Wh. In doing so, you will render service to God, and find His blessing to accompany such most pious, most honourable, and truly royal endeavours; and I hope your Highness will not think amiss of this liberty which your servant hath taken, to speak to you of these things.

Pr. I am so far from thinking amiss of it or taking in ill part what you have said to me, that I do most heartily thank you for it, and do promise that I shall be mindful to put in practice the good counsel you have given me, as soon as it shall please God to give me an opportunity for it, and that the temper of this people will bear it; being convinced of the duty which lies upon me herein, and the service and honour which will thereby be done to God and to the people of this kingdom, both in respect to their temporal and eternal estate.

Wh. I am very glad to find your Royal Highness so sensible hereof, and shall humbly and earnestly leave it to your thoughts.

Pr. I hope I shall not forget it.[268]

They had other discourse touching the princes and states of Christendom, particularly of the House of Austria, and of the design of the Papists against the Protestants, the which, and the increase of the interest of Rome, Whitelocke said could not be better prevented than by a conjunction of the Protestants; to which the Prince fully agreed.  The Prince took his leave of Whitelocke with very great respect and civility.

After the Prince was gone, there came to Whitelocke Grave Eric Oxenstiern and Lagerfeldt, to take their leaves of Whitelocke, they being to go to Stockholm by command of the Ricksdag; and Grave Eric gave unto Whitelocke a paper, in French, of damage sustained by a Swedish ship taken and brought into London, which he recommended to Whitelocke to be a means that satisfaction might be procured.

[SN:  Whitelocke goes to a running at the ring.]

Whitelocke being informed that now at the Court, among other solemnities and entertainments to welcome the Prince, the gallants used the exercise and recreation of running at the ring, a pleasure noble and useful as to military affairs, improving horsemanship, and teaching the guidance of the lance, a weapon still used by horsemen in these parts of the world; this generous exercise having been in use in England in Whitelocke’s memory, who had seen the lords, in presence of the King and Queen and a multitude of spectators, in the tilt-yards at Whitehall and at St. James’s House, where the King, when he was Prince, used also that recreation:  it made Whitelocke the more desirous to see the same again, and whether, as they used it here, it were the same with that he had seen in England.  He went incognito in the coach of General Douglas, without any of his train, to the place where the running at the ring was.  He would not go into the room where the Queen and Prince and great lords were, but sat below in a room where the judges of the course were, with divers other gentlemen, who, though they knew Whitelocke very well, yet seeing him cast his cloak over his shoulder, as desiring not to be known, they would take no notice of him—­a civility in these and other countries usual.