Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 16, 2025
Bodman was profoundly astonished, for he had been expressly informed that Walsingham was to know nothing of the transaction. The Secretary of State could not so easily be outwitted, however, and he was soon seated at the table, surveying the scene, with his grave melancholy eyes, which had looked quite through the whole paltry intrigue. Burghley.
He soon informed the King that according to Champagny and Bodman the Lord Treasurer, the Comptroller, Lord Cobham, and Sir Christopher Hatton, were more pacific than they had ever been. These four were represented by Grafigni as secretly in league against Leicester and Walsingham, and very anxious to bring about a reconciliation between the crowns of England and Spain.
Early in July Bodman arrived in London. He found Grafigni in very low spirits.
"I have no commission to say anything. I am only instructed to listen to anything that may be said to me, and that her Majesty may be pleased to command." Burghley. "'Tis very discreet to begin thus. But time is pressing, and it is necessary to be brief. We beg you therefore to communicate, without further preface, that which you have been charged to say." Bodman.
It was obviously composed through the inspiration of Walsingham rather than that of Burghley. The letter, brought by a certain Grafigni and a certain Bodman, she said, was a very strange one, and written under a delusion.
Bodman consoled his colleague, as well as he could, by assurances that when the letter was fairly produced, their vindication would be complete, and Grafigni, upon that point, was comforted. He was, however, very doleful in general, and complained bitterly of Burghley and the other English counsellors.
Meantime, as Prince of Parma, he writes these letters, and assists his sovereign perhaps more than he doth ourselves." Here the interview terminated. A few days later, Bodman had another conversation with Burghley and Cobham. Reluctantly, at their urgent request, he set down in writing all that he had said concerning his mission.
There was a sheer drop of more than a mile straight down, and at the distant bottom were jagged rocks and stunted trees that looked, in the blue haze, like shrubbery. "This is the spot," said the man to himself, "and to-morrow morning is the time." John Bodman had planned his crime as grimly and relentlessly, and as coolly, as ever he had concocted a deal on the Stock Exchange.
It has just been shown that there was no such intimation at all in the letter; but as neither Grafigni nor Bodman had read the epistle itself, but only the copy furnished them, they could merely say that such an assertion; if made by the Prince, had been founded on no statement of theirs.
His communication could Sir Thomas have read it might have partly explained her Majesty's rage. Parma had heard, he said, through Bodman, from Comptroller Croft, that the Queen would willingly receive a proper envoy.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking