Browne was but a little lad of five when his greatest townsman finished his heroic course in a sea-grave off Nombre de Dios, in 1596; but he kept his exploits in remembrance, and presently celebrated him as the— —valiant, well-resolvèd Man, Seeking new paths i’ th’ pathlesse Ocean. Besides the Drakes, there were several families of distinction in and about Tavistock when Browne was a boy: there were Slannings, Kellys, and Champernownes near by; and in the parish, Glanvills, Maynards, Peeks, and Fitz. In that year, 1596, there was born in the mansion at Fitzford the daughter of John Fitz and Bridget Courtenay, who, as Lady Howard, was to be so cruelly maligned by false rumours and fictitious romance. The family had been long settled at Fitzford, and a John Fitz was M.P. for Tavistock in 1427. Lady Howard’s grandfather married Mary Sydenham, of Brympton, Somerset; and at the back of their quiet tomb in the Parish Church is the kneeling figure of her father, Sir John Fitz. He was but a youth of fifteen at his father’s death, in 1589; and his riotous, wasted life was an ironical commentary on his kneeling posture. After a wild and reckless youth, in 1699, when he was twenty-five, he killed Nicholas Slanning, of Bickley, in a cowardly brawl. Coming home from a short sojourn abroad, he was more quiet for a while; but presently, returning from London, whither he had gone to be knighted at the Coronation of James I., he was more dissipated than ever. He drove his wife and daughters to seek refuge at Powderham, and upset the usually decent parish with drunkenness and disorder. At last, on a second journey to London, in a fit of mad panic, he killed the innkeeper at Twickenham, and then so stabbed himself that he died in a few days. His nine-year-old daughter, the prey of greedy guardians, after being forced into early marriages, enjoyed some years of wedded happiness with her third husband, Sir Charles Howard, fourth son of the Earl of Suffolk. Then, having suffered years of neglect and annoyance from her fourth husband, the clever soldier, but treacherous politician, Sir Richard, brother of the chivalrous Sir Bevil Grenville, at last, after Fitzford had been sacked by the Roundheads, and her husband had fled the country, she settled down in her old home for twenty-five quiet years, from 1646 to 1671. Her son, George Howard, managed her property, joined her in such local contributions as that, in 1670, for the “redemption of captives in Turkey,” and represented Tavistock with Lord William Russell in 1660. But as he died some weeks before her, Lady Howard left her large estates bordering the Tavy, the mansion of Fitzford, the pleasant country house of Walreddon, with many goodly farms, Browne’s favourite Ramsham amongst them, to her first cousin, Sir William Courtenay, of Powderham.