“I remained there until the morrow—the 3rd—in order to secure conveyances for my suite. On the next day—the 4th—I slept at Cantorberi [Canterbury]; the 5th at Sittimborne [Sittingbourne]; on Tuesday—the 6th—I went on to Rochester, where the King’s great ships-of-war lie, and came to sleep at Gravesinde [Gravesend]. The sieur Louis Lucnar, the conductor of Ambassadors,[53] came to meet me with the Queen’s barge, which she had sent me, and, on Wednesday—the 7th—I embarked on the Thames and passed by the warehouse of the East-India Company, and by Grennhuits [Greenwich], a house of the King,[54] near which the Earl of Dorset, Knight of the Garter, of the House of Sacfil,[55] came to receive me on the part of the King, and having conducted me to the King’s barge, brought me close to the Tower of London, where the King’s carriages were awaiting me. These took me to my lodging, where the said Earl of Dorset took leave of me. I was neither lodged nor entertained at the King’s expense,[56] and they had even made a difficulty about sending this Earl of Dorset, according to the usual custom, to receive me. However, this did not prevent me from being well lodged, furnished, and accommodated.[57] That same evening, after I had supped, word was brought to the Chevalier de Jars,[58] who had supped with me, that someone was asking for him. It was the Duke of Bocquinguem and Montagu, who had come alone to see me without torch-bearers, and begged him [Jars] to bring them into my chamber by some private door, which he did, and then came to fetch me. I was very astonished to see him [Buckingham] there, because I had understood that he was at Hampton Court with the King; but he had come from there to see me. He made at first many complaints to me of France, and then also on the subject of certain persons;[59] to which I replied the best I could, and then spoke of the grievances which France had against England. These he excused as well as he was able, and afterwards promised me all manner of assistance and friendship, and I also made him ample offers of my service. He requested me not to say that he had come to see me, because he had done so unknown to the King, which I did not believe.
“On Thursday—the 8th—the Ambassador Contarini, of Venice, came to visit me, and at night I went to see the Duke of Buckingham in secret at his house called Iorchaus,[60] which was extremely fine, and so richly fitted up that I never saw one to equal it.[61] We parted very good friends.
“Friday, the 9th (October). In the morning, the sieur Louis Lucnar [Sir Lewis Lewkenor] came to me, on behalf of the King, to command me to send back to France Père Sancy, of the Oratory, whom I had brought with me. This I absolutely refused, saying that he was my confessor, and that the King had no concern with my suite; and that, if I were not agreeable to him, I would leave his kingdom and return to my master. A little while after the Duke of Bocquinguem and the Earls of Dorset and Salisberi[62] came to dine with me, and I complained to them about this. After dinner the Earl of Montgomery[63] Grand Chamberlain, came to visit me and to press me, on the part of the King, to send away Père Sancy, to whom I returned the same answer as I had made Lucnar.”
This Père de Sancy, whom Charles I was so anxious to drive from his dominions, even, as we shall see presently, going the length of threatening to refuse to receive Bassompierre in private audience until he had sent him away, was a most extraordinary personage. The younger son of Nicolas Harlay de Sancy, who had been Colonel-General of the Swiss and Surintendant des Finances[64] under Henri IV, he had taken Holy Orders and been provided with three fat abbeys and the bishopric of Lavaur. But, on the death of his elder brother, the Baron de Maule, he abandoned the cassock for the sword and served in several campaigns in Italy, Germany, and Flanders. About 1611 he was sent as Ambassador to Constantinople, where he remained for seven years and amassed a considerable fortune, by methods which were common enough amongst the diplomatists of those days, whose official salaries were quite insufficient to meet the heavy expenditure which such positions entailed. Part of this fortune Sancy spent in the acquisition of rare Oriental manuscripts, for he was a man of really remarkable learning, speaking fluently, it is said, modern Greek, Latin, Spanish, English, Italian, and German, reading Hebrew texts with ease, and having a wide acquaintance with mathematics, natural history, and chemistry. However, in 1618, some unusually scandalous abuse of his official position so enraged the Turkish Government, that it caused him to be, not only arrested, but sentenced to a hundred blows with the bastinado. The Court of France accepted the excuses of the Porte—Sancy himself seems to have been only too anxious for the matter to be hushed up—and recalled its Ambassador, who, on his return, resumed the cassock, entered the Congregation of the Oratoire and attached himself to the fortunes of Richelieu. In 1625 he was amongst the ecclesiastics who accompanied Henrietta Maria to England, where he rendered himself particularly odious to Charles I and his people by his ill-considered zeal. The King had insisted on his being sent back to France not long after his arrival, but, notwithstanding this, he now reappeared as chaplain to Bassompierre’s embassy. This appointment, which could not be regarded as other than a direct affront to the English Court, had been made, it would seem, at the instance of Marie de’ Medici, and against the advice of Bassompierre, who foresaw the embarrassments to which it was bound to give rise. However, since he had been obliged to bring Sancy to England, the dignity of his sovereign demanded that he should protect him, even at the risk of compromising the success of his mission.
