A strange romance sheds a mysterious glamour over the story of his son Edward, who is said to have been loved by Queen Mary and slighted by him for her sister, Elizabeth. The queen made him earl of yet another new creation, but later threw him into prison on an absurd charge of aiding the rebellion of Sir Thomas Wyatt, which he had really been largely instrumental in quelling. It was ill consorting with the Tudors, or even living in their times, for they were tigerish alike in their affections and their hatreds. This ill-used young earl—“this beautiful youth,” Gibbon calls him—was released, but died mysteriously, it is supposed of poison—at Padua, in 1556. With him that branch of the Courtenays, and it was long supposed the title also, became extinct. Meanwhile the junior branch, the Courtenays of Powderham, continued unmolested. “He that is low need fear no foe,” says the old proverb; and those plain knights and, later, baronets excited the jealousy of no one. So they continued until the era of beheadings and forfeitures ended, when Sir William Courtenay was created Viscount Courtenay in 1762. And viscounts they might be yet, only in 1851 an accomplished genealogist, looking over the patent of nobility granted by Queen Mary, discovered the all-important fact that the usual words “_de corpore_,” limiting the title to direct descendants, were not included. The succession was thus extended to collaterals, and the curious fact was revealed that for two hundred and seventy-five years the Courtenays of Powderham had been earls unknown to themselves, and had gratefully accepted inferior honours while legally possessed of greater.