In the latter end of the year 1641 he published a tragedy called the Sophy, which was greatly admired, and gave Mr. Waller occasion to say of our author, ’That he broke out like the Irish rebellion, threescore thousand strong, when no body was aware, nor in the Ieast expected it.’  Soon after this he was pricked for high sheriff for the county of Surry, and made governor of Farnham-Castle for the King; but not being well skilled in military affairs, he soon quitted that post and retired to his Majesty at Oxford, where he published an excellent poem called Cooper’s-hill, often reprinted before and since the restoration, with considerable alterations; it has been universally admired by all good judges, and was translated into Latin verse, by Mr. Moses Pengry of Oxford.

Mr. Dryden speaking of this piece, in his dedication of his Rival Ladies, says, that it is a poem, which, for the Majesty of the stile, will ever be the exact standard of good writing, and the noble author of an essay on human life, bestows upon it the most lavish encomium[3].  But of all the evidences in its favour, none is of greater authority, or more beautiful, than the following of Mr. Pope, in his Windsor Forest.

  Ye sacred nine, that all my soul possess,
  Whose raptures fire me, and whose visions bless;
  Bear me, O bear me, to sequester’d scenes,
  The bow’ry mazes, and surrounding greens;
  To Thames’s bank which fragrant breezes fill,
  Or where the muses sport on Cooper’s-hill. 
  (On Cooper’s hill eternal wreaths shall grow,
  While lasts the mountain, or while Thames shall flow.)
  I seem thro’ consecrated walks to rove,
  I hear soft music die along the grove,
  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.’