the report throughout London. On the contrary, it is but true to say that the king has every reason to complain (though he has not yet done so) of the proceedings of Mr. Hollis, in that he has taken it into his head to call in question an order which has existed for centuries in this court, and which, as he very well knows, is practised daily by all the ambassadors of crowned heads. This order is that the carriages, which the princes of the blood are accustomed to send to honour their entrance, should precede those of the ambassadors in the procession; whereas Mr. Hollis claims that his carriage should have the precedence. In other words, he desires that his majesty, in order to please him, should in some measure degrade the princes of the blood, by depriving them of a right which they have possessed from time immemorial; and also that he should, at the same time, offend all other crowns, or at least declare that their ministers have all been in error, and have failed to maintain, as he has done, the dignity of their masters.

"As recent examples are less likely to be contested or disbelieved, he has been duly informed of the conduct of the Count de Fuensaldagna, the Marquis de la Fuente, the Count de Tott, the ambassador-extraordinary of Denmark, and MM. Nani, Grimani, and Sagredo, the Venetian ambassadors, who are usually most exact in all matters of ceremony, that they may thus maintain themselves in the same rank as the representatives of crowns. Mr. Hollis admits the truth of these examples, but he says that they cannot serve as a rule for the ambassador of England; to which objection we have the civility to make no answer, though there are many things which we could easily urge against him on this point. The king ordered me to pay him a visit yesterday on his behalf, to try and induce him to hear reason; but as his majesty himself, if he had undertaken the task, would never have succeeded, you will readily imagine that my mission failed entirely of

success.

"I remarked that he rested his claim principally upon three particular cases, and I will tell you my answer to each of his arguments.

"The first was, that in the year 1564 (if I mistake not) an English ambassador came to swear to a treaty of alliance, and was accompanied at his entrance by a Marshal of France (quod notandum); but on the day upon which the treaty was sworn,

the king sent M. de la Roche-sur-Yon, a prince of the royal race, of the branch of Montpensier, to fetch him from his lodging; and Mr. Hollis deduces this consequence, that the prince thus gave precedence to the ambassador, because, he says, it is not likely that the king, being desirous to honour the said ambassador, would have sent to him any one who would afterwards have taken precedence of him.

"I urged two things in reply to this: first, that before the time of Henry III., the princes of the blood in France held no rank unless they were peers, and took precedence only according to the date of their peerage, so that other princes frequently preceded them; secondly, that his authority does not state that the Prince de la Roche-sur-Yon walked after the ambassador; and that, in order to show him that his argument of likelihood might very probably be false, only six weeks ago, the Prince de Condé and Monseigneur le Duc were sent by the king to conduct the Swiss ambassadors to his presence, but that they, nevertheless, preceded the ambassadors, although his majesty desired to do them all honour.

"The second instance that he alleged was that one of our kings, I do not remember whether it was Henry IV. or Louis XIII. that he mentioned, on another similar occasion of swearing to an alliance, being accompanied by all the princes and others, took the English ambassador by the hand, and made him walk by his side to the church, where he afterwards sat down on the king's right hand, while the princes and other nobles of the kingdom remained standing on his left hand.

"I replied to this, that when a reason proves too much, it is of no force; and that, if the English ambassador were seated and the princes of the blood standing, it is evident, if the thing be true, as it possibly may be, that the ceremony occurred in honour of the ambassador alone, and that the princes did not claim to take any part in it. As in fact, when the king is in any place, and all pay their court to him, there is no regular rank maintained; otherwise it would be requisite that the greatest and most considerable nobles should always be nearest the person of his majesty, which is not the case; that the ambassador, therefore, could not gain any advantage from the fact that the king, being perhaps desirous to converse with him, had taken him by the hand, and talked with him as they walked to the church.

"The third instance was that he read me a letter from a secretary, whom he did not name, who informs him that having, by order of the King of Great Britain, inquired of Lord Leicester how matters had been arranged here during the embassy which he and Lord Scudamore undertook in the reign of the late king, that lord had told him that at his entrance he rode in the king's carriage, which was followed by the queen's carriage, and immediately after by his own and Lord Scudamore's; and that a Swedish ambassador had contested his place with Lord Scudamore, but after some disputes the Swede had given way.

"I replied to this that there were either no princes of the blood at Paris, at that time, or that Lord Leicester had not a good memory, or that he was not well informed of what was going on behind him and out of his sight.

“There was undoubtedly no necessity for me to enter into this discussion, and it would have been sufficient for me to have informed him that he was opposing a privilege which the princes of the blood have possessed from time immemorial, and to which all the other ambassadors of crowned heads yielded daily without any difficulty.

