'_Amias, my most faithful and careful servant_, God reward thee treblefold for the most troublesome charge so well discharged. If you knew, _my Amias_, how kindly, beside most dutifully, my grateful heart accepts and praiseth your spotless endeavours and faithful actions, performed in so dangerous and crafty a charge, it would ease your travail, and rejoice your heart; in which I charge you to carry this most instant thought, that I cannot balance in any weight of my judgment the value that I prize you at, and suppose no treasure can countervail such a faith. And you shall condemn me in that fault that yet I never committed, if I reward not such desert; yea let me lack when I most need it, if I acknowledge not such a merit, _non omnibus datum_.'[*] Having thus buoyed up his hopes and wishes, Walsingham, in his letters to Paulet and Drury, mentions the proposal in plain words to them. 'We find, by a speech lately made by her Majesty, that she doth note in you both a lack of that care and zeal for her service, that she looketh for at your hands, in that you have not in all this time (of yourselves, without any other provocation) found out some way to shorten the life of the Scots Queen, considering the great peril she is hourly subject to, so long as the said Queen shall live.'--In a Post-script: 'I pray you, let both this and the enclosed be committed to the fire; as your answer shall be, after it has been communicated to her Majesty, for her satisfaction.' In a subsequent letter: 'I pray you let me know what you have done with my letters, because they are not fit to be kept, that I may satisfy her Majesty therein, who might otherwise take offence thereat.' What a cruel snare is here laid for this faithful servant! He is tempted to commit a murder, and at the same time has orders from his Sovereign to destroy the warrant for doing it. He was too wise and too honourable to do either the one or the other. Had he fallen into the snare, we may guess, from the fate of Davidson, what would have been his. Paulet, in return, thus writes to Walsingham:--'Your letters of yesterday coming to my hand this day, I would not fail, according to your directions, to return my answer with all possible speed; which I shall deliver unto you with great grief and bitterness of mind, in that I am so unhappy, as living to see this unhappy day, in which I am required, by direction of my most gracious Sovereign, to do an act which God and the law forbiddeth. My goods and life are at her Majesty's disposition, and I am ready to lose them the next morrow if it shall please her. But God forbid I should make so foul a shipwreck of my conscience, or leave so great a blot to my poor posterity, as shed blood without law or warrant."