Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 5.djvu/147

1553.] book I have been unable to discover; but it contained, among other things, an account of the various grants professing to have been made by Edward to his ministers, or, in truer language, appropriated by these ministers to their own use during Edward's reign. On the 14th of January the Duke had the report in his hands; he sent it to the Marquis of Northampton, with side-notes and reflections, the occasion and meaning of which he expressed very frankly in a letter which has fortunately survived.

'The causes,' he said, 'why I have scribbled the book so much, is that I am of opinion that we need not to be so ceremonious as to imagine the objections of every froward person, but rather to burden their minds and hearts with the King's Majesty's extreme debts and necessities, grown and risen by such occasion and means as can be denied by no man; and that we need not to seem to make account to the Commons of his Majesty's liberality and bountifulness in augmenting of his nobles, or his benevolence shewed to any his good servants, lest you might thereby make them wanton and give them occasion to take hold of your own arguments. But as it shall become no subject to argue the matter so far, so, if any should be so far out of reason, the matter will always answer itself with honour and reason to their confuting and shame.'

Although the 'scribbled' document has disappeared, the substance of it remains in a separate table of reports,