Tilney remained Master of the Revels until his death on 20 August 1610. But with the new reign he appears to have exercised most of his functions through his nephew, Sir George Buck, as his deputy and prospective successor. Buck had been in the Cadiz expedition of 1596, and was not improbably the Mr. Buck who carried dispatches for Cecil to Middelburgh in the Low Countries and afterwards in England during the autumn of 1601.[323] At the funeral of Elizabeth he received livery as an Esquire of the Body, probably extraordinary.[324] Hopes of the Mastership seem to have been held out to him as early as 1597, to the despair of another Esquire of the Body, John Lyly, the dramatist, who considered that he had claims upon the reversion to the Mastership, and pretty clearly regarded the bestowal of it upon another as a distinct breach of faith on the part of the Queen. Several letters of his referring to the matter are preserved at Hatfield and elsewhere. The earliest and most important of these is dated 22 December 1597 and addressed to Sir Robert Cecil. Herein Lyly says:
'I haue not byn importunat, that thes 12 yeres w_it_h vnwearied pacienc have entertayned the p_ro_rogui_n_g of her ma_ies_ties promises, w_hi_ch if in the 13 may conclud w_it_h the Parlement, I will think the greves of tymes past but pastymes ... Offices in Reuersion are forestalld, in possession ingrost, & that of _th_e Reuells countenanced upon Buck, wherein the Justic of an oyre shewes his affection to _th_e keper & partialty to _th_e sheppard, a french fauor.'
'I was entertayned yo_u_r Mai_es_ties servant by yo_u_r owne gratious ffavo_u_r, stranghthened w_i_th condic_i_ons, that I should ayme all my courses att the Revells (I dare not saye, w_i_th a promise, butt a hopeffull Item, of the Reversion); ffor the w_hi_ch, theis tenn yeares, I haue attended, w_i_th an vnwearyed patience, and I knowe not whatt crabb tooke mee ffor an oyster, that, in the middest of the svnnshine of yo_u_r gratious aspect, hath thrust a stone betwene the shelles, to eate mee alyve, that onely lyve on dead hopes.'
The date of this petition is probably 1598, since a second letter to Cecil, dated 9 September 1598, specifies the same period of 'ten yeres', during which Lyly had had 'nothing applied to my wantes but promises'. On 27 February 1601, a third letter to Cecil, asking for his aid in obtaining a grant out of property forfeited after the Essex conspiracy, suggests that 'after 13 yeres servic and suit for _th_e Revells, I may turne all my forces & frends to feed on _th_e Rebells'. This was written in connexion with a second petition to the Queen, in which occurs the following passage: