Wh. I am very glad to find your Royal Highness so sensible hereof, and shall humbly and earnestly leave it to your thoughts.
Pr. I hope I shall not forget it.[268]
They had other discourse touching the princes and states of Christendom, particularly of the House of Austria, and of the design of the Papists against the Protestants, the which, and the increase of the interest of Rome, Whitelocke said could not be better prevented than by a conjunction of the Protestants; to which the Prince fully agreed. The Prince took his leave of Whitelocke with very great respect and civility.
After the Prince was gone, there came to Whitelocke Grave Eric Oxenstiern and Lagerfeldt, to take their leaves of Whitelocke, they being to go to Stockholm by command of the Ricksdag; and Grave Eric gave unto Whitelocke a paper, in French, of damage sustained by a Swedish ship taken and brought into London, which he recommended to Whitelocke to be a means that satisfaction might be procured.
Whitelocke goes to a running at the ring. Whitelocke being informed that now at the Court, among other solemnities and entertainments to welcome the Prince, the gallants used the exercise and recreation of running at the ring, a pleasure noble and useful as to military affairs, improving horsemanship, and teaching the guidance of the lance, a weapon still used by horsemen in these parts of the world; this generous exercise having been in use in England in Whitelocke’s memory, who had seen the lords, in presence of the King and Queen and a multitude of spectators, in the tilt-yards at Whitehall and at St. James’s House, where the King, when he was Prince, used also that recreation: it made Whitelocke the more desirous to see the same again, and whether, as they used it here, it were the same with that he had seen in England. He went incognito in the coach of General Douglas, without any of his train, to the place where the running at the ring was. He would not go into the room where the Queen and Prince and great lords were, but sat below in a room where the judges of the course were, with divers other gentlemen, who, though they knew Whitelocke very well, yet seeing him cast his cloak over his shoulder, as desiring not to be known, they would take no notice of him—a civility in these and other countries usual.
The Senator Vanderlin, Grave Tott, and the Baron Steinberg were the challengers to all the rest; and of the other part were Marshal Wrangel, Grave Jacob de la Gardie, and nine or ten others. All were well mounted; Wrangel upon an English horse, given him by Whitelocke. Their clothes, scarfs, feathers, and all accoutrements, both of men and horse, were very gallant. They ran for a prize which the Queen had ordained, and they comported themselves with much activeness and bravery; and it was the same exercise which Whitelocke had formerly seen in his own country.
May 19, 1654.
The Sound Dues. Woolfeldt visited Whitelocke in the morning, and brought with him a paper concerning the Sound, written in French with his own hand, wherein he showed much affection to the Protector and to England, and as much distaste to his own country. The paper Whitelocke laid up, and transcribed in a larger treatise.
Effect of the Prince’s visit. Woolfeldt acquainted Whitelocke that the public ministers in this Court discoursed much of the extraordinary respect showed by the Prince to the English Ambassador, both in his reception and the Prince’s visit to him. And particularly the Danish Ambassador was greatly discontented, and said that never any ambassador had that honour done him before, and it was so far beyond what he had received that he knew not how to bear it; that the entertainment of public ministers of the same character ought to be with the same ceremony, and not one to be preferred so much as the English Ambassador had been before others of equal quality with him, and much matter of complaint of that nature; which being reported to the Prince, he said that neither the Danish Ambassador nor any other public minister had cause to complain that he had not given them the respect due to their several qualities; and if he, out of a particular affection to the English Protector and Ambassador, had a mind to express more than ordinary particular respects to them, it was no wrong or cause of complaint to any other public minister, who had what was due to him, because another had perhaps more than was due to him; and he said he understood not why his condition should render him less capable than other gentlemen to show particular respects where they did bear a particular affection.
General Douglas, a Scottish gentleman in great favour and honour in this country, came late this year to the Court, being hindered by a violent ague upon his coming hither. He made frequent visits to Whitelocke, and expressed much of respect and civility to him as his countryman.