was burning with the desire of seeing and hearing him. Meanwhile, till he should get ready to come, that no time, "no opportunity, of learning anything from him, should slip away, she begged the privilege (these are her very words) "of corresponding with him by letter, and consulting him "about her studies.' They, accordingly, from that time, "exchanged frequent and most familiar letters, she writing good long ones, mostly in Latin, often of several pages, "and sometimes of six or seven. But, when our hero was "still delaying the journey for some time, chiefly from his "dread of injury to his health by the very cold air of that "country, and the extreme inclemency of the winter, which "he would have to pass entirely there, she at last intimated to "him that either he must make more haste or she must go "to him; which she declared she would actually have done "already, if considerations of her position and the convenience "of her Kingdom had allowed it." All this, we are to suppose, had been before 1650, and perhaps before the publication of the Defensio Regia. In the month of July 1650, the very time at which we have seen reason to believe that a temporary absence from Leyden was independently desirable for Salmasius, he did, his biographer adds, obtain leave of absence from the curators of the Leyden University, and set out for Stockholm. "With what kindness, with what courtesy, with "what honour, he was received by the Queen," proceeds the enthusiastic Salmasian, "it would be too long to relate here. "To state the whole matter compendiously, she did for him "everything that could be expected from an equal. It was "her wish that he should select apartments in her Palace, "that she might always be at his side when she wanted. "But, because our hero could not stand the climate, he was "almost always confined to his room. She, nevertheless, "would come to his bedside, and there hold various and long"continued conversations with him on matters of the greatest "importance, and that without any others being present, so "that, all the doors being shut, she would herself make up the "fire and perform whatever other offices were necessary for "the poor gentleman in his bed." One morning, as we learn from another source, the Queen, coming into his bedroom, with her attendants, found him reading a book, which he tried hastily to hide, because it was libellus subturpiculus, a slightly improper kind of little book. She got it into her hands, however, read a little herself, and then made one of her attendants, a beautiful girl named Sparra, read some passages aloud, she and the rest laughing, while the poor girl blushed.-Where, one asks, was Madame Salmasius? She had certainly accompanied her husband to Sweden, for she had superintended his first presentation to Queen Christina in scarlet breeches, with a black hat and a white feather, and in contemporary letters of gossip from Stockholm one hears of her, under the name of Mercera, as figuring no less there than elsewhere in her double capacity as her husband's domineering master and the sharp guardian of his interests and fighter of his battles. Indeed they had taken their two sons with them, Claude de Saumaise and Josias de Saumaise, that these young gentlemen might be naturalized in Sweden, and make their fortunes there.1 It was at Stockholm, therefore, with his family about him, and the splendid young Queen Christina attending on him as his worshipper and waiting-maid, that the blow from Milton's London book was to descend Salmasius. 1 Arkenholtz: Mémoires concernant Christine, Reine de Suède (1751), 1. 222, et seq.; Clementius "De Laudibus et Vita Salmasii," pp. li.-lii.; a quotation from Huetius by Mitford in his upon Life of Milton (Pickering's Milton, I. p. lxx., note); and correspondence of Isaac Vossius and Nicolas Heinsius in Burmann's Sylloge Epistolarum (1727). CHAPTER V. ANNALS OF THE COMMONWEALTH: THIRD YEAR, FEB. 18, 1650-1-DEC. 1, 1651. NEW COUNCIL OF STATE: RELATIONS WITH SPAIN: NEGOTIATION WITH THE PORTUGUESE AMBASSADOR: EMBASSY OF ST. JOHN AND STRICKLAND TO THE UNITED PROVINCES: AFFAIRS IN SCOTLAND: CROMWELL'S ILLNESS THERE: EFFECTS OF THE ENGLISH OCCUPATION AMONG THE SCOTS STATE OF SCOTLAND NORTH OF THE FIRTHS: CHARLES II. AND HIS SCOTTISH COURT: PARLIAMENT AT PERTH AND STIRLING: DECLINE OF THE ARGYLE INFLUENCE RESOLUTIONERS AND REMONSTRANTS: CHARLES'S SCOTTISH ARMY: DISGRACE OF LORD HOWARD OF ESCRICK: ENGLISH PRESBYTERIAN CONSPIRACY FOR CHARLES II.: CASE OF MR. LOVE AND MR. GIBBONS: CROMWELL'S MARCH UPON STIRLING: ACCESS BLOCKED BY LESLIE : DEVICE OF A PASSAGE THROUGH FIFESHIRE: CROMWELL AT PERTH: SUDDEN MARCH OF CHARLES AND THE SCOTS INTO ENGLAND: CROMWELL'S RAPID PURSUIT: EXCITEMENT THROUGHOUT ENGLAND: EXECUTION OF LOVE AND GIBBONS: BATTLE OF WORCESTER: THE CAPTIVES AND FUGITIVES: CONQUEST OF SCOTLAND COMPLETED BY MONK NEW HONOURS FOR CROMWELL: EXECUTION OF THE EARL OF DERBY AND OTHERS: SCOTTISH PRISONERS IN ENGLAND: ESCAPE OF CHARLES II.: THE MARQUIS OF ARGYLE IN SCOTLAND VIEW OF HIS CHARACTER AND CAREER: DECREE FOR THE INCORPORATION OF SCOTLAND WITH THE COMMONWEALTH CLEMENT HOME POLICY AFTER WORCESTER: NAVIGATION ACT AGAINST FOR reasons not assigned, this third Council of State was to hold office only for nine months and a half, ceasing on Dec. 1, 1651, and not on Feb. 18, 1651-2, which would have been the regular twelvemonth's term. The twenty-one reappointed members were-CROMWELL, Chief Justices ST. JOHN and ROLLE, Lords Commissioners WHITLOCKE and LISLE, Serjeant BRADSHAW, LORD GREY OF GROBY, VANE, HASILRIG, PICKERING, MASHAM, ARMYN, MILDMAY, HARRINGTON, SKIPPON, WALTON, PUREFOY, SCOTT, BOND, CHALLONER, and GURDON. The first nineteen of these had been members of both the two preceding Councils; the last two only of the second. Among the members of the two preceding Councils not reappointed on this one were Fairfax (retired from public life since June 1650), Henry Marten, Alderman Pennington, and Ludlow; and among members of the last Council now omitted were Lord Howard and Sir Peter Wentworth. The twenty absolutely new members were : Alderman Francis Allen. Lieut.-Gen. Charles Fleetwood. * Major-Gen. Thomas Harrison. William Lemon, Esq. Thomas Lister, Esq. Walter Strickland, Esq. (late Sir Thomas Widdrington, Knt. All of these were members of Parliament; and those asterisked had signed the death-warrant of Charles I. At the first meeting of the Council (Feb. 19, 1650-1), Walter Frost, junior, was reappointed assistant to his father, whose reappointment to the General Secretaryship had been made, as before, by Parliament itself, and Milton was reappointed Secretary for Foreign Languages. At the meeting on March 1, the standing Committees of Council were appointed or reappointed. There were now seven such Committees, for these departments respectively-Ordnance, Admiralty, Affairs of Ireland and Scotland, Examinations and Informations, Conference with Army-officers, Law, and The Mint; and among these the members of the Council were distributed according to their tastes or qualifications, some to serve on two or more Committees. Of the larger Committees three were to be a quorum, and of the smaller two. Renewed precautions for secrecy of the proceedings, by locked doors, &c., are very conspicuous at the beginning of this Council.1 Besides Cromwell, whose re-nomination on the Council in his absence had been again a matter of course, there were several others whose attendance at Council or its Committees could not be expected for some time. Lord Commissioner St. John and Mr. Strickland, for example, who had been appointed Ambassadors Extraordinary to the United Provinces, took their formal leave of Parliament on the 25th of February, before their departure, with all befitting state and ceremony, on their important mission. On the same day, in proof that the negotiations in London with the Spanish Ambassador Cardenas had been so far satisfactory, it was resolved by the House to send one or more Ambassadors from the Commonwealth to the Court of Madrid. They were not yet named, however; and the business of intercourse between the two nations was to be managed for some time longer, as hitherto, between the friendly Cardenas and the chiefs of the Commonwealth conferring in London. The murder of Ascham was still a subject of discussion; but, on the whole, his Spanish Majesty was understood to be now very well disposed towards the Commonwealth. His Majesty's relations at the time to other continental powers, including Portugal, were such as to make this policy prudent; and it must have been good news to him to learn in Madrid how indifferently the Portuguese 1 Notes from Counell Order Books of days named. |