It was the year 1608; James I. and Queen Anne of Denmark were spending November at Winchester Palace. They played games from twilight till supper-time; they danced, and the Queen noticed that the old admiral, now over sixty-seven, seemed mighty fond of Lady Margaret Stuart, daughter of the Earl of Murray, a blooming girl of nineteen. Anne told the King, and his Majesty at once made himself very busy in merrily promoting the marriage of the old veteran with his pretty cousin. They were soon married, and, before he died, the Earl of Nottingham had the pleasure of seeing two more children, one of whom succeeded his half-brother in the earldom. His remaining years were spent at Haling House in Surrey, in honourable ease and retirement; he died in his eighty-eighth year, loved and respected by all who knew him. "He was a nobleman," says Camden, "whose courage no danger could daunt, whose fidelity no temptation could corrupt." CHAPTER VII SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE, THE HERO OF FLORES Richard, the son of Sir Roger Grenville, was born about the year 1540, in the west of England, of a family descended from Rollo of Normandy. In his youth he showed the same restless, daring disposition which characterised him all through life. For he was barely twenty-six when he obtained the Queen's permission to serve in Hungary against the Turks, and it is reported that he was on board the Christian fleet in the famous battle of Lepanto, 1566, won by Don John of Austria, and the crowning mercy that saved Europe from Mohammedan rule; so that the Pope, on hearing the news of the victory, exclaimed, "There was a man sent from God, and his name was John." On his return, being a cousin of Sir Humphrey Gilbert and Sir Walter Raleigh, the Queen took notice of him and sent him to Ireland, to serve under Sir Henry Sidney, who was so well satisfied with his energy and courage that he recommended the Queen to appoint him Sheriff of the city of Cork. In 1571 Richard Grenville was elected one of the members for the county of Cornwall, and was knighted on becoming High Sheriff of that county. His acquaintance with Gilbert in Ireland had set his ambition on discovering new lands in Cathay or America; so when in 1584 Raleigh obtained a patent to discover and occupy heathen lands not actually possessed by any Christian prince, Sir Richard Grenville volunteered for the voyage, and was made commander of the squadron that was to plant a first colony in Virginia--an idea of Raleigh's. A Hollander, John Huighen van Linschoten, gives a full account of Sir Richard's character, as far as he knew it from personal experience.