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requiring or expecting any stipend for it. Nevertheless, it pleased the fellowship, of their own accord, to allow me soon after four marks by the year, and ever since to continue that lecture to the college. In the year of our Lord 1566, I proceeded master of arts, and read, for that year, in the school-streets, natural philosophy; after which time, within less than three years space, I was won, by intreaty of my best-affected friends, to stand for the proctorship, to which I and my colleague, Master Bearblock, of Exeter College, were quietly elected in the year 1569, without any competition or countersuit of any other. After this, for a long time, I supplied the office of the University orator, and bestowed my time in the study of sundry faculties, without any inclination to profess any one above the rest; insomuch as, at last, I waxed desirous to travel beyond the seas, for attaining to the knowledge of some special modern tongues, and for the increase of my experience in the managing of affairs, being wholly then addicted to employ myself, and all my cares, in the publick service of the state. My resolution fully taken, I departed out of England, anno 1576, and continued very near four years abroad, and that in sundry parts of Italy, France, and Germany. A good while after my return, to wit, in the year 1585, I was employed by the queen to Frederick, father to the present king of Denmark; to Julius, duke of Brunswick, to William, landgrave of Hesse, and other German princes: the effect of my message was, to draw them to join their forces with her's, for giving assistance to the king of Navarre, now Henry the Fourth, king of France. My next employment was to Henry the Third, at such time as he was forced by the Duke of Guise to fly out of Paris; which I performed, in such sort as I had in charge, with extraordinary secresy; not being accompanied with any one servant (for so much I was commanded) nor with any other letters, than such as were written with the queen's own hand to the king, and some selected persons about him; the effect of that message it is fit I should conceal. But it tended greatly to the advantage not only of the King, but of all the protestants in France, and to the duke's apparent overthrow, which also followed soon upon it. It so befel after this, in the year eighty-eight, that, for the better conduct of her highness's affairs in the Provinces United, I was thought a fit person to reside in those parts, and was sent thereupon to the Hague in Holland, where, according to the contract that had formerly past, between her highness and the states, I was admitted for one of their council of estate, taking place in their assemblies next to Count Maurice, and yielding my suffrage in all that was proposed. During all that time, what approbation was given of my painful endeavours by the Queen, Lords in England, by the States of the country there, and by all the English soldiery, I refer it to be notified by some others relation; since it was not unknown to any of any calling, that then were acquainted with the state of that government. For, at my first coming thither, the people of that country stood in dangerous terms of discontentment, partly for some courses that were held in England, as they thought, to their singular prejudice, but most of all, in respect of the insolent demeanor of some of her highness's ministers, which only respected their private emolument, little weighing in their dealing what the queen had contracted with the States of the country; whereupon was conceived a

mighty fear on every side, that both a present dissolution of the contract would ensue, and a downright breach of amity between us and them. Now what means I set a foot for redress of those perils, and by what degrees the state of things was reduced into order, it would require a long treatise to report it exactly; but this I may aver with modesty and truth, and the country did always acknowledge it with gratitude, that, had I not of myself, without any direction from my superiors, proceeded in my charge, with extreme circumspection, as well in all my speeches and proposals to the States, as in the tenour of my letters, that I writ into England, some sudden alarm had been given, to the utter subversion and ruin of the state of those provinces; which, in process of time, must needs have wrought, in all probability, to the self-same effect in the state of this realm. Of this my diligence and care in the managing of my business, there was, as I have signified, very special notice taken by the queen and state at home, for which I received from her majesty many comfortable letters of her gracious acceptance, as withal, from that time forward, I did never receive almost any set instructions, how to govern my proceedings in her majesty's occasions, but the carriage, in a manner, of all her affairs was left to me, and my direction. Through this my long absence out of England, which wanted very little of five whole years, my private estate did greatly require my speedy return, which, when I had obtained by intercession of friends, and a tedious suit, I could enjoy but a while, being shortly after enjoined to repair to the Hague again. Nevertheless, upon a certain occasion to deliver unto her some secret overtures, and of performing thereupon an extraordinary service, I came again home within less than a twelvemonth; and I was no sooner come, but, her highness embracing the fruit of my discoveries, I was presently commanded to return to the States, with charge to pursue those affairs to performance, which I had secretly proposed; and according to the project, which I had conceived, and imparted unto her, all things were concluded and brought to that issue that was instantly desired, whereupon, I procured my last revocation. Now, here I cannot chuse, in making report of the principal accidents that have fallen unto me in the course of my life, but record among the rest, that, from the very first day, I had no man more to friend among the lords of the council, than was the lord treasurer Burleigh: For, when occasion had been offered of declaring his conceit as touching my service, he would always tell the queen, which I received from herself and some other ear witnesses, that there was not any man in England so meet as myself, to undergo the office of the secretary. And since his son, the present lord treasurer, hath signified unto me in private conference, that, when his father intended to advance him to that place, his purpose was withal to make me his colleague. But the case stood thus in my behalf: Before such time as I returned from the Provinces United, which was in the year 1597, and likewise after my return, the then Earl of Essex did use me so kindly both by letters and messages, and other great tokens of his inward favours to me, that, though I had no meaning, but to settle in my mind my chiefest desire and dependence upon the Lord Burleigh, as one that I reputed to be both the best able, and therewithal the most willing to work my advancement with the queen,

