“Francis, Lord Cottington to the Earl of Newcastle.
“1632, December 13. Charing Cross.—The death of the two Kings, Sweden and Bohemia, with his Majesty’s late sickness of the small-pox, has almost put by here all kind of home negociations; yet I must tell you from my Lord Treasurer that you are lively in the memory both of the King and of his lordship. The King is now well though he still keeps his chamber, and my Lord Deputy[16] is precisely sent for, so that you will have one friend more here. You are appointed to attend the King into Scotland which I conceive might be a good motive for your friends to put it to a period.”
[16] Strafford.
The “good motive for your friends to put it to a period” probably alluded to an object that Newcastle had very much at heart, of which we shall hear more by and by.
CHAPTER III.
Clarendon tells us something of the personality of Newcastle.[17] “He was a very fine gentleman, active, full of courage and most accomplished in those qualities of horsemanship, dancing and fencing, which accompany a good breeding, in which his delight was. Besides that, he was amorous in poetry and music, to which he indulged the greatest part of his time.”
[17] History, Book viii. p. 507.
Newcastle seems also to have been “amorous” in pictures, if we may judge from the following letter.[18]
[18] Hist. MSS. Comm., 13th Rep., Appendix, Part II, p. 131.