"He then told me that he had hit upon the expedient of making no public entrance, and tried to persuade me that such a course would prejudice no one. I could not agree with him, but maintained, on the contrary, that, with the exception of himself, all others who had any interest in matters of this kind would be placed at a very notable disadvantage; for the princes of the blood would be degraded from their privilege, all the other ambassadors would be obliged to confess that they had hitherto been in error, and the king would be injured most of all; for the other ambassadors would not fail immediately to put forward the same claims, and, if his desire was granted, it would be impossible to deny them their request of making no public entry, after the novel precedent which he would have established. That not only would the suppression of this ceremony abolish for ever a custom which is of some lustre in the courts of princes (as our example would be infallibly followed in all other courts), but it would finally appear that this expedient had ended only in doing the king one of the greatest injuries it is possible for him to receive, by depriving him of the means of assuming and continuing in possession of the precedence

C

which has been yielded to him by the King of Spain; and I begged Mr. Hollis to infer from hence whether his expedient were practicable, and whether the king could accede to it.

"The conclusion was, that Mr. Hollis told me that he greatly desired that I would show him a single instance in which an ambassador of England had given place to the princes of the blood, as he would be glad to have good cause for abandoning his claim. This morning I have sent to him MM. de Berlize and de Bonneuil, who will prove to him, from a book printed a long while ago, that at the marriage of Louis XII. with Mary, the sister of the King of England, in 1514, all the princes of the blood were seated above the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, the English ambassadors. I do not know whether, after the promise he has given me, he will be satisfied with this example, although it is so conclusive, and occurred at a time when the princes of the blood royal in France did not hold so high a rank as they do now. Besides, the English ambassadors always pay the first visit to the princes of the blood."+

Business matters were as difficult to arrange as questions of etiquette. "I cannot believe," wrote M. de Lionne to the Count de Comenge, "that the Chancellor (Lord Clarendon) can consider Lord Hollis capable of conducting any important negotiation, and much less of arranging and concluding a treaty between two crowns. As soon as he has had his public audience it will quickly be perceived, by the course which he will adopt, what kind of orders he is commissioned to execute."‡

Hollis was not wanting in capacity; but no one had less disposition than he felt to make England a satellite of France, and he displayed with haughty stiffness his aversion to a policy which he could find no means of eluding. In April, 1664, he submitted to M. de Lionne a draft of a treaty very similar to that which had just begun to be discussed in England. "I can already perceive plainly, by the proceedings of Lord Hollis," wrote Louis XIV. himself to the Count de Comenge, "that the negotiation will make no quicker progress here than it did in London."§ This was, in fact, the case; it * Ceremonial Français, by Godefroy, p. 745.

This inedited despatch is printed from the original in the archives of the French Foreign Office.

Despatch of 26th December, 1663; French Foreign Office.

Letter of 25th June, 1664; French Foreign Office.

lingered on, but no tangible results appeared; Hollis had a splendid house in Paris, arranged and kept in the English fashion, as he would, in no respect, conform to the manners and usages of France.* It was not long before the political relations of the two courts escaped from his hands. Charles II.'s sister, Henrietta Duchess of Orleans, became the real ambassadress of her brother to Louis XIV., and of Louis XIV. to her brother. On the 22nd of November, 1664, M. de Lionne wrote to the Count de Comenge:-" His majesty has not forgotten to give his best thanks to Madame for the kind reception and good treatment which you experience from the King of Great Britain and all his ministers; and his majesty gave her to understand that he would be very glad if she would convey his acknowledgments to the king her brother. He considered that it would be better for the thing to pass through this channel than by the medium of Lord Hollis, whom we see, by the way, about once a year."+

Hollis was held in no greater consideration at Whitehall than at the Louvre, and, while Louis XIV. would hardly listen to him, his own king seized the slightest pretext for laughing at him. On the 1st of December, 1664, M. de Comenge wrote from London to M. de Lionne :-" You will doubtless be as much surprised as I was to learn that a man of high rank, of mature age, and of exalted office, has written to the king of England that the queen, our mistress, has been brought to bed of a black (more) daughter. Be not astonished that I have not yet told you his name; I cannot make up my mind to do so, and I must break the matter to you gently, lest you should fall down in a fainting fit at the name of Lord Hollis. I am not the author of this bit of news. It has been related by the whole court of England, and by the king himself. If the story be true, which is hardly credible, it must of necessity be that the slight acquaintance which that nobleman has with the French language has made him commit this gross-I don't know what to call it; and that the first news he received was that the queen had been brought to bed with a dead (morte) daughter, and that, by a play upon the words, he manufactured this piece of intelligence; or that his secretary did not rightly understand * Biographia Britannica, vol. iv., p. 2650. † Archives of the French Foreign Office.