I took a wagon for Dort, to be present at the reception of the Queen-mother, Marie de Medicis, Dowager ((widower – GS)) of France, widow of Henry the Great, and mother to the French King, Louis XIII., and the Queen of England, whence she newly arrived, tossed to and fro by the various fortune of her life. From this city, she designed for Cologne, conducted by the Earl of Arundel and the Herr Van Bredrod ((Possibly refers to a member of the Van Brederode family – a noble family from the Netherlands -GS)) . At this interview, I saw the Princess of Orange, and the lady her daughter ((I believe this to be the Countess Louise Henriette of Nassau – GS)) , afterward married to the House of Brandenburgh. There was little remarkable in this reception befitting the greatness of her person; but an universal discontent, which accompanied that unlucky woman wherever she went (([In 1638 she had come to England from Holland. But the popular hatred of popery drove her back again in August, 1641. Lilly, the astrologer, thus speaks of her at this time:—“I beheld the Old Queen Mother of France departing from London, in Company of Thomas Earl of Arundel; a sad Spectacle of Mortality it was, and produced Tears from mine Eyes, and many other Beholders, to see an Aged lean decrepid poor Queen, ready for her Grave, necessitated to depart hence, having no Place of Residence in this World left her ” (Life and Death of King Charles, 1715, p. 49). Holland declined to harbour her, and she sought an asylum in the electorate of Cologne, where she died, 3rd July, 1642. There is a portrait of her by the younger Pourbus at Hampton Court, apparently painted subsequent to the assassination of Henry IV. by Ravaillac in l6l0.]. –AD))