[49] When Louis lay on his death-bed, the Queen swore, with tears in her eyes, that she had been innocent of any such intention. “In the state in which I am,” was the reply, “I am obliged to pardon you, but I am not obliged to believe you.” [50] Tyburn Tree would appear to have stood on the spot which is now the junction of the Bayswater and Edgware Roads. [51] “They [the Bishop of Mende and the other ecclesiastics of the Queen’s Household] abused the influence which they had acquired over the tender and religious mind of her Majesty, so far as to lead her a long way on foot, through a park, the gate of which had been expressly ordered by the Count de Tilliers [Tillières] to be kept open, to go in devotion to a place (Tyburn), where it has been the custom to execute the most infamous malefactors and criminals of all sorts, exposed on the entrance to a high road; an act, not only of shame and mockery towards the Queen, but of reproach and calumny of the King’s predecessors of glorious memory, as accusing them of tyranny on having put to death innocent persons, whom these people look upon as martyrs, although, on the contrary, not one of them had been executed on account of religion, but for high treason.”--Reply of the Commissioners of his Majesty the King of Great Britain, to Monsieur le Maréschal de Bassompierre, Ambassador Extraordinary from his Most Christian Majesty. [52] The orthography of this letter is, of course, modernised. [53] Sir Lewis Lewkenor, Knight. In 1603 an office had been instituted, or rather revived, for the more solemn reception of the Ambassadors by the title of Master of the Ceremonies, with a salary of £200 per annum. Sir Lewis Lewkenor was the first holder of the post. The worthy knight’s emoluments were not confined to his salary, for Stow tells us that when, in March, 1605, he was sent by the Lords of the Council to the foreign Ambassadors to contradict officially a report of James I’s death which had been spread, the Spanish Ambassador was “ravished with a soddaine joy, and gave unto Sir Lewis Lewkner (_sic_) a very great chaigne of gold, of a large value.” [54] Greenwich Palace, on the site where now stands the Naval Hospital, had been a favourite residence of Henry VIII and Elizabeth, but the Stuarts appear to have resided there but little. [55] Sir Edward Sackville, fourth Earl of Dorset (1591-1652). He was one of the handsomest men of his time, and in 1613 had become notorious as the hero of a duel, fought on a piece of ground specially purchased for the purpose near Bergen-op-Zoom, in which he had killed Edward Bruce, second Lord Kinloss, and been himself severely wounded. He had been ambassador in France for a short time in 1621 and again in 1623.