Note 576 — Chapter XV · 1588-1593

A letter from Sir John Smith to Burghley, 28th January 1590, expresses sorrow “to hear that you were very dangerously sick, being next unto her Majesty, in my opinion, the pillar and upholder of the Commonwealth. Howbeit, I am now very glad to hear you have recovered your health;” to which the Lord Treasurer appends the note “relatio falsæ” (Hatfield Papers, part iv.). Later in the year, however (October), the Clerk of the Privy Seal, writing to Lord Talbot, says, “I never knew my Lord Treasurer more lusty or fresh in hue than at this hour.” How heavily business still pressed upon the Lord Treasurer is seen by a remark of his in a letter to Mr. Grimstone (January 1591): “The cause” (of his not having written) “is partly for that I have not leisure, being, as it were, roundly besieged with affairs to be answered from north, south, east, and west; whereof I hope shortly to be delivered by supply of some to take charge as her Majesty’s principal secretary” (Bacon Papers, Birch).