He was now accredited to the English ambassador with the title of Henry VIII.'s 'Colonel,' and enjoyed the consideration accorded to a powerful monarch's privy agent.
[Footnote 228: See Rawdon Brown's _Calendar of State Papers_, vol.iv.] [Footnote 229: See Botta, Book IV., for the story of Lodovico's intrigues at Siena.] His pension amounted to fifty crowns a month, while he kept eight captains at his orders, each of whom received half that sum as pay.
These subordinates were people of some social standing.

We find among them a Trissino of Vicenza and a Bonifacio of Verona, the one entitled Marquis and the other Count.

What the object of Lodovico's residence in Italy might be, did not appear.

Though he carried letters of recommendation from the English Court, he laid no claim to the rank of diplomatic envoy.

But it was tolerably well known that he employed himself in levying troops.