raits yonder in the
Palatinate. What do these Papists here?

That is the only letter written on Christmas day in the English
"Domestic Archives" for that year! Christmas is for frolic here, not for
letter-writing, nor house-building, if one's houses be only built
already!

But on the 27th, Wednesday, "Lord Arundel has gone to meet the French
Ambassador at Gravesend." And a very pretty time it seems they had at
Gravesend, when you look on the back of the embroidery. Arundel called
on Cadenet at his lodgings, and Cadenet did not meet him till he came to
the stair--head of his chamber-door--nor did he accompany him further
when he left. But Arundel was even with him the next morning. He
appointed his meeting for the return call _in the street_; and when the
barges had come up to Somerset House, where the party was to stay,
Arundel left the Ambassador, telling him that there were gentlemen who
would show him his lodging. The King was so angry that he made Cadenet
apologize. Alas for the Court of Governor John Carver on this
side,--four days old to-day--if Massasoit should send us an ambassador!
_We_ shall have to receive him in the street, unless he likes to come
into a palace without a roof! But, fortunately, he does not send till we
are ready!

The Domestic Archives give another glimpse:

Dec. 30. Thomas Locke to Carleton: "The French Ambassador has arrived at
Somerset House with a train so large that some of the seats at
Westminster Hall had to be pulled down to make room at their audience."
And in letters from the same to the same, of January 7, are accounts of
entertainments given to the Ambassador at his first audience (on that
Sunday), on the 4th at Parliament House, on the 6th at a masque at
Whitehall, where none were allowed below the rank of a Baron--and at
Lord Doncaster's entertainment--where "six thousand ounces of gold are
set out as a present," says the letter, but this I do not believe. At
the Hampton entertainment, and at the masque there were some disputes
about precedency, says John Chamberlain in another letter. Dear John
Chamberlain, where are there not such disputes? At the masque at
Whitehall he says, "a Puritan was flouted and abused, which was thought
unseemly, considering the state of the French Protestants." Let the
Marshal come over to Gov. John Carver's court and see one of our masques
there, if he wants to know about Puritans. "At Lord Doncaster's house
the feast cost three thousand pounds