power as there hath been. Justice is described with a balance in her hand, holding it even, and it hangs as even now as ever it did in any king's days; for singular authority begets but general oppression.

Couns. However it be, that is nothing to you that have no interest in the king's favour, nor perhaps in his opinion; and concerning such a one, the misliking, or but misconceiving of any hard word, phrase, or sentence, will give argument to the king, either to condemn or reject the whole discourse. And however his majesty may neglect your informations, you may be sure that others (at whom you point) will not neglect their revenges: you will therefore confess it (when it is too late) that you are exceeding sorry that you have not followed my advice. Remember cardinal Wolsey, who lost all men for the king's service; and when their malice (whom he grieved) had outlived the king's affection, you know what became of him as well

as I.

Just. Yea, my lord, I know it well, that malice hath a longer life than either love or thankfulness; for as we always take more care to put off pain than to enjoy pleasure, because the one has no intermission, and with the other we are often satisfied; so it is in the smart of injury, and memory of good turns. Wrongs are written in marble; benefits are sometimes acknowledged, rarely requited. But, my lord, we shall all do the king great wrong, to judge him by common rules or ordinary examples; for seeing his majesty hath greatly enriched and advanced those that have but pretended his service, no man need doubt of his goodness towards those that perform any thing worthy reward. Nay, the not taking knowledge of those of his own vassals that have done him wrong, is more to be lamented, than the relinquishing of those that do him right is to be suspected. I am therefore, my lord, held to my resolution by these two, besides the former: the first, that God would never have blest him with so many years, and in so many actions, yea, in all his actions, had he paid his honest servants with evil for good. The second, where your lordship tells me, that

I shall be sorry for not following your advice; I pray your lordship to believe, that I am no way subject to the common sorrowing of worldly men; this maxim of Plato being true, Dolores omnes ex amore animi erga corpus nascuntur ; but for my body, my mind values it at nothing.

Couns. What is it then you hope for, or seek?

Just. Neither riches, nor honour, or thanks; but only seek to satisfy his majesty, (which I would have been glad to have done in matters of more importance,) that I have lived and will die an honest man.

A DISCOURSE

TOUCHING

A MATCH PROPOUNDED BY THE SAVOYAN

BETWEEN

THE LADY ELIZABETH AND THE PRINCE OF PIEDMONT.

To obey the commandment of my lord the prince, I have sent you my opinion of the match lately desired by the duke of Savoy, and propounded by his own ambassador, between the lady Elizabeth, his majesty's eldest and only surviving daughter, and the prince of Piedmont; with an overture (as I have heard) of a cross marriage between the most excellent and hopeful prince of Wales and the eldest daughter of the said duke.

Now as by the first, to wit, by the match with the lady Elizabeth, the duke's son, of a Spanish race, may in the future (if it should please God to lay such a heavy burden upon us) become king of England; so by the second, though the Savoyan had no heirs male, yet would it not be easy for a king of England to recover the right of those principalities, all France being interjacent. For one of the most renowned kings, and the most valiant, that ever France had, spent more in the obtaining and defence of that part of Savoy and Piedmont, which fell unto him by Louisa his mother, heir to her brother Philibert, than both those petty provinces could be valued to be worth. And if those of the house of Austria and of Spain thought it a matter so exceeding perilous for a French king to possess that barren diadem; much more will the French esteem it dangerous for them, that a king of England should inherit it. The reason why, I need not tell you. But we will leave these

considerations to their far-off possibilities; and in the meantime take it for granted, that marriages between foreign princes, for the most part, are but politic: for wheresoever they employ their own affections, judging by persons presented, and not by pictures representing, they commonly make choice of their own subjects. Now this policy in marriages hath either respect to the enlarging of dominion and uniting of kingdoms, dukedoms, and other principalities; as by a marriage the duchy of a Bretagne, and other seigniories in France, were annexed to that crown; by a b marriage the Netherlands became subject to the princes of Austria, and Castile to Arragon, and Portugal to Castile, &c. or to the ending of some great war, and the establishing of peace; as when Ferdinand of Arragon married the lady Germaine of Foix; when king Francis the First married queen Eleanor; Philip the Second the lady Elizabeth of France, and Philibert Emanuel, duke of Savoy, the lady Margaret, sister to king Henry the Second of France: or, lastly, it hath respect to the combination and league against some other king, or estate, powerful and suspected.

Now for the first, I think his majesty holds nothing more impossible, nor any thing less profitable, than the inheritance of Savoy for as long as there is a king of France, or a king of Spain, they will never (if their powers fail them not) endure the uniting of Savoy and Piedmont to an absolute monarchy powerful in itself. It was a long war, a cruel and costly one, made for the defence of the duchy of Milan, and to keep it a duchy apart from the Imperial, Spanish, and French. For the second, to wit, the establishing a peace after a long war, as there never was any effect without a cause; so to those things that never had beginning, there never was any man that took care to give end or conclusion.

For the third, namely, a combination against some powerful or suspected enemy, I know no Christian prince so powerful as the king of Great Britain; and, out of doubt,

a Charles VIII.

emperor.

b Mary of Burgundy to the archduke, son to the