is provided fresh opportunity for scientific study, though his
connection with the English Catholic malcontents, and his services to the
Queen Henrietta Maria, who now made him her Chancellor, absorbed much of
his time. When the Cause needed him, the Cavalier broke away from
philosophy; and in 1645 he set out for Rome, at the bidding of the Queen,
to beg money for her schemes. With all his address, diplomacy was not among
the chief of his talents. With high personages he took a high tone.
Innocent X gave 10,000 crowns to the Cause; but they quarrelled; and the
Pope went so far as to accuse Digby of misappropriation of the money.
Digby, a man of clean hands, seems to have taken up the Queen's quarrel.
She would have nothing to do with Rinuccini's Irish expedition, which his
Holiness was supporting; and her Chancellor naturally insisted on
disbursing the funds at her commands rather than at the Pope's. Moreover,
he was now renewing his friendship with Thomas White, a heretic Catholic
priest, of several _aliases_, some of whose work had been placed on the
Index. White was a philosophic thinker of considerable power and subtlety,
and he and Digby acted and reacted on each other strongly--though Digby's
debt is perhaps the greater. Their respective parts in the _Two Treatises_
and in the _Institutionum Peripateticorum libri quinque_, published under
White's name, but for which Sir Kenelm is given the main credit, can hardly
now be sifted. White, at all events, was not a prudent friend for an envoy
to the Holy See. Digby "grew high and hectored with his holinesse, and gave
him the lye. The pope said he was mad." Thus Aubrey. Henrietta Maria sent
him once more on the same errand; but the Roman Curia continued to look on
him as a "useless and restless man, with scanty wisdom." Before returning,
however, he paid a round of visits to Italian courts, making everywhere a
profound impression by his handsome person and his liveliness. He had to
hasten back to England on his own business. His fortunes were desperate;
and he desired to compound for his estates.

A week or so after the King's death he is proved by his correspondence to
be in France, having fled after one more pronouncement of him as a
dangerous man. He went into exile this time with a sad heart; and it was
not only the loyalist in him that cried out. The life of an English country
gentleman would never have satisfied him; yet he longed for it now it had
become impossible.