On another sheet, written at the same time, but signed by “Steenie” alone, and perhaps written without the Prince’s knowledge, he says:—“The cheefest advertisment of all wee omitted in oure other letter, which was to let you know how we like your daughter, his wife, and my ladie mistris. Without flatterie, I think there is not a sweeter creature in the world. Babie Charles himself is so touched at the hart, that he confesses all he ever yett saw is nothinge to her.” The King, in his answer to this letter, dated March twenty-fifth, says:—“I have written a letre to the Condé d’Olivares, as both of you desired me, as full of thankes and kyndnes as can be desyred, as indeed he well deserves.“ “I know not,” says the King, in reply, “quhat ye meane by my acknowledging the Pope’s spirituall supremacie. I am sure ye wolde not have me to renounce my religion for all the world; but all I can guess at your meaning is, that it may be ye have an allusion to a passage in my booke against Bellarmine, quhaire I offer, if the Pope wold guyte his godheade, and usurping over Kings, to acknowledge him for the Cheefe Bishoppe, to whom all appeals of churchmen ought to lye _en dernier ressort_; the verie wordes I sende you heere inclosed, and that is the furthest my conscience will permit me to goe upon this pointe, for I am not a Monsieur, quho can shifte his religion as easilie as he can shifte his shirte quhen he commeth from tennice.” The passage in his hook, which the King fancied Buckingham might allude to (though he more probably had never read it), is thus written, in the King’s own hand, on a separate slip of paper: “And for myselfe, if that were yett the question, I wolde with all my hairte give my consent that the Bishoppe of Rome showlde have the first seate. I, being a Western king, wolde go with the Patriarche of the West. And for his temporall principalities over the seignorie of Rome, I do not quenell it nether, lett him in God’s name be primus Episcopus inter omnes Episcopos et Princeps Episcoporum, so it be no other wayes but as St. Peter was _Princeps Apostolorum_.”[436] Footnote 436: Harleian MSS., 6987.—Printed at length in Nichols. To these letters, Endymion Porter added an account in a letter to his wife, that the Prince and Duke were “most handsomely received. The King, Queen, and Infanta,” he adds, “drove out yesterday[437] in a coach, when the Prince, in another coach, saw his mistress, and was much stricken with her beauty.”[438] Footnote 437: March 10, 1622-23. Footnote 438: State Papers.