TO THE
KING
Sir
After the delivery of Your Royal Father's Person into the hands of the Army, I undertaking to the Queen Mother, that I would find some means to get access to him she was pleased to send me, and by the help of Hugh Peters I got my admittance, and coming well instructed from the Queen (his Majesty having been long kept in the dark) he was pleased to discourse very freely with me of the whole state of his Affairs: But, Sir, I will not launch into a History, instead of an Epistle. One morning waiting on him at Causham, smiling upon me, he said he could tell me some News of my self, which was, that he had seen some Verses of mine the Evening before (being those to Sir Richard Fanshaw) and asking me when I made them, I told him two or three years since; he was pleased to say, that having never seen them before, He was afraid I had written them since my return into England, and though he liked them well, He would advise me to write no more, alledging, that when men are young, and have little else to do, they might vent the overflowings of their Fancy that way; but when they were thought fit for more serious Employments, if they still persisted in that course, it would look as if they minded not the way to any better.
Whereupon I stood corrected as long as I had the honour to wait upon him, and at his departure from Hampton Court, he was pleased to command me to stay privately at 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 furnish'd with nine several Cyphers in order to it: Which 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 my self, and those that held correspondence with me; that time was too hot and busie for such idle speculations, but after I had the good fortune to wait upon Your Majesty in Holland and France, You were pleased sometimes to give me Arguments to divert and put off the evil hours of our Banishment, which now and then fell not short of Your Majesty's expectation.
After, when Your Majesty departing from St. Germans to Jersy, was pleased freely (without my asking) to confer upon me that place wherein I Have now the honour to serve You, I then gave over Poetical Lines,
