Darpent was recommended to my
Lord Clarendon as too useful a secretary to be parted with, and
therewith the great folk remembered that I came of an old Cavalier
family. Indeed Queen Henrietta had promised my mother and sister to
seek me out, though may be she would never have recollected it.
After all it was the Duke of Gloucester who actually came and found
me, riding up to our door with only one gentleman, and he no other
than good old Sir Francis Ommaney.
Prince Henry was a fine youth, far handsomer and more like his
blessed father than his brothers, and with as bright a wit and as
winning and gracious as the King. He reproached me for not having
come to see his mother, and asked merrily if I had turned Roundhead
as well Frondeuse. I told him I had a good excuse, and showed him my
three children, the youngest not yet a month old, and the other two
staring open-mouthed to see a Prince so like other gentlemen.
Whereupon he asked if the little one was yet christened, and did him
the honour to offer to be his godfather; and he noted that little
Eustace promised to be like his uncle, and spake, with tears in his
eyes, of the blessing my brother had been to him in his earlier stay
at Paris, and how the remembrance of that example had helped him
through the days when he had to undergo the same persuasions to
forsake his father's Church.
So whereas the two first christenings had been done privately, as
among those under persecution, Master Harry was baptized in state and
splendour in St.
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