Cathedrals -- England; England -- Description and travel
had repudiated, was well received. The truth was, he was in grave money
difficulties, and indeed in 1603 was arrested by the Venetians and
imprisoned "in a certain obscure island near unto Scio." The English
Government, however, came to his aid and obtained his release, but
refused him permission to return to England. He went to Prague, and
thence on the business of the Emperor to Morocco. There he was received
in great state and remained five months. Before leaving, however, he
released certain Portuguese whom he found in slavery, and sailed with
them for Lisbon, where he hoped to reimburse himself for their ransom.
In this he was disappointed, so on he went to Madrid, where he was made
very much of and promised the Order of Sant'Iago. In the service now of
Spain, he went to Naples in 1607, after a visit to the Emperor at
Prague where he was created a Count of the Holy Roman Empire. He seems
to have travelled considerably in Southern Italy, and after a brief
visit, to obtain money, to Madrid, set out for Sicily in command of a
fleet to attack the Moors and Turks. He achieved nothing and was
dismissed. In 1611 he appeared again in Madrid in utter poverty, but
the King took compassion upon him and gave him a pension, and in Madrid
he remained writing an account of his adventures till he died in
beggary. The English ambassador notes in 1619, "The poor man sometimes
comes to my house and is as full of vanity as ever he was, making
himself believe that he shall one day be a great prince." It might
indeed seem a long road from Wiston under the Downs to the Gulf of
Guinea, the Quays of Venice, Constantinople, the Euphrates, Babylon,
Moscow, Prague, Rome, and Morocco, to die at last a beggar in purse,
but in heart a great Prince in Madrid.
Now, when I had been reminded of all this, I was directed to visit
Buncton Chapel to the north of Wiston Park, where I found indeed some
Norman work in the nave and chancel arch. And so I went on my way
through the failing afternoon by that beautiful road within sight of
the high Downs to the Washington Inn, where I slept, for it is a quiet
place not to be passed by.
And on the morrow I went on my way, still through as fair a country as
is to be found in all South England, through Storrington, and so by way
of Parham Park, with its noble Elizabethan house and little church with
the last leaden font in Sussex, a work of the fourteenth century, to
Amberley in the meads of the Arun, a dear and beautiful place.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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