Letter From 17th Earl of Oxford to Sir Robert Cecil

Excerpt from 1603:


I cannot but find great grief in myself to remember the Mistress which we have lost, under whom both you and myself from our greenest years have been in a manner brought up; and although it hath pleased God after an earthly kingdom to take her up into a more permanent and heavenly state, wherein I do not doubt but she is crowned with glory... yet the long time which we spent in her service, we cannot look for so much left of our days as to bestow upon another, neither the long aquaintance and kind familiarities wherewith she did use us, we are not ever to expect from another Prince as denied by the infirmity of age and common course of reason. In this common shipwreck, mine is above all the rest, who least regarded though often comforted of all her followers, she hath left to try my fortune among the alterations of time and chance, either without sail to take the advantage of any prosperous gale, or with anchor to ride till the storm be overpast.

Sounds like Shake-speare to me!