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 marriage he lost his senses, but soon recovering from that disorder, he continued in great esteem at court for his poetical writings.  In the dedication of his poems to King Charles ii. he tells us that he had been discouraged by King Charles I. from writing verses.

’One morning (says he) when I was waiting upon the King at Causham, smiling upon me, he said he could tell me some news of myself, which was that he had seen some verses of mine the evening before (being those to Sir Robert 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 having little else to do, they might vent the over-flowings 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.’  This is a strong instance of his duty to the King; but no great compliment to his Majesty’s taste:  nor was the public much obliged to the Monarch for this admonition to our author.

But King Charles ii being of an humour more sprightly than his father, was a professed encourager of poetry, and in his time a race of wits sprung up, unequalled by those of any other reign.

This monarch was particularly delighted with the poetry of our author, especially when he had the happiness to wait upon him, in Holland and Flanders; and he was pleased sometimes to give him arguments to write upon, and divert the evil hours of their banishment, which now and then, Sir John tells us, he acquitted himself not much short of his Majesty’s expectation.