rdinal's bedside!
When the Nuncio Spada would have made the cardinal jealous of the
pretensions of the English ambassadors, and reproached him with yielding
his precedence to them, the cardinal denied this. "I never go before
them, it is true, but likewise I never accompany them; I wait for them
only in the chamber of audience, either seated in the most honourable
place, or standing till the table is ready: I am always the first to
speak, and the first to be seated; and besides, I have never chosen to
return their visit, which has made the Earl of Carlisle so
outrageous."[96]

Such was the ludicrous gravity of those court etiquettes, or
_punctilios_, combined with political consequences, of which I am now to
exhibit a picture.

When James the First ascended the throne of his united kingdoms, and
promised himself and the world long halcyon days of peace, foreign
princes, and a long train of ambassadors from every European power,
resorted to the English court. The pacific monarch, in emulation of an
office which already existed in the courts of Europe, created that of
MASTER OF THE CEREMONIES, after the mode of France, observes Roger
Coke.[97] This was now found necessary to preserve the state, and allay
the perpetual jealousies of the representatives of their sovereigns. The
first officer was Sir Lewis Lewknor,[98] with an assistant, Sir John
Finett, who at length succeeded him, under Charles the First, and seems
to have been more amply blest with the genius of the place; his soul
doted on the honour of the office; and in that age of peace and of
ceremony, we may be astonished at the subtilty of his inventive shifts
and contrivances, in quieting that school of angry and rigid boys whom
he had under his care--the ambassadors of Europe!

Sir John Finett, like a man of genius in office, and living too in an
age of diaries, has not resisted the pleasant labour of perpetuating his
own narrative.[99] He has told every circumstance, with a chronological
exactitude, which passed in his province as master of the ceremonies;
and when we consider that he was a busy actor amidst the whole
diplomatic corps, we shall not he surprised by discovering, in this
small volume of great curiosity, a vein of secret and authentic history;
it throws a new light on many important events, in which the historians
of the times are deficient, who had not the knowledge of this assiduous
observer. But my present purpose is not to treat Sir John with