Ambrosius Layton, our subject, and brother of the same Order, has delivered to us your Reverence's letter, and from it we very well understand the matters concerning the said Order, which your Reverence had committed to his charge to be delivered to us; but we have delayed to return an answer, and we still delay, because we have understood that a general Chapter of your whole Order will be held in a short time, to which we doubt not that the more prudent and experienced of the brethren of the Order will come, and we trust that, by the general wish and counsel of all of you, a place may be selected for this illustrious Order which may be best suited for the imperial support and advancement of the Republic, and for the assailing of the infidels. When therefore your Reverence shall have made us acquainted with the place selected for the said Chapter, you shall find us no less prompt and ready than any other Christan prince in all things which can serve to the advantage and support of the said Order. From our Palace at Richmond, Fourth day (month omitted), 1526, Your good friend, HENRY REX. That the subject of the above letters may be better understood, it may be necessary to state that L'Isle Adam was driven out of Rhodes by the Sultan Solyman, after a most desperate and sanguinary struggle, which continued almost without intermission from the 26th of June to the 18th of December, 1523. From this date to the month of October, 1530, nearly seven years, the Order of St. John of Jerusalem had no fixed residence, and the Grand Master was a wanderer in Italy, either in Rome, Viterbo, Naples, or Syracuse, while begging of the Christian Powers to assist him in recovering Rhodes, or Charles V. to give him Malta as a residence for his convent. It was during this period that the above letters, and some others which I purpose sending hereafter, were written. WILLIAM WINTHROP. * * * * * PENNY SIGHTS AND EXHIBITIONS IN THE REIGN OF JAMES I. The following curious list may amuse some of your readers. I met with it among the host of panegyrical verses prefixed to Master Tom Coryate's _Crudities_, published in 1611. Even in those days it will be admitted that the English were rather fond of such things, and glorious Will himself bears testimony to the fact. (See _Tempest_, Act II. Sc. 2.) The hexameter verses are anonymous; perhaps one of your well-read antiquaries may be able to assign to them the author, and be disposed to annotate them. I would particularly ask when was Drake's ship broken up, and is there any date on the chair[1] made from the wood, which is now to be seen at the Bodleian Library, Oxford?