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Supererogation of 1593, says of Papp-Hatchett, who is almost certainly Lyly, 'He might as truly forge any lewd or villanous report of any one in England; and for his labour challenge to be preferred to the Clerkship of the whetstone'; and again, 'His knavish and foolish malice palpably bewrayeth itself in most odious actions; meet to garnish the foresayd famous office of the whetstone'.^[1] The actual phrasing of Lyly's letters is, of course, characteristically obscure. It is possible that the 'keper' referred to in the first of them is the Lord Keeper, Sir Thomas Egerton, to whom, if Collier may be trusted, Buck sent, in 1605, a copy of a poem called ΔΑΦΝΙΕ ΠΟΛΥΣΤΕΦΑΝΟΣ, with some lines referring to an obligation of long standing towards his patron.^[2] The allusion to 'Tentes and Toyles' may mean that, after giving up hope of the Mastership of the Revels, Lyly had turned his thoughts to the Mastership of the Tents and Toils, the actual holder of which, in 1601, Henry Sackford, had been appointed to the Tents as far back as 1559, and must therefore have been an oldish man; or possibly that, if he could not have the higher place, Lyly would have been content with the reversion of one of the two subordinate appointments, the Clerkship or the Clerk Comptrollership, which the Revels shared with the Tents.^[3]

I may complete the story by pointing out that Buck, no less than Lyly, was making interest with Cecil. As a connexion of the Howards, he had of course a powerful influence behind him, and after the death of Nicasius Yetswiert, French Secretary and Clerk of the Signet, Lord Howard of Effingham had written to Cecil on 28 April 1595^[4]:

'In favour of M^r. Buck, whom Her Majesty, talking with M^r. John Stanhope, herself named, showing a gracious disposition to do him good, and think him fit, as sure he is, for one of the two offices of M^r. Necasius, that is called unto God's mercy. For the French tongue he can do it very well to serve her Majesty.'

Four years later, on 1 June 1599, Buck himself wrote to the Secretary^[5]:

'I understood by a friend of mine, not many months since, that you were very well affected to mine old long suit, and of your own disposition offered to move the Queen in my behalf. Ever since I reckoned myself in your good favour till yesterday that I heard

1. Grosart, Harvey, ii. 211.
2. Collier, i. 361.
3. The conjecture of R. W. Bond (Lyly, i. 41) that Lyly was actually Clerk Comptroller is rendered untenable by our complete knowledge of the succession to that post; cf. Tudor Revels, 60, and Feuillerat, Lyly, 194, who shows that Lyly was the Queen's 'servant' as Esquire of the Body.
4. Hatfield MSS. v. 189.
5. Ibid. ix. 190.