Right trusty, I grete you well
I write this missiue to you sir on this, the seventeenth day of July, being the historic anniuersary of my birthe in Fifteen Hundred and Fifty Five, from my seate in Cornwall’s Antonie. I haue obserued your undertakings for some years and haue understoode them in recent times to be of the persuasion of a radikal antiquary, this being of your own naming and productione. It is kind sir, that you thinketh of the political nature of the antiquary but you haue yet to conuince me of the riske and argumente nascent in your practice.
I take this opportunitie to remind you of the uery radikal nature of my own inuolument in things of an historicke and learned nature. To this we can adde my own partaking in the illustrious college of antiquaries to whiche I was elected a member in Fifteene Hundred and Eighty Nine. Throughoute I attempted with zeale to display the devastations of time make so swiftly upon all things and how this affekteth our own being and relationshipe. This projecte was indeede stifled by the sad loss of our princess and the ascending of the prince in Sixteene Hundred and Three. It was with greate misgiuing that our societie had to formerly dissolue lest it be acused of treasonne and so our undertakings needeth to go under the grounde of oure faerie isle.
And it is but unto the grounde that I wishe to draw your attentione. When you walketh out on Plymouthe hawe with your stickes in congregatione understande well that what you see in surrounde is but merely an allusione and that behinde that mirage lies the uery political structure of our times. Reade it well. Use, forthwith the stickes to define the outlines of oppressione and conflicte that stande beneathe, before and above ye. Persevere in establishing what ye haue begun, and continue to employ Labours upon those things, which were worthy of them; that so they might not be drawn into Oblivion themselves, by that which they would rescue from it, and that Time might not rob them of aught more considerable than that which they should restore.
I curry not with smoothing termes,
Ne yet rude threats I blaste:
I seeke no patrone for my faults,
I pleade no needlesse haste.
Your seruante of intereste
Richard Carew
