"It is not a supplication, may it please your Majesty," replied Overbury, "but a paper which your Majesty was pleased to say you would sign. You may remember the matter in which I moved you, sire, regarding my Lord Rochester and my Lady Arabella."
"I'll not sign it, sir, I'll not sign it," cried the King, "I told you so before. She's got a hankering, sir, after that fellow Seymour, and I'll not sign it. If I was sure she would use it only to marry Carro, I don't say but that I might. But I will not have the other! Now look ye, young gentleman," he added, falling, imperceptibly to himself, into a disquisitional tone, "you are not without sense, and good parts, and judgment; and, while we have a minute to spare, we will condescend to instruct you as to our motives, which with kings--who are bound to exercise their sagacity upon fine points, that altogether escape the attention of ordinary men--are very different from the common motives of the people, or even of councillors, and men accustomed to broad and general state affairs."
"I hear your Majesty with reverence and gratitude," replied Sir Thomas Overbury, in the fulsome style then used towards the Monarch, "and will lay to heart every word that falls from your lips, as the most precious guide to wisdom."
"Well, sir, that's right," rejoined James. "Now listen, then. Ordinary men will think--and, most like, you amongst them--that it is a strange thing that I should let this lady wed Rochester, and refuse her to the fellow Seymour. The vulgar people will think that it is because Rochester is, what they call, with their profane tongues, the King's favourite. I know their gabble right well. Others will think that it is because I judge ill of this lad Seymour, or well of Rochester, as the case may be; and in this they will be reverent, though not altogether wise. You yourself may think that you have had a finger in the pie, and brought the matter about by smooth words and representations; but these opinions are altogether wrong. As my Lord Rochester is now a man of great estate, the match may be a suitable one. As his fortunes depend upon us, we shall always have the staff in our own hands: and it is not unexpedient that she should be married to some one over whom we have the greatest authority, to prevent her from wedding another who might cause confusion. But these are all collateral or subsidiary considerations, and go no farther than to affect her marriage with Lord Rochester. But there are reasons why we will not have her marry the fellow Seymour, which are these:--that he, failing his elder brother, who is but a puny lad, is the immediate representative of that Lady Catharine Grey, descended from King Henry VII., by Mary, Queen Dowager of France; and the lady, as you well know, being of the Blood Royal of England, and next to the throne, after ourself and our children, has been the object, as you well know, of many dark conspiracies and treacherous designings, both amongst the subjects of our crown and foreign princes. Now were the two lines blended more by her marriage with this Seymour, there is no knowing what might come of it--wars, and rumours of wars, tumults, and confusion, sir. If they two were to lay their heads together, and take up either with the Papists or the Puritans, they might blow up a flame in a minute that would be difficult to put out again."