I have heard his Majesty is now granting a pension. I pray your Lordship to consider how impossible it is for me to do service if any such thing be done, and withal whether it were not unjust to stop pensions already granted, and at the same instant to grant new, and what a life I should have with those whose pensions are stayed, for whom I have now a good answer: viz., the King must and shall be first served. I pray your lordship not only to stay the granting any new, but to move his Majesty not to suffer any old to be exchanged or altered from one life to another; and then, I dare assure your Lordship, within these few months they will not be worth two years' purchase. I shall not desire to live if I do not the work; and therefore, good my Lord, be constant yourself, and be the happy means to hold the King so. It is my gratitude to his Majesty and your lordship that hath engaged me: otherwise there is nothing upon this earth could have tempted me to have quit the happy estate I was in within these fourteen days, to enter into a business so full of continual vexation and trouble. I have called some men to account who have not accounted these seven years. I doubt some will make their addresses to his Majesty or your lordship; I pray let their answer be, his Majesty hath referred the trust of ordering his estate to me. I shall shortly call for an account out of the Isle of Wight. I think out of moneys owing by some rich lords to pay some of his Majesty's poor servants. I will spare no person, nor forbear any course that is just and honourable to make our great and gracious master to subsist of his own. The pains and envy shall be mine: the honour and thanks your lordship's. Wherefore be constant to him that loves and honours you, and will ever rest, Your lordship's faithful servant and kinsman, LIONEL CRANFIELD. CHELSEA, _12th Oct., 1621_. PROCLAMATION FOR RELIEF OF THE POOR (1622). =Source.=--Rymer, _Fœdera_. Vol. xvii., p. 428.