"May it please your Excellence,

"There is nothing happens here that can be worthy of your knowledge
but you meet with it doubtless long before I could send it,--indeed,
I think, long before I know it,--so that I cannot present you with
any English news: my still keeping in from the open cold air makes
me a mere winter stranger in my own country. The best news I have
heard since I had the honour to see you, and that which brought me
with it an ample store of gladness, was the assurance of your
Excellence's safety, which a false rumour with great confidence had
utterly destroyed here. There is none living can with more hearty
affection wish all happiness to you, and good success in your great
employment there, and a safe and timely return, than doth most
really,

"Your Excellence's most obliged
"and most humble servant,
"J. SELDEN.
"_Whitefriars, February 10, 1653._"

The occasion of that passage in his letter of a false rumour was news
brought into England that Whitelocke was stabbed and murdered in Sweden;
and thus his death was with much confidence reported from several hands,
and from divers intelligences out of several parts of Christendom.
Whitelocke's friends were much startled at this news, and the more
because of former intelligences of designs of that nature against him,
whereof they wrote him word; and he was glad to read the news, and that,
through the goodness of God, he was able to confute those reports. They
were kept from Whitelocke's wife by the care of his friends, till one in
gladness came to give her joy that the ill news of her husband was not