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And that which most properly concerns this action, if it prove a peace, I think her majesty shall do well to cure the root of the disease; and to profess, by a commission of peaceable men, chiefly of respect and countenance, reformation of abuses, extortions, and injustices there; and to plant a stronger and surer government than heretofore, for the ease and protection of the subject. For the removing of the sword or government in arms from the earl of Ormond, or the sending of the deputy, which will eclipse it, if peace follow, I think it unseasonable.

Lastly, I hold still my opinion, both for your better information, and the fuller declaration of your care, in meddling in this urgent and meriting service, that your lordship have a set conference with the persons I named in my former letter.

Rawley's XLVIII. A LETTER of advice to my Lord of ESSEX, immediately before his going into Ireland.

tio.

1599.

My singular good Lord,

YOUR late note of my silence in your occasions hath made me set down these few wandring lines, as one that would say somewhat, and can say nothing, touching your lordship's intended charge for Ireland: which my endeavour I know your lordship will accept graciously and well; whether your lordship take it by the handle of the occasion ministred from yourself, or of the affection from which it proceeds.

Your lordship is designed to a service of great merit and great peril; and as the greatness of the peril must needs include a like proportion of merit; so the greatness of the merit may include no small consequence of peril, if it be not temperately governed. For all immoderate success extinguisheth merit, and stirreth up distaste and envy; the assured forerunners of whole charges of peril. But I am at the last point first, some good

9 Our author observes, "I was not called or advised with some year and a half before his lordship's [namely, the earl of Essex's] going into Ireland," which explains this passage. Apology, Vol. III. p. 217.

spirit leading my pen to presage to your lordship success; wherein, it is true, I am not without my oracles and divinations; none of them superstitious, and yet not all natural. For first, looking into the course of God's providence in things now depending, and calling to consideration, how great things God hath done by her majesty and for her; I collect he hath disposed of this great defection in Ireland, thereby to give an urgent occasion to the reduction of that whole kingdom; as upon the rebellion of Desmond there insued the reduction of that whole province.

Next, your lordship goeth against three of the unluckiest vices of all others, disloyalty, ingratitude, and insolency; which three offences, in all examples, have seldom their doom adjourned to the world to come.

But

Lastly, he that shall have had the honour to know your lordship inwardly, as I have had, shall find bonà exta, whereby he may better ground a divination of good, than upon the dissection of a sacrifice. that part I leave; for it is fit for others to be confident upon you, and you to be confident upon the cause: the goodness and justice whereof is such as can hardly be matched in any example; it being no ambitious war against foreigners, but a recovery of subjects; and that after lenity of conditions often tried; and a recovery of them not only to obedience, but to humanity and policy, from more than Indian barbarism.

There is yet another kind of divination, familiar to matters of state; being that which Demosthenes so often relied upon in his time; when he said, That which for the time past is worst of all, is for the time to come the best which is, that things go ill, not by accident, but by errors; wherein, if your lordship have been heretofore an awaking censor, yet you must look for no other now, but Medice, cura teipsum: and though you shall not be the happy physician that cometh in the declination of the disease: yet you embrace that condition which many noble spirits have accepted for advantage; which is, that you go upon the greater peril of your fortune, and the less of your reputation; and so the honour countervaileth the adventure; of which

honour your lordship is in no small possession, when that her majesty, known to be one of the most judicious princes in discerning of spirits that ever governed, hath made choice of you, merely out of her royal judg ment; her affection inclining rather to continue your attendance, into whose hand, and trust, to put the command and conduct of so great forces; the gathering the fruit of so great charge; the execution of so many counsels; the redeeming of the defaults of so many former governors; the clearing of the glory of her so many happy years reign, only in this part eclipsed. Nay farther, how far forth the peril of that state is interlaced with the peril of England; and therefore how great the honour is, to keep and defend the approaches or avenues of this kingdom, I hear many discourse; and there is a great difference, whether the tortoise gathereth herself within her shell hurt or unhurt.

