imagine the best part of the war for this summer will be brought into Italy, where men reckon it will last till want of money on both sides part this fray.

The Turk, as letters from Constantinople to Venice do report, has prepared as great a navy as any he sent out these years past; and gives commandment to his General that the gallies shall go where the Prince of Salerne shall appoint them, and do but what he will have them do. If the Viceroy get not to Naples before Salerne come towards it, the Prince is likelier to turn that state upside down than the Viceroy to find it in good order. At his going to Siena he cut off the head of il Marchese di Castel Vetere, and put il Signor Cæsare Caraffe in prison, whom it is said he hath since caused to be beheaded. It is thought the Turk, in person, will abroad into the wars this summer, for that all such have warning to be in readiness which are not wont to stir but when the Turk goes to the field himself. The short letter concerning the state of Transylvania came from the Venetian Ambassador with the King of the Romans. Men suppose the Turk will either come thither, or meet the Sophy, who this winter did besiege a town of the Turks called Argis. The King of Poland sent a messenger to the Turk not long since, to signify unto him that, if it would so stand with his pleasure, he meant to send Ambassadors unto his Highness to renew such conditions of amity and peace as were between him and the King his father. The gentleman that went was

brought to kiss the Turk's hand, which is a favour shewed but to a few. He is returned with gifts, and the King provides a great embassy to the Turk.

And, while the French King practises in all places to abase the house of Austria, the Emperor hath three of his chief Councillors against three almost as great as they; the Duke of Alva, Don Pedro de Toledo, and the Duke of Florence, are in a great amity; Ferdinand Gonzaga,* d'Arras, and Don Diego, are in a league, utterly bent to mislike, and to charge, by hook or by crook, any thing done, or to be done, by the three first. The secret talk is that d'Arras is not in such favour as he has been, but whether it be so, or do rise by grudge of such as fain would have it so, I know not. The Queen is thought a good indifferent woman, scarce finding in all the six whom she may think the Emperor's good servant; but the Emperor, because d'Alva goes into Spain, and must do things there for him all ways that he can, does countenance the Duke, and with some show of displeasure to d'Arras. The Viceroy, the Duke of Florence, and d' Alva, say, d'Arras, for not shewing their letters, and Don Diego, for his pride, were the loss of Siena; and Ferrante the

Ferdinand Gonzaga, of the Ducal house of Mantua, Duke of Guastalla, &c., and one of the first military characters in these wars. He acquired great fame in Charles's campaigns in Africa and Hungary, and had lately been employed in a vain attempt to annex Parma to the territory of Milan, where he was Governor. He became at last Viceroy of Sicily, and died at Brussels, Nov. 15,

cause of all the wars and troubles, at this time, by his burning of houses besides Parma, when the matter was as good as taken up; and they on the other side say, if either the Duke of Florence or the Viceroy had sent men to Don Diego when he did require them, Siena had been still at the Emperor's devotion. It may be they shall lose the Emperor more than ten Sienas are worth, if they continue their jarring, as it is likely they will. Some do not stick to say Ferdinand Gonzaga did set upon Alva, and so did turn to St. Damiens, because he would not send the 4000 Germans to help the Viceroy to achieve his enterprise of Siena.

The Prince of Sulmona, General Captain in Italy of all the Emperor's horsemen, is dead; and Mons. du Ruelp is here very sick, no less cumbered with thought, as it is said, than troubled with his sickness. Mons. di Prat could not bear that he had done well at Heding; more glad that du Ruelp's son was at the losing of it than that his father had won it. The Emperor would give to il Seignor Francisco di Este the charge that Sulmona had, but where good service is in hazard, either of the first threes, or of the second threes evil report ever findeth ways to excuse the and friends, to make the Emperor to take it well. There was a talk that the Venetians had made the Duke of Ferrare their General Captain, but it is nothing so. It were a dishonour for the Duke to become their servant, and no safety for the Venetians to have their power in so great a Prince's hands; besides, the

Duke hath too much of his own, carefully to look to other folk's things. The Duke of Urbine is made, they say, Gonfaliniere of the Church, and the Bishop's nephew shall marry with the Duke's daughter, and be made Duke of Camarine. The French King's liberality, in giving two month's pay to those that served in Mentz more than the time of their being there came to, hath moved the Emperor to give to Marches Han's horsemen a month's pay more than he promised them; so that being hired for four months, and not serving past three of them, they shall have wages for five months. Men suppose his Majesty will trust more to the Germans hereafter than either to Italian or Spaniard, and therefore doth this to get him the name of a good payer; it is time, for he may else chance to need of men a good many, and find but a few. This Court hath the Venetians in some jealousy, for that the Frenchmen did take up soldiers for Siena out of their town called Grema. And thus, at this time troubling your Lordship no longer, most humbly I take my leave of your honors. From Brussels, the 20th of February, 1553.

*

Your Lordships', most bound so to be,

RICHARD MORYSIN.+

* Morysin's and Chamberlayne's letters are dated according to the new style.

+ Sir Richard Morysin, Knight, a minister of great prudence, learning, and integrity. Lloyd and Sir Richard Baker differ about this gentleman's native county, and probably both are

No. XXI.

(Cecil Papers.)

SIR THOMAS CHAMBERLAYNE
TO THE PRIVY COUNCIL.

PLEASE your most honourable Lordships to be advertised how that since the Emperor's arrival here hath occurred no matter of moment worthy to be certified, every man attending to hear wherefore the estates of these Low Countries were called and on Tuesday last the same were assembled

wrong the former says that he was born in Essex, the latter in Oxfordshire: be this as it may, the visitations of Hertfordshire inform us that he was the son of Thomas Morysin of that county (descended from a Yorkshire family), by a daughter of Thomas Merry of Hatfield. He was educated at Eton, and in the University of Cambridge, whence he went with the reputation of an 'xcellent Greek and Latin scholar, to the inns of court, where he became a proficient in the common and civil laws. He was sent in the late reign, at an early time of life, Ambassador to the Emperor Charles V. and had acquired by long habit so thorough a knowledge of the various factions which distracted the Empire, that Edward's Ministers found it necessary to continue him in that court, much against his own inclination. He returned not long before that Prince's death, and was employed in building a superb mansion at Cashiobury, in Hertfordshire, a manor which had been granted to him by Henry VIII. when Mary's violent measures against the Protestants compelled him to quit England, and after residing a short time in Italy, he returned to Strasburgh, and died there, March 17, 1556.

Sir Richard Morysin married Bridget, daughter of John Lord Hussey, and left a son and three daughters: Sir Charles, who settled at Cashiobury; Elizabeth, married, first, to William Norreys, son and heir to Henry Lord Norreys, secondly to Henry Clinton, Earl of Lincoln; Mary, to Bartholomew Hales, of Chesterfield in Derbyshire; and Jane, to Edward Lord Russel, eldest son of the Earl of Bedford, and afterwards, to Arthur Lord Grey of Wilton. The family of Morysin ended in an heiress, Mary, great grand-daughter of Sir Richard, who married Arthur Lord Capel of Hadham, an ancestor of the present Earl of Essex.