1593, Aug. - I am committed from my Lord Chamberlain for abusing him unto you, as also for wicked speeches that could say I was able to to make any counsellor a traitor: only this I do presume, that I told your honour it was others' practices and lies also and not my own, neither did so name it but that exempli gratia, how it might be so done to all mortal men, and so I presume it will be said by you. If I have done you anything worthy of this rebuke, or have said or done that might deserve imprisonment, let it come with death rather than with favour. If my deserts be thus rewarded it will teach others more wit. Alas Sir, why was I not committed by your own good hands which would have delivered me upon true cause? My Lord Chamberlain is too continually bent against me; his displeasure is everlasting and so is my misery. Banish me forever as my lord thinketh meet, and I shall be bound to you, for if truth may take no place nor true meaning, farewell country, life and all. Endorsed: - "August, 1593." 1 p.
LETTER FROM THOMAS DRURY TO SIR ROBERT CECIL (2)
(HMC Cecil Volume IV pp.357-8)
2pp. Holograph. Endorsed: - "1593"
[1593,] Aug. 17. - In all duty and lowliness of heart I most humbly thank your Honour for
your liberality, as also for my liberty . My lord's pleasure was that I should be freely
discharged from the prison; howbeit, they stay my "cloak" for the charges of the house. I
received your honourable letter, but if my lord Chamberlain do detain my writings, I cannot
anyway make an end. The stay of my writings hath been my utter undoing. I most humbly beseech
your Honour to speak unto my Lord for them, for I dare not speak unto his Lordship, nor any
friend I have. It pleased your Honour to promise me to speak unto the Lord Keeper that I
should sue in forma pauperis; which licence I would most humbly beseech your Honour
to procure me, now before my departure. In like manner, I humbly pray your Honour to speak
unto my Lord Chamberlain, to speak unto Sir Edmond and his son, to pay me the hundred pounds
I lent him, as also the forty pounds I lent unto my lady his wife. Besides, I paid for
velvet and other silks thirty pounds for him and my lady. I have, upon his entreaty,
because I would not hinder the sale of his land, delivered him all his assurances again,
and in my life I never received back again the value of twenty pounds. And, gracious Sir,
I do but desire to have but one suit of apparel of his old, and a couple of shirts, and
what money either my lord his father, or yourself, shall judge, and I will give him a
general acquittancefor, so God help me, I have borrowed my cloak, and neither have shirt,
doublet nor hose, that scant will cover my nakedness, and only that money I have had by your
honourable means, is that must be my greatest comfort, under God, for a great season. Thus,
presuming of your honourable inclination to pity my miserable estate, because it hath pleased
my Lord of Buckhurst and your Honour, that I should by writing acquaint your Honour with my
bad and ruinated estate, and not by coming, I humbly present my suit, in all humility craving
your honourable speedy answer; for this town will consume me, it is so excessive dear. -
This 17th August.