The humiliation of his position was forced upon his notice, for little men began to cheat him in little ways, and he could find no redress. The law knew him but as dead. He writes to Levinus Muncke, secretary to Lord Cranborne.... "I solde of late two peeces of ordenance to one Mr. Aloblaster, a marchant, whome you knowe. Hee that made the bargayne between us was one Thomas Scott, a broker,--one that I have done much for in my tyme, and one that, since I came back from Winchester, offred to sell his howse for me, if I wanted, with protestations too shamless to be dissembled. But having gotten my mony into his hands which Mr. Aloblaster sent mee and five pound waight of tobacco, hath sold the tobacco and reteyneth my money; finding mee now fitt for all men to tread on." The man jackal is more impatient than his animal brother. For nearly two years Ralegh beat against the prison walls, bruising himself, unable to give up hope that some measure of freedom might be his. His health failed. The plague broke out in the Tower. A woman with the plague on her slept in the next room to his eldest son, with only a partition of paper between them. Every trouble and annoyance fell upon him. Indifference could not come to him with its peace of apathy. He continued to live and to resent and to suffer. A weaker man would have broken down, would have given up this horrible struggle for existence against such overwhelming odds. Ralegh did not. And slowly he emerged from the struggle the conqueror even of these circumstances. He found work and worked. At first he obtained permission to turn a little disused hen-house that leant against a wall in the Tower into a laboratory. He made lotions and a medicine, which remained in constant use for very many years after his death. In modern times that alone would have been sufficient to give him the prestige of millions, and probably with a little discreet management, a peerage. Few men have turned necessity to gain (that is the quality of the warrior in life) so greatly as Ralegh, such constricting necessity to such glorious gain. By sheer will power he kept in touch with the life, from which he was excluded. He wrote pamphlets on questions that were paramount in interest. His treatise on _The Prerogative of Parliaments_ shows him in the vanguard of the fighters for liberty of thought, before that movement developed into a baser servitude. He wrote arguments against an alliance by marriage with Spain. He wrote at Prince Henry's request a treatise on the building and management of ships. In every sphere his presence was felt. Ladies were eager to use his lotions for the preservation of beauty. His medicine was famous. The Queen sent an urgent messenger to the Tower when the Prince was dying, thinking to save her son's life by its means. But it was too late. The medicine only served to alleviate the agony of his last moments.