Buckingham appears, on this occasion, to have acted a kind and sensible part. His utmost discretion was soon called upon in an affair upon which the annals of the time ring changes, and the details of which present the most curious combat of worldly passions, and the most fatal results of misdirected influence, that can be conceived. In spite of a “fearful dream” of Queen Anne’s, reported to James as a warning, his progress was not shortened. He spent several days at Brougham Castle, the residence of Francis Clifford, fourth Earl of Cumberland, whose daughter, the celebrated Anne Clifford, afterwards repaired the castle, which suffered during the civil wars; but which, so vain were her exertions, has since been permitted to fall into ruins. The expenses entailed by the king’s visit, including the music performed in his presence, were considerable, and helped to ruin the lord of the castle, an easy, improvident man, whose allusion to the tax imposed by this royal visitation is almost touching. “I fynde plainly,” he thus wrote to his son, “upon better consideration, that the charge for that entertainment will grow very great, besyde the musick, and that instead of lessening, my charge in general encreaseth, and new paiments come on which without better providence hereafter cannot be performed.”[170] In his progress from one mansion or manor-house to another, James visited several of those families whose names became afterwards distinguished among the adherents of his unfortunate son. At Hoghton Tower, in Lancashire, at that time the principal seat of the Hoghton family, but now unhappily a ruin, still containing an apartment called King James’s room; where the monarch is said to have conferred the honour of knighthood, which he had dispensed very freely during his progress upon his subjects, on the loin of beef, that act being also one of the last achievements of his journey. He visited also Lathom House, the seat of the Stanleys; and was received with great demonstrations of respect and joy at Stafford, where the Earl of Essex, who lived in an honoured retirement at Chartley Castle, rode before him into the town. At Warwick, he was entertained by Sir Fulke Grevill, who was then the master of Warwick Castle, which he had found, on taking possession of it, in a ruinous state, and used as a county jail.[171] In the hall of Leicester Hospital, that charitable foundation, endowed by Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, for twelve Brethren, James was entertained with a supper; an event of which a tradition still remains attached to the half-monastic institution in which it occurred. Sir Fulke Grevill had his own private motives to induce him to extend his marks of respect to Buckingham, as well as to the king; for, shortly afterwards, we find him a suitor to the niece of Buckingham, Lady Anderson, for her hand.[172] There can be no doubt, but that James and Buckingham visited Warwick Castle, but were not entertained there on account of its ruinous