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.” [Illustration: CHARLES I. After the picture by Van Dyck at Dresden.] 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