,
Led by the found, I roam from shade to shade,
By god-like poets venerable made:
Here his last lays majestic Denham sung,
There the last numbers flow'd from Cowley's tongue.

In the year 1647 he was entrusted by the Queen with a message to the
King, then in the hands of the army, and employed in other affairs,
relating to, his Majesty. In his dedication of his poems to Charles II.
he observes, that after the delivery of the person of his royal father
into the hands of the army, he undertook for the Queen-mother, to get
access to his Majesty, which he did by means of Hugh Peters; and upon
this occasion, the King discoursed with him without reserve upon the
state of his affairs. At his departure from Hampton-court, says he,
'The King commanded me to stay privately in London, to send to him and
receive from him all his letters, from and to all his correspondents, at
home and abroad, and I was furnished with nine several cyphers in order
to it. Which I trust I performed with great safety to the persons with
whom we corresponded; but about nine months after being discovered by
their knowledge of Mr. Cowley's hand, I happily escaped both for myself
and those who held correspondence with me.'

In April 1648 he conveyed away James duke of York, then under the
tuition of Algernon earl of Northumberland, from St. James's, and
carried him into France, to the prince of Wales and Queenmother.
This circumstance is related by Wood, but Clarendon, who is a higher
authority, says, that the duke went off with colonel Bamfield only,
who contrived the means of his escape. Not long after, he was sent
embassador to the King of Poland, in conjunction with lord Crofts,
to whom he addresses a poem written on their journey; from whence he
brought ten thousand pounds for his Majesty, by the decimation of his
Scottish subjects there.

About the year 1652, he returned into England, and was well received by
the earl of Pembroke at Wilton, and continued with that nobleman about a
year; for his own fortune by the expence he was at during the civil war,
and his unconquerable itch of gaming was quite exhausted. From that year
to the restoration, there are no accounts of our author; but as soon
as his Majesty returned, he entered upon the office of surveyor of his
Majesty's buildings, in the room of Inigo Jones, deceased; and at the
coronation of King Charles II. was created a knight of the Bath. Upon
some discontent arising from his second