“I have this long time expected your commands, which to receive, having sent two expresses, I verily believed would have come ere this into my hands; trusting likewise to Mr. Walsingham’s solicitations; but as yet I have neither heard from him nor your Excellency, one word since his departure, and receiving an earnest desire from the Nuncio to speak with me; as understanding likewise how prejudicial it might be to me, and especially to my brother who is in Italy, if the dean whom he hath sent thither, should depart without satisfaction from me of so pressing an occasion, as was by my Lord Nuncio pretended unto me. I repaired thither on Saturday last, with so much the more contentment as that I persuaded myself that your Excellency would be at Kilkenny, and I so much the nearer to kiss your hands; but I now return to the county of Clare, there to expect your commands. Yet let me not forget to give you an account of the business I was sent for. The rumour being spread that the Concessions (which some call mine) were to be printed and published at Kilkenny, as I have absolutely disowned any such thing to my Lord Nuncio, and denied to patronise the same; so I think myself bound to acquaint your Excellency, and by your means the Council Table, how mindful I am of the favours I there received, so as not to incur the least censure of yours and theirs by enacting anything, for which I had already a check. And certainly it cannot be imagined that the Supreme Council which was, could expect or desire any such thing at my hands, since they never urged to take off my recognizance, which through innocency I also neglected, and I joy to be disengaged from so perilous a business, protesting before Almighty God, that since that time I have entered into no new engagements unto them; and what hath passed before (conditions not having been held with me), none of the Commissioners themselves can think them obligatory, all other reasons also considered. Besides, when they had first thought to make use of them, it was resolved, that after the completing of conditions with your Excellency, they might bear a true date subsequent thereunto; and how invalid they are without the same is sufficiently evident, abstracting from the King’s declaration, which (though enforced upon him), I esteem it yet a warning for further proceedings therein, and fit only for great persons, who can maintain the same, to go contrary to the intimation of his Majesty’s pleasure, though never so compulsorily granted. For as I never have, nor will esteem, and be frighted at the contradiction of any others, when the intimation of his Majesty’s pleasure continues to me in any particular unrevoked; so, on the contrary, can I never be drawn, for any man’s pleasure, to go immediately contrary to what proceedeth from him, deeming it not my part to enter into dispute which way his Majesty is induced, when I see his positive act extant. Let this, therefore (I beseech