Alchymist, which I heare this tearme is reviv’d, and the newe playe a friend of mine sent to Sʳ John Sucklyn and Tom Carew (the best witts of the time) to correct. But for want of these gentile recreations, I must content my selfe here with the Studie of Shackspeare, and the historie of Woemen, all my Countrie Librarie. Newes have I none to send you, onely at my Lady Mores wee have lately had a ball, where your Company was much wished. I had intended to ha’ requited ’um with another at Wrest, and given ’um the addition of a small banquet, but they desired it might be put off till you come downe, that your presence mayᵉ crowne the meeting. I beseech you at your best leisure honour me with a few lines from your faire hand. “Your most humble and most affectionate servant, “ANN MERRICKE. “Wrest, Janua: 21, 1638.” Driving and walking became daily more fashionable at the Piccadilly end of Hyde Park. The gay and frivolous George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, was wont to trip along in all his frills and frippery, or sitting stately in his coach drawn by six horses, joking with King Charles, and urging the monarch to some fresh imprudence. Many looked darkly on the silly intercourse between these two men. Charles, clinging to the ambitions of his powerful minister, with the obstinacy of a weak and incapable nature, was far advanced on the way to the scaffold, when John Fenton,—mixing with the crowds assembled at Portsmouth to witness Buckingham’s departure for France,—stabbed the favourite to the heart. [Illustration: Queen Henrietta Maria’s Penance at Tyburn beneath the “Triple Tree.” _From an old Print in the Crowle Collection, British Museum._] An incident of which much has been made, and which there is little reason to doubt was grossly exaggerated by the religious bigots of the time, associated Charles’s Queen, Henrietta Maria, with Hyde Park. The early years of his French marriage were certainly not happy, the meddling household of the Queen’s French attendants and Catholic priests being responsible for the luckless monarch’s domestic broils. His fierce hatred of their interference obtains expression in a letter to Buckingham, by virtue of which the lot were “sent packing.” It is addressed to his “faithful, constant, loving friend Steenie”: “I command you to send all the French away to-morrow out of the towne, if you can by fair meanes (but stike not long in disputing), otherwise force them away, dryving them away lyke so manie wilde beasts, until ye have shipped them, and so the devil goe with them. Let me heare no answer, but of the performance of my command.” Whatever his subsequent weakness, Charles I. was at least in early years of kingship a forceful letter-writer.