Catalogue description LORD WYLLUGHBY to the PRIVY COUNCIL.

--"Notes of my Lords owne draught to answer the letters received from the Council the 15th December, 1589."

The letter of Nov. 9, mentioned in their Lordships' letter of Nov. 30, has never arrived.

"The proposition of such soldiers as will stay is deferred to be made till we be dismissed, to avoid alterations of humours of our people, which are suddenly moved with the smallest occasion, especially tending to that end."

The matter of Dieppe is stayed by the Council's letter of Dec. 1.

"The season of the year unfit for war, the contagion consumes us, people unarmed and unpaid where all nations else are. Their Lordships may please to understand we have served him as none hath done, to our ruins of our purses: if we were pensionary, to seek to be refreshed is a matter of necessity, but being treated as we are it is of impossibility ; yet so much have we tendered the cause as we never refused any service so long as we were able, and have offered also our men, being relieved with such necessities as cannot here be recovered, to follow him again within a month or two, provided her Majesty and your Lordships allow it, so far forth as the commanders may not [be] utterly impoverished as they be. There wanteth not in any of us disposition to [refuse ?] your command to this service but the poverty of the most Christian [King] and the popish French humours. This I dare say, he hath never had any nation, nay voluntary adventure[r]s, have served him better cheap than we, never once touching penny of his ; which your Lordships may please to consider : that our poor private losses and ruins be[ing] subjects of your state, will fall to be some loss to the whole. What other occasions, I forbear to write. I could wish, whilst we refresh ourselves, which even his French subjects are accustomed to do and do at this instant, some other frank fellows would spend as much time (I will not speak of other expense), as we.

"For apparel, I have of my own furnished them with hose and shoes ; and if the soldiers have apparel from them, how shall the Captain and leaders do, upon whose hand rest the greatest expense of charge, and reason therefore to be cared for, as is well known to your Lordships.

"We have been so far from demanding the King any thing, more than the performance of his, as contented to bear our own harms, we were contented to have got leave to return.

"Impossibility to send safely apparel to the soldiers, so far from the sea, and the enemy so dispersed in the country. Rather honourably to give our service than to take one month's pay, as we have offered, to have them not think us mercenary."