“My dear Lord, my heart is yet full fraughted, and I can say much more for myself, were I not ashamed of giving your Grace so great a trouble with my scribbling, which I will thus end, promising to smother as long as may be, my deplorable condition, and worse usage, but it will at last fly over the whole world to the disheartening of all zealous and loyal subjects; unless such a true-hearted Englishman and faithful servant as your Grace do awaken his Majesty out of the lethargy my enemies have cast him into, not to be sensible of what I have done or suffered. Cardinal Mazarine presented me to his King with these words, ‘Sire, whosoever hath loyalty or religion in recommendation, must honour this well-born person;’ and the Queen-mother, now Dowager, hath often said to have heard her husband say, that next to her and his children, he was bound to take a care of me, of whom it may be now verified, qui jacet in terra non habet unde cadet, I am cast to the ground, I can fall no lower.” This month the Marquis appears to have obtained the loan of £200, for which a draft receipt[E] is extant, as follows:-- “I, Edward Somerset, Earl and Marquis of Worcester, do confess and acknowledge to have received and borrowed of **** the full sum of two hundred pounds sterling, for the assurance thereof I do constitute him the said *** to be receiver of two hundred pounds, payable from the Right Honourable the Lord High Chancellor of England, the Earl of Clarendon, at Michaelmas next, which shall be in the year of our Lord 1666, and therewith to repay himself the said two hundred pounds. Witness my hand and seal, this 30th day of Dec. 1665. “WORCESTER. “Signed, sealed and delivered “in presence.” From 1662 to 1665, the Marquis of Worcester appears to have been pretty regular in his attendance at the House of Peers. But the last we hear of him was on the 31st of October, 1665. When the House met on the 1st of October, 1666, the Marquis was absent, being “excused,” possibly from the state of his health, as he was never present afterwards.[F] About the same time we have his Petition for the appointment of a Committee of Inquiry:--[G] “To the King’s Most Excellent Majesty.--The most humble Petition of Edward, Marquis of Worcester:-- “SHEWETH,