It is perhaps to this episode that Bassompierre here refers.
[78] Perhaps Robert Ker, afterwards Earl of Roxburgh.
[79] Probably, Endymion Porter (1587-1649), groom of the bedchamber to Charles I, whom he had accompanied on his journey to Spain, where he sometimes acted as interpreter, having been educated in that country. He was a generous patron of literature and art, and Herrick declares that poets would never be wanting so long as they had a patron like Porter,
“who doth give
Not only subject for our art,
But oil of maintenance to it.”
Porter was devoted to Buckingham, to whose favour he owed his rise to fortune, and in his will, dated the year before his death, he “charged all his sons, upon his blessing, that, leaving the like charges to their posterity, they did all of them observe and respect the children and family of his Lord Duke of Buckingham, deceased, to whom he owed all the happiness he had in the world.”
[80] Charles de Brouilly, Marquis de Piennes.
[81] Pierre Gobelin, counsellor to the Parlement in 1618, was appointed maître des requêtes in 1624.
[82] Wallingford House. It stood near Charing Cross, upon the site of the Old Buildings of the Admiralty.
[83] There were at this time two Duchesses of Lennox: Catherine Clifton, widow of Esmé Stuart, the first duke, and Frances Howard, widow of Ludovic, the second duke, whom James I had created Duke of Richmond, in the peerage of England. As the latter was a vain, ambitious, and intriguing woman, and possessed of considerable influence at Court, it is probable that it was to her that Bassompierre’s visit was paid. The duchess had been married three times. She began her matrimonial experiments with a merchant, a Mr. Prannell; continued them with an earl, Edwin, Earl of Hertford, and concluded with a duke of royal blood. If, however, we are to believe the gossip of the time, she would fain have made yet another, and secured a yet more exalted consort. “For, finding the King (James) a widower, she vowed, after so great a prince as Richmond, never to be blown with kisses or eat at the table of a subject; and this vow must be spread abroad that the King might notice the bravery of her spirit. But this bait would not catch the old king, and she, to make good her resolution, speciously observed her vow to the last.”
[84] Mary Villiers, to whom by letters-patent of August, 1627, the duchy of Buckingham was granted in default of heirs male. Like the lady just mentioned, she was married three times: first, to Lord Herbert, son of Philip, Earl of Pembroke; secondly to James Stuart, Duke of Lennox and Richmond, and, finally, to Thomas Howard, a brother of the Earl of Carlisle. She had no children by any of her husbands.