etter to a friend, in Strype iii. 2, 379. Certain true general
notes upon the actions of Lord Burleigh, in Strype iii. 2, 505. A
letter from Leicester is in existence, in which he tries to prove that
William Cecil had obligations to his father and not merely to the
Protector.

[281] Naunton, Fragmenta regalia.

[282] Sir H. Nicolas, Life and Times of Christopher Hatton,
communicates (p. 30) fragments of the Queen's letters, which lead him
to remark that the supposition of an immoral relation (which he
elsewhere adopts) is refuted by them. The Queen inquires for instance,
What is friendship? 'The union of two minds bound to each other by
virtue. He is no more a friend who desires more than the other can
reasonably grant.'

[283] Herrera, Historia del mundo iii. 754.

[284] Device made by the Earl of Essex: Devereux, Lives and Letters of
the Devereux, Earls of Essex, ii. App. F.

[285] Herrera complains at first of the 'ministros infideles' of the
Queen: among them he names Essex.

[286] In Winwood, Memorials i.

[287] Rowland Whyte to Sir Robert Sidney, Michaelmass Day 1599 (the
day after the Earl's arrival). Sidney Papers ii. 127.

[288] 'I could not but see and feel what misery was near unto my
country by the great power of such as are known indeed to be atheists
papists and pensioners of the mortal enemies of this kingdom.'
Confession to Ashton, in Devereux ii. 165.

[289] 'As foreseeing that the rebel will never suffer the King to live
or reign, who might permit or take revenge of the treason and
rebellion.' In Campbell, Lives of the Lord Chancellors ii. 199.

[290] Dispaccio di Carlo Scaramelli 19 Feb. 1603 (Venetian Archives).

[291] Memoirs of Robert Cary 116.

[292] The first appears in Aubery's Memoires pour servir a l'histoire
de Hollande 1687, 214; with another apocryphal tale about finding the
bones of Edward IV's children as early as Elizabeth's time. Aubery
asserts that he heard the history of the ring from his father's mouth,
who had heard it from Prince Maurice of Orange, to whom it had been
communicated by the English ambassador Carleton. According to him the
Queen then took to her bed, dressed as she was, sprang from it a
hundred times during the night, and starved herself to death. Who does
not, in reading this, feel himself in a sphere of wild romance? Lady
Spelman has tried to clear away the improbability involved in it, that
Essex should have applied to the wife of one of his enemies,