] should visit him
at all. The case is, in his quality of Resident he hath totally
declined the visiting either the Emperor's, or me, or the French
Ambassador; because the other two first, and then I, by their
example, did not assent to treat him with 'Senoria Illustrissima,'
and in our own houses with the hand and upper chair, this latter,
of giving him precedence in our own houses, being, I conceive, the
only point he absolutely insists upon. Now if we do him wrong in
this, why should we not right him whilst he is yet under the notion
of Resident? And if we do him none, why should we visit the Holland
Ambassador in our turn, when the Holland Resident, especially,
being the same person, will not visit us in this?
Here is a Danish Resident, and an Enviado of Genoa, who stand off upon
the very same terms both with those Ambassadors and with me. The
latter having obliged me, by message, to solicit for the King our
master's orders to guide me on behalf of his pretence, because I had
sent him word, that without such I could not in discretion and
civility, being a new comer, vary from the judgment and practice of my
seniors in this Court.
Your Honour, by your long and late experience here, will understand
the pinch of this business better than yet I do; who, by what I can
learn, am of opinion, that according to the style of this Court,
perhaps of all others likewise, a King's AMBASSADOR, in his own house,
doth not give the hand to another King's RESIDENT, much less
'illustrissima,' twenty years ago; but then again, I am informed, that
now these very Ambassadors of Germany and France, who may with justice
enough make scruple of that, may at the same time give
'illustrissima,' and, within their own doors the hand, to a Ducal
Ambassador, thereby preferring them to their own Residents: an old
controversy not easily decided, and yet in a fair way to be so, when
by strong inference we shall be found judges against ourselves.
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