eat
chamber, and appointing a moderator; and this exercise they found useful
and pleasant, and improving their language. To this end likewise they had
public declamations in Latin, himself giving them the question, as "an
quodcunque evenerit sit optimum," etc., so that his house was like an
academy.

_March 23, 1653._

[SN: Whitelocke again negotiates with the Queen.]

Whitelocke attended the Queen; and after some discourses of pleasantries,
they fell upon the treaty, and Whitelocke said to her:--

_Whitelocke._ My business, Madam, is now brought to a conclusion.

_Queen._ Is it to your liking?

_Wh._ Pardon me, Madam, if I say it is not at all to my liking; for in
the articles which Grave Eric sent me there were many particulars to
which I could not agree, and I much wondered to receive such articles
from him, being persuaded that your Majesty was before satisfied by me in
most of the particulars in them.

_Qu._ What are those particulars?

The articles Whitelocke had in readiness with him, and his observations
upon them, having taken pains this morning to compare their articles with
his own, and to frame his objections upon them. The Queen wrote down the
objections with her own hand, and then entered into a debate with
Whitelocke upon the whole, and seemed to be satisfied in most of the
points insisted on by Whitelocke; but was stiff upon the law relating to
ships of war which is mentioned in her eleventh article, and upon some
other particulars. After the debate, she desired that Whitelocke would
the next morning bring to her his objections in writing; and then she
said, "We will not be long before we come to a conclusion of this
business."

Whitelocke thought it convenient to make his addresses to the Queen
herself, and, as much as he could, to decline conferences with her
Commissioner Grave Eric, whom he found more than others averse and cross
to him in his treaty. And the Queen was pleased to admit Whitelocke to
this way, and was not displeased to have applications in this and other
affairs of the like nature to be made upon her person; whereof Whitelocke
had private information before from Piementelle, Woolfeldt, and others,
whose advice he pursued herein with good success.

Her Majesty also permitted Whitelocke to have a free debate with her upon
the points controverted, and would return answers to every argument with
as much reason and ingenuity as any of her Ministers of State, and be
sooner tha