was confident of obtaining from Cromwell great advantages for the English Catholics, and the Protector, it seems, fully trusted the intentions and the abilities of this strange and fascinating personality who came to him out of the enemy’s camp.  Delicate business was given into his hands, that of preventing an alliance between France and Spain.  Prynne, in his True and Perfect Narrative, bitterly denounced Cromwell in “that Sir Kenelme Digby was his particular favourite, and lodged at Whitehall; that Maurice Conry, Provincial of the Franciscans in England, and other priests, had his protections under hand and seal.”  Of Digby’s feelings towards Cromwell there is clear evidence.  It seems his loyalty had been questioned in his absence; and he writes from Paris, in March, 1656, to Secretary Thurloe:  “Whatsoever may be disliked by my Lord Protector and the Council of State must be detested by me.  My obligations to his Highness are so great, etc.”  And again, “How passionate I am for his service and for his honour and interest, even to exposing my life for him.”  The intimacy, begun on both sides in mere policy, had evidently grown to friendship and mutual admiration.

The illness of which he died had already attacked him, and it was for his health he went to Montpelier in 1658.  His stay in that seat of learning was made memorable by his reading to a company of eminent persons his Discourse on the Powder of Sympathy, which has brought him more fame and more ridicule than anything else.  I have already referred to the secret confided to him as a youth in Florence by the Carmelite Friar from the East.  When he came back to England he spoke of the great discovery, and had occasion to use it.  Howell—­of the Familiar Letters—­was, according to Sir Kenelm’s account, wounded while trying to part two friends who were fighting a duel.  His wounds were hastily tied up with his garter, and Digby was sent for.  Digby asked for the garter-bandage, and steeped it in a basin in which he had dissolved his secret powder (of vitriol).  Immediately Howell felt a “pleasing kind of freshnesse, as it were a wet cold napkin did spread over my hand.”  “Take off all the plasters and wrappings,” said Digby.  “Keep the wound clean, and neither too hot nor too cold.”  Afterwards he took the bandage from the water, and hung it before a great fire to dry; whereupon Howell’s servant came running to say his master was much worse, and in a burning fever.  The bandage plunged once more in the dissolved powder, soothed the patient at a distance; and in a few days the wound was healed.  Digby declared that James and Buckingham were interested witnesses of the cure; and the king “drolled with him about it (which he could do with a very good grace).”  He said he divulged the secret to the Duke of Mayenne.  After the Duke’s death his surgeon sold it so that “now there is scarce any country barber but knows it.”  Why did not Digby try it on his wounded men at Scanderoon?