t my hard fortune that I should offend your
majesty the least, especially in that whereby I have long desired to
merit of your majesty, as appeared before your majesty was my sovereign.
And though your majesty's neglect of me, my good liking of this
gentleman that is my husband, and my fortune, drew me to a contract
before I acquainted your majesty, I humbly beseech your majesty to
consider how impossible it was for me to imagine it could be offensive
to your majesty, having _few days before given me your royal consent to
bestow myself on any subject of your majesty's_ (which likewise your
majesty had done long since). Besides, never having been either
prohibited any, or spoken to for any, in this land, by your majesty,
_these seven years_ that I have lived in your majesty's house, I could
not conceive that your majesty regarded my marriage at all; whereas if
your majesty had vouchsafed to tell me your mind, and accept the
free-will offering of my obedience, I would not have offended your
majesty, of whose gracious goodness I presume so much, that _if it were
now as convenient in a worldly respect, as malice make it seem, to
separate us, whom God hath joined_, your majesty would not do evil that
good might come thereof, nor make me, that have the honour to be so near
your majesty in blood, the first precedent that ever was, though our
princes may have left some as little imitable, for so good and gracious
a king as your majesty, as David's dealing with Uriah. But I assure
myself, if it please your majesty in your own wisdom to consider
thoroughly of my cause, there will no solid reason appear to debar me of
justice and your princely favour, which I will endeavour to deserve
whilst I breathe."

It is indorsed, "A copy of my petition to the King's Majesty." In
another she implores that "If the necessity of my state and fortune,
together with my weakness, have caused me to do somewhat not pleasing to
your majesty, let it be all covered with the shadow of your royal
benignity." Again, in another petition, she writes:--

"Touching the offence for which I am now punished, I most humbly beseech
your majesty, in your most princely wisdom and judgment, to consider in
what a miserable state I had been, if I had taken any other course than
I did; for my own conscience witnessing before God that I was then the
wife of him that now I am, I could never have matched any other man, but
to have lived all the days of my life as a harlot