There is surely “no finer story to be told than this; nor can there have been, since first men began to slay each other, many sights more noble than that of the child, tearful, excited, triumphant, set upon the great charger, a world too high for him, and led up the hill at the head of his dying father’s troop.” What wonder that the King knighted the boy-warrior at Bristol on the 3rd of August following, for his bravery at Lansdowne fight (cf. Metcalfe’s “Book of Knights,” p. 200), or that Prince Charles, his own contemporary in age, attracted by his heroism, chose him out of all others to be his personal attendant and intimate friend ever afterwards--a friendship that was only broken by death! We wish that we could bring ourselves to believe that the letter (on page 117), breathing the spirit of rare nobility, and stated by Mr. Hawker to have been written to Lady Grace Grenvile after her valiant husband’s death by his true-hearted giant retainer, was authentic. We fear, however, that it originated in the study at Morwenstow, and is the product of Mr. Hawker’s own versatile and gifted pen. What became of Anthony Payne after this is not certainly known. Did he return with his master’s body to Stowe, and remain on there to protect his mistress during the four unquiet years of her widowhood? There is, indeed, a tradition which would bear out this supposition, if it is true. It relates that the poor Queen, in her flight (within a week after her confinement) from Exeter, to avoid capture by Lord Essex, escaped to Okehampton with a small body of attendants, where she was met by Anthony Payne, who guided her to Stowe by a series of tracks and lanes, in order to secure greater secrecy, and that from Stowe she went to Lanherne, and so on to Falmouth, whence she escaped to France. In confirmation of this theory a letter is said to have been seen from Lady Grace, in which she mentions the fact of the Queen having slept at Stowe, and of her departure to Lanherne. But the letter is no longer extant, if it ever existed, and it has been proved pretty conclusively by Mr. Paul Q. Karkeek, in a very interesting paper on the subject of the Queen’s flight, that from Okehampton the Queen went to Launceston, the most direct route, under the escort of Prince Maurice, and from Launceston to Falmouth. Or did Anthony Payne remain on with his young master, who narrowly escaped meeting his father’s fate at the second battle of Newbury, and afterwards took a prominent part in the defence of the West under his uncle, Sir Richard Grenvile, and who so gallantly defended the Scilly Islands, the last rallying point of the Royalists, against Admiral Blake, in 1651, that he obtained exceptionally favourable terms when he was at last compelled to capitulate?