After the Lord Chamberlain had taken his departure, Bassompierre received visits from the Danish Ambassador and the agent of the ex-King of Bohemia, the unfortunate Frederick V, Elector Palatine. In the evening Walter Montague supped with him, and the following night he entertained Edward Cecil, Viscount Wimbledon—which the marshal spells “Houemelton”—who, the previous year, had commanded the expedition against the coast of Spain, the failure of which had been mainly due to the gross incapacity which he had displayed. Edward Cecil was an old acquaintance of Bassompierre. He had met him for the first time when a lad in Italy, and again when he visited England with Biron in 1601, upon which occasion, he tells us, Cecil had shown him much courtesy.
On the 11th Bassompierre had his first audience of the King:
“The Earl of Carlisle came with the King’s coaches to convey me to Amptoncourt [Hampton Court] to have audience of the King. At Amptoncourt I was conducted to a room in which a beautiful collation was spread. The Duke of Bouquinguem came to introduce me to the audience, and told me that the King desired to know beforehand what I intended to say to him, and that he did not wish me to speak about any business to him, otherwise, he would not grant me an audience. I told him that the King should know what I had to say to him from my own mouth, and that it was not the custom to limit an Ambassador in the representations he had to make to the King to whom he was sent. He swore to me that the only reason which obliged him [the King] to that, and which made him insist upon it, was that he could not help putting himself into a passion in discussing the matters about which I had to speak to him, which would not be seemly in the Chair of State, in sight of the chief persons of the Kingdom, both men and women; that the Queen his wife was close to him, who, incensed at the dismissal of her servants, might commit some extravagance and weep in the sight of everyone; that, in short, he would not compromise himself in public, and that he was resolved to break up this audience and grant me one in private sooner than treat with me concerning any business before everyone. He [Buckingham] swore vehemently to me that he was telling me the truth, and that he had not been able to persuade the King to see me save on this condition; and he begged of me to suggest some expedient, whereby I should place him under an obligation. I (who perceived that I was going to receive this affront, and that he was asking me to aid him with my counsel, in order to avoid the one and to insinuate myself more and more into his good graces by the other) told him that I could not in any manner whatsoever do anything but what was prescribed to me by the King my master; but that, since, as my friend, he asked my counsel as to some expedient, I told him that it depended on the King to give or to take away, to abridge or to lengthen, my audience in what manner he would, and that he might, after having permitted me to make my reverence, and received, with the King’s letters [i.e., his credentials], my first compliments, when I should come to open to him the occasion of my coming, interrupt me and say: ‘Sir Ambassador, you are come from London, and you have to return thither; it is late, and this matter requires a longer time than I could now give you. I shall send for you one of these days at an earlier hour, and we will confer about it at our leisure in a private audience. Meantime, I shall content myself with having seen you and heard news of the King my brother-in-law and the Queen my mother-in-law; and I will not delay longer the impatience which the Queen my wife has to hear of them also from you.’ Upon which I shall take leave of him to go and make my reverence to the Queen.”