I do verily hope that neither the manner nor matter of this advice
will be condemned by your Lordship, when for my defence in the first
I shall alledge my double attempt, since your return from
Hinchinbroke, of doing it personally, in both of which your
Lordship’s occasions, no doubtfulnesse of mine, prevented me, and
that being now fearful of a sudden summons to Portsmouth, for the
discharge of some ships there, I judge it very unbecoming the duty
which every bit of bread I eat tells me I owe to your Lordship to
expose the safety of your honour to the uncertainty of my return.
For the matter, my Lord, it is such as could I in any measure think
safe to conceal from, or likely to be discovered to you by any other
hand, I should not have dared so far to owne what from my heart I
believe is false, as to make myself but the relater of other’s
discourse; but, sir, your Lordship’s honour being such as I ought to
value it to be, and finding both in city and court that discourses
pass to your prejudice, too generally for mine or any man’s
controllings but your Lordship’s, I shall, my Lord, without the
least greatening or lessening the matter, do my duty in laying it
shortly before you.
People of all conditions, my Lord, raise matter of wonder from your
Lordship’s so little appearance at Court: some concluding thence
their disfavour thereby, to which purpose I have had questions asked
me, and endeavouring to put off such insinuations by asserting the
contrary, they have replied, that your Lordship’s living so beneath
your quality, out of the way, and declining of Court attendance,
hath been more than once discoursed about the King. Others, my
Lord, when the chief ministers of State, and those most active of
the Council have been reckoned up, wherein your Lordship never used
to want an eminent place, have said, touching your Lordship, that
now your turn was served, and the King had given you a good estate,
you left him to stand or fall as he would, and, particularly in that
of the Navy, have enlarged upon your letting fall all service there.
Another sort, and those the most, insist upon the bad report of the
house wherein your Lordship, now observed in perfect health again,
continues to sojourne, and by name have charged one of the daughters
for a common courtizan, alledging both places and persons where and
with whom she hath been too well known, and how much her wantonnesse
occasions, though unjustly, scandal to your Lordship, and that as
well to gratifying of some enemies as to the wounding of more
friends I am not able to tell.
Lastly, my Lord, I find a general coldness in all persons towards
your Lordship, such as, from my first dependance on you, I never yet
knew, wherein I shall not offer to interpose any thoughts or advice
of mine, well knowing your Lordship needs not any. But with a most
faithful assurance that no person nor papers under Heaven is privy
to what I here write, besides myself and this, which I shall be
careful to have put into your owne hands, I rest confident of your
Lordship’s just construction of my dutifull intents herein, and in
all humility take leave, may it please your Lordship,
Your Lordship’s most obedient Servant, S. P.