"And many an earl's son will be glad to be in his place a score years
hence, if he will but learn what I know you two can teach him. And now,
Amyas, my lad, I will tell you for a warning the history of that Sir
Thomas Stukely of whom I spoke just now, and who was, as all men know,
a gallant and courtly knight, of an ancient and worshipful family in
Ilfracombe, well practised in the wars, and well beloved at first by our
incomparable queen, the friend of all true virtue, as I trust she will
be of yours some day; who wanted but one step to greatness, and that
was this, that in his hurry to rule all the world, he forgot to rule
himself. At first, he wasted his estate in show and luxury, always
intending to be famous, and destroying his own fame all the while by
his vainglory and haste. Then, to retrieve his losses, he hit upon the
peopling of Florida, which thou and I will see done some day, by God's
blessing; for I and some good friends of mine have an errand there as
well as he. But he did not go about it as a loyal man, to advance the
honor of his queen, but his own honor only, dreaming that he too should
be a king; and was not ashamed to tell her majesty that he had rather be
sovereign of a molehill than the highest subject of an emperor."

"They say," said Mr. Leigh, "that he told her plainly he should be a
prince before he died, and that she gave him one of her pretty quips in
return."

"I don't know that her majesty had the best of it. A fool is many times
too strong for a wise man, by virtue of his thick hide. For when she
said that she hoped she should hear from him in his new principality,
'Yes, sooth,' says he, graciously enough. 'And in what style?' asks she.
'To our dear sister,' says Stukely: to which her clemency had nothing to
reply, but turned away, as Mr. Burleigh told me, laughing."