Lives of the last four princesses of the royal house of Stuart

1655.] DANIEL ORIEL'S LETTEES TO KING CHARLES. 87
of O'Niel and his reasons for giving it, but strange to say,
it was wholly unavailing. From his next letter to his
master, it appears the Princess was immovably bent on
pursuing her design.
" In my last," observes O'Niel, " I have writ to your
majesty, what all here thought of her absence at Cologne,
and what ruin they think this journey to France will draw
after it. I do not find it lessens anything of her passion
for it : the more she is dissuaded the more violent she is,
which made me persuade Monsieur Heenvliet, not to
oppose her any more, lest it should increase her indis-
position, but to take care there should be no money for
the journey ; by which 1 hope, with what your majesty can
persuade the Queen to do, she shall be brought to reason.
The doctor has written, by this post, earnestly to her to go,
and insists it is for her health to make such a journey in
January. By this post she has sent a list of near seventy
persons to the Queen, that she intends shall be of her
train, I believe not above half will be lodged in the
Palais Koyal."*
Poor O'Neil, at the same time he was exerting all
his powers of reason and persuasion, to induce the
Princess-royal to give up the unseasonable journey to
Paris, on which she had set her mind, was troubled by his
royal master's command for him to procure a suit of rich
sables and a muff, for the purchase of which there were
no funds. Liveries for ten persons were also ordered with
like recklessness by the penniless monarch.
" I should most willingly have obeyed your majesty's
commands," writes O'Neil, " if I had money or credit for
to do it, but I have none of my own, nor do I see till
February that there is any for your majesty."!
* Hague, December 3rd, 1655.
t Ibid, December 14th. Thnrloe's ' State Papers,' vol. i. p. 655.