FullReads

That is the way history gets written by a flattering and obsequious court editor or organ at the time. That is the way, then, that the dread sovereign of John Carver and Edward Winslow spent his Christmas holidays, while they were spending theirs in beginning for him an empire. Dear old William Brewster used to be a servant of Davison’s in the days of good Queen Bess. As he blows his fingers there in the twenty-foot storehouse before it is roofed, does he tell the rest sometimes of the old wassail at court, and the Christmas when the Earl of Southampton brought Will. Shakespeare in? Perhaps those things are too gay,–at all events, we have as much fuel here as they have at St. James’s.

Of this precious embassy, dear reader, there is not a word, I think, in Hume, or Lingard, or the “Pictorial”–still less, if possible, in the abridgments. Would you like, perhaps, after this truly elegant account thus given by a court editor, to look behind the canvas and see the rough ends of the worsted? I always like to. It helps me to understand my morning “Advertiser” or my “Evening Post,” as I read the editorial history of to-day. If you please, we will begin in the Domestic State Papers of England, which the good sense of somebody, I believe kind Sir Francis Palgrave, has had opened for you and me and the rest of us.

Here is the first notice of the embassy:

Dec. 13. Letter from Sir Robert Naunton to Sir George Calvert…. “The King of France is expected at Calais. The Marshal of Cadenet is to be sent over to calumniate those of the religion (that is, the Protestants), and to propose Madme. Henriette for the Prince.”

So they knew, it seems, ten days before we started, what we were coming for.

Dec. 22. John Chamberlain to Sir Dudley Carleton. “In spite of penury, there is to be a masque at Court this Christmas. The King is coming in from Theobalds to receive the French Ambassador, Marshal Cadenet, who comes with a suite of 400 or 500.”

What was this masque? Could not Mr. Payne Collier find up the libretto, perhaps? Was it Faith, Valor, Hope, and Love, founding a kingdom, perhaps? Faith with a broadaxe, Valor and Hope with a two-handled saw, while Love dug post-holes and set up timbers? Or was it a less appropriate masque of King James’ devising?

Dec. 25. This is our day. Francis Willisfourd, Governor of Dover Castle to Lord Zouch, Warden of the Cinque Ports. “A French Ambassador has landed with a great train. I have not fired a salute, having no instructions, and declined showing them the fortress. They are entertained as well as the town can afford.”

Observe, we are a little surly. We do not like the French King very well, our own King’s daughter being in such straits yonder in the Palatinate. What do these Papists here?

That is the only letter written on Christmas day in the English “Domestic Archives” for that year! Christmas is for frolic here, not for letter-writing, nor house-building, if one’s houses be only built already!

But on the 27th, Wednesday, “Lord Arundel has gone to meet the French Ambassador at Gravesend.” And a very pretty time it seems they had at Gravesend, when you look on the back of the embroidery. Arundel called on Cadenet at his lodgings, and Cadenet did not meet him till he came to the stair–head of his chamber-door–nor did he accompany him further when he left. But Arundel was even with him the next morning. He appointed his meeting for the return call in the street; and when the barges had come up to Somerset House, where the party was to stay, Arundel left the Ambassador, telling him that there were gentlemen who would show him his lodging. The King was so angry that he made Cadenet apologize. Alas for the Court of Governor John Carver on this side,–four days old to-day–if Massasoit should send us an ambassador! We shall have to receive him in the street, unless he likes to come into a palace without a roof! But, fortunately, he does not send till we are ready!