It was during the Lordship of Sir George More--between the years 1600 and 1632--that the history of Loseley became deeply interesting, as associated with some of the most remarkable events and illustrious worthies of the epoch. The famous Dr. Donne--Poet, Scholar, and Divine--privately married the daughter of Sir George. Donne was at that time Secretary to the Lord Chancellor Egerton, the husband of the Lady’s aunt. The marriage was “to Sir George so immeasurably unwelcome,” that he successfully exerted his influence to procure the Poet’s dismissal from his honourable and profitable service, and consigned to a gaol the clergyman by whom the knot had been tied. His father-in-law--although earnestly intreated in a letter, still preserved at Loseley, “so to deal in the matter as the persuasions of nature, reason, wisdome, and Christianity should dictate”--separated the couple, imprisoning one “offender,” and involving the other in a tedious and ruinous law-suit, for the recovery of his “deare life.” His friend and biographer, exquisite Izaak Walton, has in his own simple and natural manner recorded the story of this young affection, and of the sad trials and pecuniary difficulties in which the Poet and his wife were for a long period involved; presenting us with a beautiful though a mournful picture of a high and generous mind struggling against the most galling of all troubles; to him the more intolerable, because of her whom he had “transplanted into a wretched fortune, which he laboured to disguise from her by many honest inventions.” At length, however, fate was not only borne but conquered; Dr. Donne entered into holy orders, became a prosperous man--King’s Chaplain and Dean of St. Paul’s--and the gates of Loseley did not for ever remain closed against him. Other names--equally immortal--are associated with this ancient house. Sir George More was the guardian of Lord Herbert of Cherbury--the Knight “whose chivalry was drawn from the purest founts of the Fairy Queen”--the history of whose life is a brilliant romance.