"commit so notorious a contempt" against her, both on account of this
very exhibition of contempt on Leicester's part, and because they thereby
"shewed themselves to have a very slender and weak conceit of her
judgment, by pressing a minister of hers to accept that which she had
refused, as: though her long experience in government had not taught her
to discover what was fit to do in matters of state." As the result of
such a proceeding would be to disgrace her in the eyes of mankind, by
inducing an opinion that her published solemn declaration on this great
subject had been intended to abuse the, world, he was directed--in order
to remove the hard conceit justly to be taken by the world, "in
consideration of the said contempt,"--to make a public and open
resignation of the government in the place where he had accepted the
same.

Thus it had been made obvious to the unlucky "creature of her own," that
the Queen did not easily digest "contempt." Nevertheless these
instructions to Heneage were gentle, compared with the fierce billet
which she addressed directly to the Earl: It was brief, too, as the posy
of a ring; and thus it ran: "To my Lord of Leicester, from the Queen, by
Sir Thomas Heneage. How contemptuously we conceive ourself to have been
used by you, you shall by this bearer understand, whom we have expressly
sent unto you to charge you withal. We could never have imagined, had we
not seen it fall out in experience, that a man raised up by ourself, and
extraordinarily favoured by us above any other subject of this land,
would have, in so contemptible a sort, broken our commandment, in a cause
that so greatly toucheth us in honour; whereof, although you have showed
yourself to make but little account, in most undutiful a sort, you may
not therefore think that we have so little care of the reparation thereof
as we mind to pass so great a wrong in silence unredressed. And
therefore our express pleasure and commandment is, that--all delays and