I
Must Again Profess That I Have Read Many Of His Letters, For They
Are Commonly Sent To My Lord
Of Leicester and of Burleigh out of
France, containing many fine passages and secrets, yet, if I might
have been
Beholding to his cyphers, they would have told pretty
tales of the times; but I must now close him up, and rank him
amongst the TOGATI, yet chief of those that laid the foundations of
the French and Dutch wars, which was another piece of his fineness
of the times, with one observation more, that he was one of the
greatest always of the Austrian embracements, for both himself and
Stafford that preceded him might well have been compared to him in
the Gospel that sowed his tares in the night; so did they their
seeds in division in the dark; and as it is a likely report that
they father on him at his return, the Queen speaking to him with
some sensibility of the Spanish designs on France: "Madam," he
answered, "I beseech you be content, and fear not; the Spaniard hath
a great appetite and an excellent digestion, but I have fitted him
with a bone for these twenty years that your Majesty should have no
cause to doubt him, provided that, if the fire chance to slake which
I have kindled, you will be ruled by me, and cast in some of your
fuel, which will revive the flame."
WILLOUGHBY.
My Lord Willoughby was one of the Queen's first swordsmen; he was of
the ancient extract of the Bartewes, but more ennobled by his
mother, who was Duchess of Suffolk.
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