Lady Honor Grenville, Viscountess Lisle's letter to her husband Sir John Basset, dated September 22, 1539

Source:

Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 14, Part 2: August-December 1539, published by Her Majesty's Stationery Office, London, 1895

https://www.british-history.ac.uk/letters-papers-hen8/vol14/no2/pp58-67

Above: Honor Grenville, Viscountess Lisle, photo courtesy of Lobsterthermidor at Wikimedia Commons.

Above: Sir John Basset, artist unknown.

The letter:

I have received yours by Nich. Eyre. The one part, in which you write that you have been well entertained, and your journey shall be worth to you 1,000l., rejoiceth me much, but the other, wherein you say you will trust no fair words and do your own business with the King, pleaseth me much more. I trust no persuasions will move you from the same, but you will continue in your resolutions. I am glad you have had good communication with my lord Privy Seal. I have sent your sables by Ravon. Since my request that you should give the place of 6d. to one of your own servants, I hear you have given it to Sir Edw. Ryngeley. Remember who first complained of you for giving rooms to little men, as Worth and other, and setting them in the retinue, "howbeit I will not know it." Thank you for your credence by John Toborow. I am glad you answered as you did my lord Privy Seal; "and even so I pray you to hold him, for so shall you have best of him. And whereas he saith that you be ruled by me therein, he taketh his pleasure; but mine own good lord, if I had not both loved you a'drad you, he should never have had of me that he hath." I send you my tooth-picker, which I thought to have given to the Palsgrave while he was here, but it was not then at my hand. Please present it him. "I send it to him because when he was here I did see him wear a pen or call to pick his teeth with." Tell him I have had it seven years. Calais, 22 Sept.

You may keep your pasties, for, as the ship tarried, I have sent him another pasty of partridges. I am glad your partridges pleased you, "but I care not greatly if my lord Privy Seal had not had them." I bid you farewell as she that doth endure with as little sleep as any woman living.