[100] He gave notice to
foreign ambassadors, that he should not any more "defray their diet,
nor provide coaches for them," &c. "This frugal purpose" cost Sir John
many altercations, who seems to view it as the glory of the British
monarch being on the wane. The unsettled state of Charles was appearing
in 1636, by the querulous narrative of the master of the ceremonies; the
etiquettes of the court were disturbed by the erratic course of its
great star; and the master of the ceremonies was reduced to keep blank
letters to superscribe, and address to any nobleman who was to be found,
from the absence of the great officers of state. On this occasion the
ambassador of the Duke of Mantua, who had long desired his parting
audience, when the king objected to the unfitness of the place he was
then in, replied, that, "if it were under a tree, it should be to him as
a palace."
Yet although we smile at this science of etiquette and these rigid forms
of ceremony, when they were altogether discarded a great statesman
lamented them, and found the inconvenience and mischief in the political
consequences which followed their neglect. Charles II., who was no
admirer of these regulated formalities of court etiquette, seems to have
broken up the pomp and pride of the former master of the ceremonies; and
the grave and great chancellor of human nature, as Warburton calls
Clarendon, censured and felt all the inconveniences of this open
intercourse of an ambassador with the king.
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