His presumption in meddling with questions of State, and in answering them in a manner opposite to the King's inclination, may have had something to do with the unexplained chastisement inflicted upon him in the summer of 1611. Whatever their cause, rebukes and curtailments of privileges neither silenced him nor lost him the goodwill of his friend. The Prince not long after sought his assistance in the building of a model ship. The vessel was christened 'The Prince,' and it proved an excellent sailer. The prisoner of the Tower wrote about it as if he smelt the sea-breezes. Twenty-nine years earlier he had proved himself a master in the art of ship-building. In his time, as he has recorded, 'the shape of English ships had been greatly bettered.' Much of the credit of the reform is his due. Pett, the best naval architect in the kingdom, in whose family the post of Master Shipwright became almost hereditary, is reported to have been glad to gather hints from him. His communications with the Prince about the ship drew his thoughts back to maritime questions. Beside a letter, admirably terse and critical, to Prince Henry, he composed a treatise minutely practical, called a _Discourse of the Invention of Ships_, and also _Observations concerning the Royal Navy and Sea Service_. Both probably were intended for parts of an elaborate work on _The Art of War by Sea_, which the death of the Prince hindered him from completing. He alludes in the Observations to a _Discourse of a Maritimal Voyage_, as a previous product of his pen, which, unless it be the _Discourse of the Invention of Ships_, has disappeared. Had _The Art of War by Sea_ come into systematic being, that might have stood as another of its chapters. [Sidenote: _Robert Cecil's Death._] Prince Henry's death was the most cruel blow inflicted on him since his trial. The disappointment was the severer that it had been preceded six months earlier by another death on which his friends, and perhaps himself, founded expectations. On May 16, 1612, died Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, and Lord High Treasurer. He was hastening to Court, to countermine his underminers, from Bath, where he had been taking the waters. At the inn at Marlborough he found himself grievously ill. He was removed, it has been variously stated, either to the parsonage, or to the house of a Mr. Daniel, which had formerly been St. Margaret's Priory. There he expired. [Sidenote: _Dumb Enmity._]