Be pleased to note, dear reader, that this Monday, when this Ambassador of a most Christian King departs from Dover, is on Monday the 25th day of December, of Old Style, or Protestant Style, when John Carver is learning wood-cutting, by way of encouraging the others. Let us leave the King of France to his bad roads, and follow the fortunes of the favorite's brother, for we must study an English Christmas after all. We have seen the Christmas holidays of men who had hard times for the reward of their faith in the Star of Bethlehem. Let us try the fortunes of the most Christian King's people, as they keep their second Christmas of the year among a Protestant people. Observe that a week after their own Christmas of New Style, they land in Old Style England, where Christmas has not yet begun. Here is the Mercure Français's account of the Christmas holidays,—flattering and obsequious, as I said:
"Marshal Cadenet did not depart from Dover till the Monday after" (Christmas day, O. S.). "The English Master of Ceremonies had sent twenty carriages and three hundred horses for his suite." (If only we could have ten of the worst of them at Plymouth! They would have drawn our logs for us that half quarter of a mile. But we were not born in the purple!) "He slept at Canterbury, where the Grand Seneschal of England, well accompanied by English noblemen, received him on the part of the King of England. Wherever he passed, the officers of the cities made addresses to him, and offers, even ordering their own archers to march before him and guard his lodgings. When he came to Gravesend, the Earl of Arundel visited him on the part of the King, and led him to the Royal barge. His whole suite entered into twenty-five other barges, painted, hung with tapestry, and well adorned" (think of our poor, rusty shallop there in Plymouth bay), "in which, ascending the Thames, they arrived in London Friday the 29th December" (January 8th, N. S.). "On disembarking, the Ambassador was led by the Earl of Arundel to the palace of the late Queen, which had been superbly and magnificently arranged for him. The day was spent in visits on the part of his Majesty the King of Great Britain, of the Prince of Wales, his son, and of the ambassadors of kings and princes, residing in London." So splendidly was he entertained, that they write that on the day of his reception he had four tables, with fifty covers each, and that the Duke of Lennox, Grand Master of England, served them with magnificent order.
"The following Sunday" (which we could not spend on shore), "he was conducted to an audience by the Marquis of Buckingham," (for shame, Jamie! an audience on Sunday! what would John Knox have said to that!) "where the French and English nobility were dressed as for a great feast day. The whole audience was conducted with great respect, honor, and ceremony. The same evening, the King of Great Britain sent for the Marshal by the Marquis of Buckingham and the Duke of Lennox; and his Majesty and the Ambassador remained alone for more than two hours, without any third person hearing what they said. The following days were all receptions, banquets, visits, and hunting-parties, till the embassy departed."
That is the way history gets written by a flattering and obsequious court editor or organ at the time. That is the way, then, that the dread sovereign of John Carver and Edward Winslow spent his Christmas holidays, while they were spending theirs in beginning for him an empire. Dear old William Brewster used to be a servant of Davison's in the days of good Queen Bess. As he blows his fingers there in the twenty-foot storehouse before it is roofed, does he tell the rest sometimes of the old wassail at court, and the Christmas when the Earl of Southampton brought Will. Shakespeare in? Perhaps those things are too gay,—at all events, we have as much fuel here as they have at St. James's.
Of this precious embassy, dear reader, there is not a word, I think, in Hume, or Lingard, or the "Pictorial"—still less, if possible, in the abridgments. Would you like, perhaps, after this truly elegant account thus given by a court editor, to look behind the canvas and see the rough ends of the worsted? I always like to. It helps me to understand my morning "Advertiser" or my "Evening Post," as I read the editorial history of to-day. If you please, we will begin in the Domestic State Papers of England, which the good sense of somebody, I believe kind Sir Francis Palgrave, has had opened for you and me and the rest of us.
Here is the first notice of the embassy:
Dec. 13. Letter from Sir Robert Naunton to Sir George Calvert.... "The King of France is expected at Calais. The Marshal of Cadenet is to be sent over to calumniate those of the religion (that is, the Protestants), and to propose Madme. Henriette for the Prince."
So they knew, it seems, ten days before we started, what we were coming for.
Dec. 22. John Chamberlain to Sir Dudley Carleton. "In spite of penury, there is to be a masque at Court this Christmas. The King is coming in from Theobalds to receive the French Ambassador, Marshal Cadenet, who comes with a suite of 400 or 500."
What was this masque? Could not Mr. Payne Collier find up the libretto, perhaps? Was it Faith, Valor, Hope, and Love, founding a kingdom, perhaps? Faith with a broadaxe, Valor and Hope with a two-handled saw, while Love dug post-holes and set up timbers? Or was it a less appropriate masque of King James' devising?