yet, I knew not how, the Earl, who sought by all devices, to divert her love and liking both from the father and the son, but from the son especially, to withdraw my affection from the one and the other, and to win me altogether to depend upon himself, did so often take occasion to entertain the queen with some prodigal speeches of my sufficiency for a secretary, which were ever accompanied with words of disgrace against the present lord treasurer, as neither she herself, of whose favour before I was thoroughly assured, took any great pleasure to prefer me the sooner. For she hated his ambition, and would give little countenance to any of his followers, and both the lord Burleigh and his son waxed jealous of my courses, as if under-hand I had been induced, by the cunning and kindness of the Earl of Essex, to oppose myself against their dealings. And though, in very truth, they had no solid ground at all of the least alteration in my disposition towards either of them both, for I did greatly respect their persons and places, with a settled resolution to do them any service, as also in my heart I detested to be held of any faction whatsoever; yet the now lord treasurer, upon occasion of some talk, that I have since had with him, of the Earl and his actions, hath freely confessed of his own accord unto me, that his daily provocations were so bitter and sharp against him, and his comparisons so odious, when he put us in a balance, as he thought thereupon he had very great reason to use his best means, to put any man out of hope of raising his fortune, whom the Earl with such violence, to his extreme prejudice, had endeavoured to dignity. And this, as he affirmed, was all the motive he had to set himself against me, in whatsoever might redound to the bettering of my estate, or increasing of my credit and countenance with the queen. When I had thoroughly now bethought me, first in the Earl, of the slender hold-fast that he had in the favour of the queen, of an endless opposition of the chiefest of our statesmen like still to wait upon him, of his perilous, and feeble, and uncertain advice, as well in his own, as in all the causes of his friends: And when moreover, for myself, I had fully considered how very untowardly these two counsellors were affected unto me, upon whom before in cogitation I had framed all the fabrick of my future prosperity; how ill it did concur with my natural disposition to become, or to be counted either a stickler or partaker in any publick faction; how well I was able, by God's good blessing, to live of myself, if I could be content with a competent livelihood; how short time of further life I was then to expect by the common course of nature; when I had, I say, in this manner, represented to my thoughts my particular estate, together with the Earl's, I resolved thereupon to possess my soul in peace, all the residue of my days; to take my full farewel of state employments, to satisfy my mind with that mediocrity of worldly living, that I had of my own, and so to retire me from the court, which was the epilogue and end of all my actions and endeavours of any important note, till I came to the age of fifty-three. Now, although after this, by her majesty's direction, I was often called to the court, by the now lord treasurer, then secretary, and required by him, as also divers times since, by order from the King, to serve as ambassador in France, to go a commissioner from his highness, for concluding the truce between Spain and the provinces, and to negotiate in other

