ELIZABETH I, Queen of England (1558-1603). Document signed (at head, 'Elizabeth R’), Greenwich, ‘the sixth day of June 1595 in the Seven and Thirtith yeere of o[ur] Raigne’, in English, addressed to all ‘Admiralles, viceadmiralles, Captains of anie our Shippes serving on the Seas’, as well as to other public officials, a passport for Sir Anthony Mildmay ‘moved unto us by the advise of phisiciens for lycence to be given him to repaire to certaine Bathes in the partes of Germanie’, guaranteeing him safe passage for one year only – 'Wherefore we will and commannde you to suffer him quyetly to passe by you out of this our Realme with Three Servants Three horse and one hundred poundes in money together with all other his necessarie Carriages and utensiles’ – provided he does not ‘haunte or resorte into’ the territories of hostile foreign powers, and ‘use not the companie of anie Jhesuite or Semynarie or other evill affected person’, 19 lines on a vellum membrane (160 x 283mm, the signature approx. 70 x 140mm), (inscription in a 19th-century hand in the top margin, close-trimmed right and lower margins, small losses to the lower margin), laid down into a mount. Provenance: Dr Max Thorek, Chicago (partially erased ownership stamp). Sir Anthony Mildmay (c.1549-1617) was to be appointed ambassador to France the following year – a role he had assiduously tried to avoid with pleas of poverty, unsuitability, and the weak health to which the present document bears witness – being presented to Henry IV at Rouen in October 1596. Mildmay's embassy was to prove something of a disaster: in March 1597 the French king ordered him from his chamber, threatening to strike him. He was never again to receive an appointment of any distinction: ‘I always knew him’, claimed the letter writer John Chamberlain in 1597, ‘to be paucorum hominem’. Notable in the present document is the ever-present danger posed on the seas by England's continental enemies, as well as the looming spectre of Catholicism.