FullReads

The Domestic Archives give another glimpse:

Dec. 30. Thomas Locke to Carleton: “The French Ambassador has arrived at Somerset House with a train so large that some of the seats at Westminster Hall had to be pulled down to make room at their audience.” And in letters from the same to the same, of January 7, are accounts of entertainments given to the Ambassador at his first audience (on that Sunday), on the 4th at Parliament House, on the 6th at a masque at Whitehall, where none were allowed below the rank of a Baron–and at Lord Doncaster’s entertainment–where “six thousand ounces of gold are set out as a present,” says the letter, but this I do not believe. At the Hampton entertainment, and at the masque there were some disputes about precedency, says John Chamberlain in another letter. Dear John Chamberlain, where are there not such disputes? At the masque at Whitehall he says, “a Puritan was flouted and abused, which was thought unseemly, considering the state of the French Protestants.” Let the Marshal come over to Gov. John Carver’s court and see one of our masques there, if he wants to know about Puritans. “At Lord Doncaster’s house the feast cost three thousand pounds, beside three hundred pounds worth of ambergris used in the cooking,” nothing about that six thousand ounces of gold. “The Ambassador had a long private interview with the king; it is thought he proposed Mad. Henriette for the Prince. He left with a present of a rich jewel. He requested liberation of all the imprisoned priests in the three kingdoms, but the answer is not yet given.”

By the eleventh of January the embassy had gone, and Thomas Locke says Cadenet “received a round answer about the Protestants.” Let us hope it was so, for it was nearly the last, as it was. Thomas Murray writes that he “proposed a match with France,–a confederation against Spanish power, and asked his Majesty to abandon the rebellious princes,–but he refused unless they might have toleration.” The Ambassador was followed to Rochester for the debts of some of his train,–but got well home to Paris and New Style.

And so he vanishes from English history.

His king made him Duke of Chaulnes and Peer of France, but his brother, the favorite died soon after, either of a purple fever or of a broken heart, and neither of them need trouble us more.

At the moment the whole embassy seemed a failure in England,–and so it is spoken of by all the English writers of the time whom I have seen. “There is a flaunting French Ambassador come over lately,” says Howel, “and I believe his errand is naught else but compliment…. He had an audience two days since, where he, with his train of ruffling long-haired Monsieurs, carried himself in such a light garb, that after the audience the king asked my Lord Keeper Bacon what he thought of the French Ambassador. He answered, that he was a tall, proper man. ‘Aye,’ his Majesty replied, ‘but what think you of his head-piece? Is he a proper man for the office of an ambassador?’ ‘Sir,’ said Bacon, ‘tall men are like houses of four or five stories, wherein commonly the uppermost room is worst furnished.'”

Hard, this, on us poor six-footers. One need not turn to the biography after this, to guess that the philosopher was five feet four.

I think there was a breeze, and a cold one, all the time, between the embassy and the English courtiers. I could tell you a good many stories to show this, but I would give them all for one anecdote of what Edward Winslow said to Madam Carver on Christmas evening. They thought it all naught because they did not know what would come of it. We do know.

And I wish you to observe, all the time, beloved reader, whom I press to my heart for your steadiness in perusing so far, and to whom I would give a jewel had I one worthy to give, in token of my consideration (how you would like a Royalston beryl or an Attleboro topaz).[A] I wish you to observe, I say, that on the Christmas tide, when the Forefathers began New England, Charles and Henrietta were first proposed to each other for that fatal union. Charles, who was to be Charles the First, and Henrietta, who was to be mother of Charles the Second, and James the Second. So this was the time, when were first proposed all the precious intrigues and devisings, which led to Charles the Second, James the Second, James the Third, so called, and our poor friend the Pretender. Civil War–Revolution–1715–1745–Preston-Pans, Falkirk and Culloden–all are in the dispatches Cadenet carries ashore at Dover, while we are hewing our timbers at the side of the brook at Plymouth, and making our contribution to Protestant America.