And if any man be of opinion, that the nature of the enemy doth extenuate the honour of the service, being but a rebel and a savage, I differ from him; for I see the justest triumphs that the Romans in their greatness did obtain, and that whereof the emperors in their stiles took addition and denomination, were of such an enemy as this; that is people barbarous, and not reduced to civility, magnifying a kind of lawless liberty, and prodigal of life, hardened in body, fortified in woods and bogs, and placing both justice and felicity in the sharpness of their swords; such were the Germans and ancient Britons, and divers others. Upon which kind of people, whether the victory were a conquest, or a reconquest upon a rebellion or a revolt, it made no difference, that ever I could find, in honour. And therefore it is not the inriching predatory war that hath the preeminence in honour, else should it be more honour to bring in a carrack of rich burden, than one of the twelve Spanish Apostles. But then this nature of people doth yield a higher point of honour, considered in truth, and substance, than any war can yield which should be atchieved against a civil enemy; if the end may be pacisque imponere morem, to replant and refound the policy of that nation; to which nothing is

wanting, but a just and civilgovernment; which design, as it doth descend unto you from your noble father, who lost his life in that action, though he paid tribute to nature, and not to fortune; so I hope your lordship shall be as fatal a captain to this war, as Africanus was to the war of Carthage, after that both his uncle and father had lost their lives in Spain in the same war. Now although it be true, that these things which I write, being but representations unto your lordship of the honour and appearance of the success of the enterprise, be not much to the purpose of any advice; yet it is that which is left to me, being no man of war, and ignorant in the particulars of estate. For a man may, by the eye, set up the white in the midst of the but, though he be no archer. Therefore I will only add this wish, according to the English phrase, which termeth a well-willing advice, a wish; that your lordship in this whole action, looking forward, would set down this position; That merit is worthier than fame; and looking back hither would remember this text, That obedience is better than sacrifice. For designing to fame and glory may make your lordship in the adven ture of your person to be valiant as a private soldier, rather than as a general: it may make you in your commandments rather to be gracious than disciplinary: it may make you press action, in respect of the great expectation conceived, rather hastily than seasonably and safely: it may make you seek rather to atchieve the war by force, than by intermixture of practice: it may make you, if God shall send prosperous beginnings, rather seek the fruition of that honour, than the perfec tion of the work in hand. And for the other point that is the proceeding, like a good protestant, upon express warrant, and not upon good intention, your lordship in your wisdom knoweth that as it is most fit for you to desire convenient liberty of instructions, so it is no less fit for you to observe the due limits of them; remembering that the exceeding of them may not only procure, in case of adverse accident, a dangerous disavow; but also, in case of prosperous success,

Rawley's
Resuscita-

tio.

Ibid.

be subject to interpretation, as if all were not referred to the right end.

Thus have I presumed to write these few lines to your lordship, in methodo ignorantie; which is, when a man speaketh of any subject, not according to the parts of the matter, but according to the model of his own knowledge; and most humbly desire your lordship that the weakness thereof may be supplied in your lordship by a benign acceptation, as it is in me by my best wishing.

XLIX. To my Lord of ESSEX.

My Lord,

CONCEIVING that your lordship came now up in the person of a good servant to see your sovereign mistress; which kind of compliments are many times instar magnorum meritorum; and therefore that it would be hard for me to find you: I have committed to this poor paper the humble salutations of him that is more yours than any man's; and more yours than any man. To these salutations I add a due and joyful gratulation, confessing that your lordship, in your last conference with me before your journey, spake not in vain, God making it good; that you trusted, we should say, Quis putasset? Which, as it is found true in a happy sense, so I wish you do not find another Quis putasset? in the manner of taking this so great a service. But I hope it is, as he said, Nubecula est, cito transibit: and that your lordship's wisdom, and obsequious circumspection, and patience, will turn all to the best. So referring all to some time that I may attend you, I commit you to God's best preservation.

L. A LETTER to the Earl of Essex, in offer of his service when he was first enlarged to Essex-House.

My Lord,

No man can expound my doings better than your lordship, which makes me need to say the less; only I

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