h of this month, struck me with such horror
that I kept the day of his martyrdom a fast, and would not be present at
that execrable wickednesse, receiving the sad account of it from my
Brother George and Mr. Owen, who came to visite me this afternoone, and
recounted all the circumstances.'

While he 'went through a course of chymestrie at Sayes Court,' and
otherwise engaged in study and in the examination of works of art, he
became disquieted about the condition of affairs in Paris.
Communications with his wife appear to have been very few and far
between, although with his father-in-law he 'kept up a political
correspondence' in cipher 'with no small danger of being discovered.' In
April he touched 'suddaine resolutions' of going to France, before he
received the news that Conde's siege of Paris had ended by peace being
concluded. The immediate carrying out of this intention was hindered by
a rush of blood to the brain. 'I fell dangerously ill of my head: was
blistered and let blood behind ye ears and forehead: on the 23rd. began
to have ease by using the fumes of a cammomile on embers applied to my
eares after all the physicians had don their best.' On 17th June,
however, he 'got a passe from the rebell Bradshaw, then in greate
power,' and on 12th July went via Gravesend to Dover and Calais,
arriving at Paris on 1st. August. Curiously enough his Diary makes no
mention of the child-wife, from whom he had 'been absent.... about a
yeare and a halfe,' save that on 'Sept. 7th. Went with my Wife and dear
cosin to St. Germains, and kissed the Queene-mother's hand.' He remained
in Paris till the end of June, 1650, when he made a flying visit to
England, and again obtained a pass from Bradshaw to proceed to France.
On 30th August, he was back again in Paris, where he stayed till his
final return to England in February 1652. His life in Paris at this time
was that of a cultured _dilletante_. He studied, or at any rate dabbled
in, chemistry, philosophy, theology, and music; and he found amusement
in examining gardens and collections of all sorts of virtuosities and
antiquities. He had 'much discourse of chymical matters' with Sir Kenelm
Digby; 'but the truth is, Sir Kenelm was an arrant mountebank.' Here,
too, he wrote his second literary composition, _The State of France, as
it stood in the IXth yeer of this present monarch Lewis XIIII_, which
was published in England in 1652. Apart from these occupations, his time
was chiefly