The Earl of Shrewsbury to Sir Henry Lee.
“I have perused that enclosed letter you sent me within yours, and do account you most faithful and forward to do good where you profess friendship. Neither can the eloquence of the one, nor the earnest desire of the other, persuade me to do otherwise in that matter than I have already, upon good consideration, determined. My son compares my words with his own conceits, and means to save his credit as shall content me, but when he sealeth I will assure. I proposed to leave him in better case than my father left me, and if I give him so much as I cannot withhold, I am not in his debt. I forgave him all his faults, but I promised him not that I would trust him. He can bring the honour of his house now to make for his purpose, but he remembereth not how he went about to dishonour it. He laboured not to make sure my Lord of Leicester of their side that went about to accuse his father of treason. He did not countenance his wife and her mother against me in all their bad actions. His deceits never moved me to be displeased. Well, if they did, I pronounce forgiveness thereof to his friend, as I have done before unto him. He knoweth whereof his grief grew; let him henceforth avoid the occasions. He says he is not overruled by his wife, but attributes that to my speeches: but I say, if he be not he will quickly recover, and live better of his annuity than I could do when I bare his name, with less allowance. Yet (notwithstanding his doubtful words of your welcome hither, in respect you have moved me for his good) I beseech you come ten times for every one past; assuring you that the most eloquent orator in England can do no more with me than you have, till I perceive a new course. Thus, with my hearty commendations, I bid you farewell.
“Sheffield, September 6th, 1587.
The long letter from Sir Henry Lee gives a pathetic and vivid portrait of the old Government official who feels himself at last like a worn-out tool, unloved, unnecessary to the world—save when his position as a premier peer required him to raise levies for the defence and contest of Ireland, or county matters called him from retirement in his military and judicial capacity. To the very end he was a prompt official, and his family motto, “Prest d’Accomplir,” his watchword. In 1586 he was still among those who receive urgent orders to arm and prepare bodies of Derbyshire fighting men, and must give his attention to the most absurd details of uniform, such as the “convenient hose and doublet, and a cassock of motley ... either sea-green colour or russet,” noted among the regulations issued by his fellows of the Privy Council.
These things are, however, only flashes in the pan. He is getting old. All the world was growing old, and all his contemporaries, in the phrase of the day, were “a little thing sickish.” The intrepid and laborious Walsingham is described as being “troubled with his old diseases: the tympany and carnosity,” and so is absent from Court. Letters still flowed in to the Earl, news of the Netherlands campaign, from the now depressed Lord Leicester, the Governor, news of the Queen’s movements, of Spain, of the legal strife of his contemporaries and friends. They are only sticks and straws flung into the deep and turgid current of his lonely, embittered life.
It was in the midst of such disputes as these that the summons had come to him from Fotheringay.