Note 264 — LETTER IV. (continued 2)

The value of this balsam is illustrated by the amusing account of the adventures in Ireland of Jean de Montluc, Bishop of Valence, given by Sir James Melville in his Memoirs (page 10, Bannatyne Club edition). Like his friend Busbecq (see vol. ii. p. 34, Letter to Maximilian, XI.) he had been ambassador at the Turkish Court, and was afterwards sent in the same capacity to Scotland. On his return he paid a visit to Ireland to intrigue with the chieftains who were hostile to England. Melville, then a boy of fourteen, was sent back with him by Mary of Guise, the Queen Regent, to be a page to her daughter Queen Mary. They landed on Shrove Tuesday, 1550, in Lough Foyle, and were taken to Odocarte’s house. A woman, who had been brought to entertain the bishop, and was kept quietly in his chamber, ‘found a little glass within a case standing in a window, for the coffers were all wet by the sea waves that fell in the ship during the storm. But she believed it had been ordained to eat, because it had an odoriphant smell; therefore she licked it clean out; which put the bishop in such a rage that he cried out for impatience.... But the Irishmen and his own servants laughed at the matter, for it was a phial of the only most precious balm that grew in Egypt, which Solyman the great Turk had given in a present to the said bishop, after he had been two years ambassador for the King of France in Turkey, and was esteemed worth two thousand crowns.’