It really is strange that he should--or that his architect, for him, should--have kept the cloisters, for the spirit of the age--it was the age of Horace Walpole, you know--was remarkably addicted to a kind of wry-necked appreciation of Gothic architecture, and given to destroy genuine antiquities, only to erect on the site of them imitative Gothic with eighteenth-century frills and embellishments. The “men of taste” who flourished towards the close of the eighteenth century were quite convinced that they could have taught the men who built in earlier ages something new in the way of Gothic: and they were, in a way, right. But what a way it was! There were some queer characters in these districts of old, and none more striking than an ancient scion of the Stucley family--Thomas Stucley, who was born in, or about, 1525 and died fighting the Moors, at the Battle of Alcazar, _ex parte_ the King of Portugal, in 1578. There can be little doubt that, when he ended thus, Queen Elizabeth and her Ministers of State, like Dogberry, thanked God they were rid of a knave; for Thomas Stucley was adventurer, pirate, renegade, and traitor to his country, and the cause of innumerable alarms and embarrassments. One of the five sons of Sir Hugh Stucley, of Affeton, near Ilfracombe, he formed something of a mystery: vague rumours that he was really an illegitimate son of Henry the Eighth following all his escapades. These were strengthened by the lenient treatment with which his most serious and inexcusable doings were visited by Queen Elizabeth. Always of an adventurous and reckless nature, and perhaps not a little tainted with madness, he proposed, when scarce more than a youth, to colonise Florida, and in 1563 set out with six ships and three hundred men, for the purpose. There must have been something unusual in the relations between himself and Queen Elizabeth, for him to have interviewed her, before he set out, in the terms ascribed to him. “He blushed not,” we read, “to tell Elizabeth to her face that he preferred rather to be sovereign of a molehill than the highest subject to the greatest king in Christendom, and that he was assured he should be a prince before his death.” Humouring this extravagant language, Elizabeth replied, “I hope I shall hear from you when you are settled in your principality.” “I will write unto you,” quoth Stucley. “In what language?” asked the Queen. “In the style of princes,” returned he; “to our dear sister.” Fine language, this, to employ to one of those imperious Tudors, whose idea of the most effective repartee was the capital one of the headsman’s axe!