons. First, ye see it has bin already longest delayd of anything, and yet yee see the lower house are ever the longer the further from it; and (as in everything that concerns mee) delay of time does never turn them towards mee, but, by the contrary, every hour breedeth a new trick of contradiction amongst them, and every day produces new matter of sedition, so fertile are their brains in ever buttering forth venome. Next, the Parlt. is now so very near an end, as this matter can suffer no longer delay. And thirdly, if this be not granted unto before they receive my answer unto their petition, it needs never to be moved, for the will of man or angel cannot devise a pleasing answer to their proposition, except I should pull the crown not only from my own head, but also from the head of all those that shall succeed unto mee, and lay it down at their feet. And that freedom of uttering my thoughts, which no extremity, strait nor peril of my life could ever bereave mee of in time past, shall now remain with me, as long as the soul shall with the body. And as for the Reservations of the Bill of Tonnage and Poundage, yee of the Upper House must out of your Love and Discretion help it again or otherwise they will in this, as in all things else that concern mee, wrack both me and all my Posterity. Yee may impart this to little 10 and bigg Suffolk. And so Farewell from my Wildernesse, wch I had rather live in (as God shall judge mee) like an Hermite in this Forrest, then be a King over such a People as the pack of Puritans are that over-rules the lower house. J. R."
MS. penes autorem.
I cannot tell who is addressed in this letter by the numeral 3; perhaps the Earl of Dunbar. By 10 we must doubtless understand Salisbury.