hirty to
fifty "pieces," or in plate or jewels; and some so grudgingly, that Sir
John Finett often vents his indignation, and commemorates the indignity.
As thus,--on one of the Spanish ambassadors-extraordinary waiting at
Deal for three days, Sir John, "expecting the wind with the patience of
an _hungry entertainment_ from a _close-handed ambassador_, as his
_present to me_ at his parting from Dover being but an old gilt livery
pot, that had lost his fellow, not worth above twelve pounds,
accompanied with two pair of Spanish gloves to make it almost thirteen,
to my shame and his." When he left this scurvy ambassador-extraordinary
to his fate aboard the ship, he exults that "the cross-winds held him in
the Downs almost a seven-night before they would blow him over."

From this mode of receiving ambassadors, two inconveniences resulted;
their perpetual jars of _punctilio_, and their singular intrigues to
obtain precedence, which so completely harassed the patience of the most
pacific sovereign, that James was compelled to make great alterations in
his domestic comforts, and was perpetually embroiled in the most
ridiculous contests. At length Charles I. perceived the great charge of
these embassies, ordinary and extraordinary, often on frivolous
pretences; and with an empty treasury, and an uncomplying parliament, he
grew less anxious for such ruinous honours.[100] He gave notice to
foreign ambassadors, that he should not any more "defray their diet,
nor provide coaches for them," &c. "This frugal purpose" cost Sir John
many altercations, who seems to view it as the glory of the British
monarch being on the wane. The unsettled state of Charles was appearing
in 1636, by the querulous narrative of the master of the ceremonies; the
etiquettes of the court were disturbed by the erratic course of its
great star; and the master of the ceremonies was reduced to keep blank
letters to superscribe, and address to any nobleman who was to be found,
from the absence of the great officers of state. On this occasion the
ambassador of the Duke of Mantua, who had long desired his parting
audience, when the king objected to the unfitness of the place he was
then in, replied, that, "if it were under a tree, it should be to him as
a palace."

Yet although we smile at this science of etiquette and these rigid forms
of ceremony, when they were altogether discarded a great statesman
lamented them, and found the inconvenience and mischief in th