Elizabeth was not slow to profit by the permission obtained for her to write to the Council through the intermediary allowed, and Sir Henry’s letter-book contains the following transcript of his report written in his own hand.

“My lady Elizabeth’s Grace’s suit:—­

“My lady Elizabeth, this present 30th of July, required me to make report of her Grace’s mind as her suit to your honours to be means to the Queen’s Majesty on her behalf to this effect.  To beseech your lordships all to consider her woeful case, that being but once licensed to write as an humble suitress unto the Queen’s Highness, and received thereby no such comfort as she hoped to have done, but to her further discomfort in a message by me opened, that it was the Queen’s Highness’s pleasure not to be any more molested with her Grace’s letters, that it may please the same, and that upon very pity, considering her long imprisonment and restraint of liberty, either to charge her with special matter to be answered unto and tried, or to grant her liberty to come unto Her Highness’s presence, which she saith she would not desire, were it not that she knoweth herself to be clear, even before God, of her allegiance.  And if also by your good mediations she might not enjoy the Queen’s Highness’s most gracious favour without any scruples or suspicions of her truth, she had rather willingly suffer this that she doth, and much more, than her Majesty should in any case be troubled or disquieted, touching her whose honour surely and preservation she saith she doth desire above all things in this world.  Requiring me further to move chiefly as many of you my lords as were a Council, parties, and privy to and for the execution of the will of the King’s Majesty her father, to further this her Grace’s suit above said.  And if neither of these two her suits may be obtained by your lordships for her, that then it might please the Queen’s Highness to grant that some of you my lords may have leave to repair hither unto her, and to receive her suit of her own mouth to be opened.  Whereby she may take a release not to think herself utterly desolate of all refuge in this world.”

To this the Council made reply on the 7th August that “the Queen’s Highness” would “take a time to consider, and at convenient leisure make such answer thereunto as shall be` necessary”; but Elizabeth’s imperious temper brooked no delay, and Sir Henry was soon prevailed on to jog their lordship’s memories:—­

“Upon Friday last,” he wrote, “my lady Elizabeth’s Grace, in the time of her walk in the over garden here, in the forenoon of the same day, said unto me, ’I have very slow speed in the answer of any of my suits, and I know it is ever so, when that there is not one appointed to give daily attendance in suit-making for answer.  And therefore,’ saith she, ’I pray you let me send a servant of mine own to whom I will do the message in your hearing that he shall do by my commandment; and this