In Henry VIII.’s time Durham House had been the scene of great banquets given by the challengers after the six days’ tournament that celebrated the butcher king’s ill-omened marriage with that “Flemish mare,” as he used ungallantly to call Anne of Cleves. To these sumptuous feasts the bruised and battered champions, together with all the House of Commons and Corporation of London, were invited. To reward the challengers, among whom was Oliver Cromwell’s ancestor, Dick o’ the Diamond, the burly king gave them each a yearly pension of one hundred marks out of the plundered revenues of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem. Later a mint was established at Durham House by Sir William Sherrington, to aid the Lord Admiral Seymour in his treasonable efforts against his brother, the Protector, who finally offered him up a victim to his ambition. Sherrington, however, escaped, and worked the mint for the equally unfortunate Protector. But no loss of heads could warn the Strand noblemen. It was here that the ambitious Duke of Northumberland married his son, Lord Guildford Dudley, to poor meek-hearted Lady Jane Grey, who, the luckless queen of an hour, longed only for her Greek books, her good old tutor Ascham, and the quiet country house where she had been so happy. On that great day for the duke, Lady Jane’s sister also married Lord Herbert, and Lord Hastings espoused Lady Catherine Dudley. It was from Durham House that the poor martyr of ambition, Lady Jane, was escorted in pomp to the Tower, which was so soon to be her grave. In 1560 Jean Nicot, a French ambassador, had carried tobacco from Lisbon to Paris. In 1586[172] Drake brought tobacco from Raleigh’s colony in Virginia. Raleigh was fond of smoking over his books. His tobacco-box still existed in 1715; it was of gilt leather, as large as a muff-case, and contained cases for sixteen pipes.[173] There is a doubtful legend about Raleigh’s first pipe, the scene of which may be not unfairly laid at Durham House, where Raleigh then lived. One day his servant, bringing in a tankard of spiced ale as usual into the turret study, found Raleigh (it is said) smoking a pipe over his folios. The clown, seeing smoke issue in clouds from his master’s mouth, dropped the tankard in a fright, and ran downstairs to shout to the family that “master was on fire, and that he would be burnt to ashes if they did not run directly to his help.”[174]