On the Sunday after the Prince’s departure, we are told by Mr. Chamberlain, “that all the Council about the town came to Paul’s Cross, when it was expected somewhat would have been said; but the preacher had his lesson in _hæc verba_, only to pray for the Prince’s prosperous journey and safe return, and the next day the Bishop, convening all his clergy, gave them the same charge; but some of them had anticipated the commandment and proceeded further, whereof one desired God to be merciful unto him now that he was going to the House of Rimmon.” But all were not so careful; old Dr White, Prebend of St. Paul’s, was dismissed for praying that the King and Prince might be preserved from any that should “go about to withdraw them from their first love, and natural religion.” This was interpreted as a sort of libel.[411] Footnote 411: Inedited Letter in the State Paper Office, from Mr. Chamberlain to Sir D. Carleton, 1623. And now Buckingham was, for the second time, in the great centre of all civilization. Paris was probably unchanged; but few persons who had known the Court of France in the days of the great Henry could have recognized it during the weak rule of his successor. Henry IV., adding another instance in corroboration of the remark, that during five hundred years not one of the French monarchs had attained the age of sixty, had now been dead twelve years.[412] To that manly and powerful monarch, bred up in the house of a peasant, his iron nerves braced by hazards almost incredible; his courage proved in battles a hundred and twenty-five in number; his hardihood so great that for two years he was never seen unbooted; being perpetually in the exercise of war and hunting—to this hero, as prudent and sagacious as he was brave, had succeeded a dull and heavy boy, slow in speech, yet quick to avenge, on any of his young companions, petty or imagined slights. Timid and even dastardly by nature, the early pusillanimity of Louis the Thirteenth had attracted the notice of his father. “Faut-il donc que je sois père d’un poltron!” was the involuntary exclamation of Henry of Navarre. Such was, however, his successor, who had, in truth, far more of his mother’s disposition than of his father’s frank and princely nature. He had the Medicean fierceness and imperiousness of character, coupled with an abject spirit, which was fostered, whilst cramped, by the potent dominion of his mother over his mind.[413] Footnote 412: He was killed on May 10th, 1610.—See Sir George Carew’s Relation of the State of France under Henry IV., in Birch’s Negotiations, p. 481. Footnote 413: Birch’s Negotiations, p. 492.