This Endymion Porter is the last of Herrick's friends with whom we shall concern ourselves, and in many respects the most interesting of them all. Originally in the service of Buckingham, he accompanied the Duke and Prince Charles on their visit to Spain, and passed into the latter's service some time in the year 1624 as a groom of the chamber. He made himself useful to the King in many ways, and as early as May 1625 was granted a pension of £500 a year for life, and three years later was assigned the invidious office of Collector of Fines to the Star Chamber, 'with a moiety of the fines he shall bring in.' Porter was as full also of projects as Steele himself, and turned them, it would seem, to much better account. Thus we hear of ventures of his in ships called the _Samaritan_ and the _Roebuck_, the latter of which proved so remunerative that the common sailors took £20 apiece as their share. He contracted to drain Somercoates Marsh in Lincolnshire, and complained to the Privy Council when his workmen were interfered with. In 1635 he joined with Lord Conway in petitioning the King for a grant of a kind of inspectorship of silks, for which dues were to be levied and _£_100 a year paid to the Treasury, the balance passing to the inspectors. Two years later Porter and his son George became deputies in the management of His Majesty's Posts. Then we hear of him as an assistant in the Corporation of Saltmakers of Yarmouth, and a little later he is concerned in the erection of a light-house and harbour at Filey, near Flamborough Head. An invention for perfecting bar-iron without the use of Scotch coal was his next venture, and, having apparently obtained a patent for this, he prays the King for a grant of the forest of Exmoor in fee-farm with a tenure in socage and the liberty of disafforestation. Next year (1638) he was given the reversion of the Surveyorship of Petty Customs in the Port of London (Chaucer's old post), and a little later on, with the Marquis of Hamilton, obtained leave from the King to examine all accounts made to his Majesty, and when they found any accountants to have deceived the King, to make what advantage they could, either by compounding with delinquents of that kind or by prosecuting them, the King to have one half the profit, and Porter and the Marquis the other. Many accountants, we are told, came in and offered very considerable compositions, so much more grist to Porter's ever busy mill. These grants and petitions, it must be confessed, shed but a sorry light on the way affairs were managed during the eleven years of Charles's personal government, but Porter knew how to make himself a favourite with the King by purchasing him works of art, conducting negotiations with Rubens and other painters, and many similar services. The State Papers which give us all these details of his business life tell us also some interesting scraps as to his taste in dress and at the table. He orders wine from abroad, and apparently uses his influence to get it in duty free, while a friend gratefully informs him that he has tried the largest soles he ever saw, fried them and pickled them according to Endymion's directions, and found them excellent. A husband who knows much about cookery does not always contribute to the easy digestion of family meals. If Endymion interfered much in this or other respects, he may probably have repented of it, for his wife, Olive, was plainly a little hot-tempered. While Endymion was absent in Spain the letters of husband and wife are full of pretty quarrels and reconciliations. 'Her will,' he writes once, 'must be done, or else there will be but little quiet'; and again,--'I wish no more wrangling till we meet, absence being punishment enough. I beg you not to beat George (their eldest son) so much, unless he be very like me. I will never beat Charles for being like you.' But Mrs. Porter could be submissive as well as provoking. Her brother tells her that Endymion is very angry, and she writes that--'She did not think he could have been so cruel to have stayed so long away, and not to forgive that which he knows was spoken in passion. She knows not how to beg his pardon, because she has broken word with him before, but she hopes his good nature will forgive her, and that he will come home.' Some day the temptation to piece together these married love-letters, with a sketch of what can be found out as to this interesting man, will become irresistible.[22] Here I must hasten to justify Porter's appearance on the present occasion. Five of Herrick's poems are addressed to him, all in the vein of a poet to a patron with whom he was on familiar terms.