In the summer, when a month had gone by without any word arriving from the Prince, who had been wont before to write often to his father, King James, then afflicted with the gout, and sick also in mind, conceived that his dear Baby Charles stood in peril of captivity, and went about wringing his hands, and crying with tears that his only sweet son would never see his old dear dad again. Whereupon the great person aforesaid resolved to send some staid and discreet person privily to Madrid to have an eye upon the Prince, and to bring him away, even by kidnapping, if he were in truth menaced by any danger. And bethinking him of my grandfather, and how he had acquit himself well in many divers adventures, and moreover had had dealings with the Spaniards, he sent for him and dispatched him forth on that errand. As it fell out, my grandfather had his pains for nought. The Prince, with that deceitfulness which has brought his present woes upon him, having made promises which he knew he could never perform, departed from Madrid, leaving, as the custom with royal persons is, a proxy to wed the Infanta, ten days after the Pope’s dispensation should come to hand, although he was in truth already minded to break off the match. Upon his return, the great person acquainted King James with what he had done, and the King sent for my grandfather, and blessed him with many tears, and dubbed him knight. Thereafter Sir Christopher dwelt only in the country, beholding with troubled eyes the headlong gait of Baby Charles after that he became King. In the year 1624 my father, having proceeded Master of Arts at Oxford, became parson of a parish in Wiltshire, and wedded the daughter of a neighbour gentleman, and in the next year I was born. When I was sixteen, and a scholar of Winchester, my grandfather related to me the passages of his life which I have set forth in these writings. Five years afterward, when the Rebellion was at its height, and my father held obstinately for the King, he was haled before the Committee of Sequestration, and charged in that he had incited his parishioners to attend the King’s rendezvous at Austin’s Cross and also helped the royal garrison at Longford Castle. By this Committee being ejected from his living, he returned to his father’s house, and there abode. And in the next year, on November 15, the very day when King Charles crept into Carisbrooke Castle, my grandfather died, to the sorrow of us who had the chiefest cause to love him, and of the friends and neighbours among whom he had lived in all honour and righteousness. RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED, BRUNSWICK STREET, STAMFORD STREET, S.E., AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.