“Either the unfairness of the ways or messengers have kept my letters from you. You have not vouchsafed me _one only_ answer . . . your honour knoweth the fortunes of my house, and from how great expectations our sins or disasters brought it both in estate and in disgrace . . . my purpose was to satisfy the world in myself that I was too worthy to have the decay of myself laid on me.”—The Sherley Brothers, p. 28. S. P. O. From Sir R. Cecil, 1600. “Her Majesty has increased her former displeasure towards him so far in respect of this presumption as by no means she will suffer him to come into the kingdome; but wholly rejected any such offer” (p. 31). The truth is, Elizabeth had been stung in her sorest point. Sherley the elder was paymaster to the forces in the Low Countries, and his accounts were deficient. That was never to be passed over. She, who exercised her ingenuity and talents in cheese-paring, who, whilst waiting for the coming of the Armada, spent her time in trying whether, if she gave her sailors fish and oil instead of salt beef, it would not save her a penny or two a day from each separate mess; who never would victual her ships or refit them, or give them shot or powder more than enough for the day. It was owing to the pluck of the half-starved, half-victualled British sailor in non-repaired ships, and in spite of every disadvantage, that the victory was won; not with her help, not with her providence, but in spite of it. Well was it expressed, “Her maddened grasp of passionate avarice.” Give the devil his due, as we say in the proverb, but don’t give one iota of credit to that stingiest, and vainest of womenkind. Ray’s Glossary of words—“Stingy, pinching, sordid, narrow spirited.” Read all these quotations from Shakespeare’s plays, and compare them line with line and the lives of Sherley’s brothers, and conviction must follow. I might just notice that Anthony Sherley’s knowledge of the localities and people where most scenes of the plays are fixed was unequalled. He told that which he had seen; he spoke of what he knew. Whateley on Shakespeare, “The characters which he has drawn are masterly copies from nature.”