The GREAT DRAWING-ROOM is a noble apartment, commanding a magnificent and extensive view of the valley of the Arun, and the surrounding country. In it is a large collection of family portraits, among which are Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, vindicating himself (“Sire, he was my crowned king. If the authority of Parliament had placed the crown on that stake, I would have fought for it. Let it place it on your head and you will find me as ready in your defence”) before Henry VII. for the part he took at the battle of Bosworth field; John, Duke of Norfolk, who fell at Bosworth, and who is generally known as “Jocky of Norfolk,” from the rude couplet:— “Jocky of Norfolk, be not too bold, For Dickon thy master is bought and sold”— which was found written on his gate, as a warning, on the morning when he set out on his fatal expedition; Henry, Earl of Surrey, the great poet of his age, “who was not only the ornament of the court of Henry VIII., which he attended in the capacity of companion to the Duke of Richmond, but of the still more brilliant and chivalrous court of Francis I. His travels on the Continent were those of a scholar and knight-errant; and the vision which he had in Agrippa’s magic mirror of his lady-love, the ‘Fair Geraldine,’ whom he has so nobly perpetuated in verse, excited in him such a transport of enthusiasm, that, at a tournament in Florence, he challenged all who could handle a lance—Turk, Saracen, or cannibal—to dispute against him her claims to the supremacy of beauty, and came off victorious: but the well-known hatred of the tyrant Henry to all the Howards prematurely extinguished this bright promise of excellence, and Surrey, the last victim of the royal murderer, perished on the scaffold at the early age of twenty-seven:”— “Who has not heard of Surrey’s fame? His was the hero’s soul of fire, And his the bard’s immortal name.” In 1547, he was beheaded on Tower Hill. One of the dark blots on British history, was the execution of this true hero of the pen and sword. The portraits also include those of Thomas, Duke of Norfolk (by Holbein), who was beheaded, and his wife, Mary Fitzalan; Henry Fitzalan; Cardinal Howard; “Belted Will Howard,” of whom we shall speak in our account of Castle Howard; and various other members of this distinguished family. The DINING-ROOM, formed out of the ancient family chapel, is principally remarkable for its large stained-glass window, the subject of which is the meeting of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba—the heads being portraits of the twelfth duke and his duchess. On each side is respectively the mercy-seat in the tabernacle, and the interior of the tabernacle.