very honourable employments; yet I would not be removed from my former final resolution, insomuch as at length, to induce me the sooner to return to the court, I had an offer made me by the present lord treasurer, for in process of time he saw, as he himself was pleased to tell me more than once, that all my dealing was upright, faithful, and direct, that, in case I myself was willing unto it, he would make me his associate in the secretary's office, and, to the intent I might believe that he intended it bona fide, he would get me out of hand to be sworn of the council. And for the better enabling of my state to maintain such a dignity, whatsoever I would ask, that might be fit for him to deal in, and for me to enjoy, he would presently sollicit the King to give it passage. All which persuasions notwithstanding, although I was often assaulted by him, in regard of my years, and for that I felt subject to many indispositions, besides some other private reasons which I reserve unto myself, I have continued still at home my retired course of life, which is now methinks to me as the greatest preferment that the state can afford. Only this I must truly confess of myself, that though I did never repent me yet of those, and some other my often refusals of honourable offers, in respect of enriching my private estate; yet somewhat more of late Í have blamed myself, and my nicety that way, for the love that I bear to my reverend mother the University of Oxford, and to the advancement of her good, by such kind of means, as I have since undertaken. For thus I fell to discourse and debate in my mind, that although I might find it fittest for me to keep out of the throng of court contentions, and address my thoughts and deeds to such ends altogether, as I myself could best affect; yet withal I was to think, that my duty towards God, the expectation of the world, my natural inclination, and very morality, did require, that I should not wholly so hide those little abilities that I had, but that in some measure, in one kind or other, I should do the true part of a profitable member in the state. Whereupon examining exactly for the rest of my life, what course I might take, and having sought, as I thought, all the ways to the wood to select the most proper, I concluded at the last to set up my staff at the library door in Oxford; being thoroughly persuaded, that, in my solitude and surcease from the commonwealth affairs, I could not busy myself to better purpose, than by reducing that place, which then in every part lay ruined and waste, to the publick use of students; for the effecting whereof, I found myself furnished in a competent proportion, of such four kinds of aids, as, unless I had them all, there was no hope of good success. For without some kind of knowledge, as well in the learned and modern tongues, as in sundry other sorts of scholastical literature; without some purseability, to go through with the charge; without very great store of honourable friends to further the design, and without special good leisure to follow such a work, it could but have proved a vain attempt, and inconsiderate. But how well I have sped in all my endeavours, and how full provision I have made for the benefit and ease of all frequenters of the library, that which I have already performed in sight, that besides which I have given for the maintenance of it, and that which hereafter I purpose to add, by way of enlargement to that place, for the project is cast, and, whether I live or die, it shall be, God willing, put in full

execution, will testify so truly and abundantly for me, as I need not be the publisher of the dignity and worth of my own institution., Written with my own hand, anno 1609, December the fifteenth.

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THOMAS BODLEY.

• Thus far our noble author of himself, who, like to the first penman

of the sacred history, seems to survive his grave, and to describe unto ' us his own death. For, having finished that great work which future ' times shall ever honour, never equal, he yielded to his fate. As being unwilling the glory of that deed should be defloured by the succession ' of an act less high than it. On the twenty-ninth of January, in the year 1612, his pure soul attained the freedom of its own divinity: Leaving his borrowed earth, the sad remainder of innocence and frailty, to be deposited in Merton College: Who had the happiness to call • his education her's, and to be intrusted with so dear a pledge of im, 'morality.'

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THE ASSEMBLY-MAN,

Written in the Year 1647.

ΘΕΟΦΡΑΣΤ. Χαρακί. ιγ. περὶ ΠΕΡΙΕΡΓΙΑΣ,

Διεγείρειν τὸς μαχομένες, καὶ ἧς ἐ γινώσκει ἀτραπᾶ ἡγήσασθαι· καὶ ὀμνύναι μέλλων, εἰπεῖν πρὸς τὰς περιεςηκότας, ὅτι τόν πρότερον πολλάκις ὀμώμοκα, i. e.

He seditiously stirs up men to fight: He will teach others the way whereof himself is most ignorant; and persuades men to take an oath, because himself had sworn it before.

London, Printed for Richard Marriott, and are to be sold at his shop under St. Dunstan's Church in Fleet-Street, 1662-3. Quarto, containing twenty-two pages.

READER,

THIS pamphlet was torn from me, by those who say, they cannot rob, because all is theirs. They found it where it slept many years forgotten; but they awakened it, and made false transcripts. They excised what they liked not; so mangled and reformed, that it was no character of an assembler, but of themselves. A copy of that reformling had crept to the press. I seized and stopped it, unwilling to father other men's sins. Here therefore you have it, as it was first

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