An illustrious name comes before us in the annals of 1592. Sir Walter Raleigh was lodged here, having incurred the Queen’s displeasure by his amour with Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, the celebrated statesman. He soon regained his liberty, however, by using the most fulsome adulation of his royal mistress. Here is just one specimen, an extract from a letter which he wrote to Cecil, of course in order that it might be shown to her Majesty:—“My heart was never broken till this day, that I hear the Queen goes away so far off [she was about to start on her annual progress], whom I have followed so many years with so great love and desire in so many journeys, and am now left behind her in a dark prison, all alone. While she was yet near at hand, that I might hear of her once in two or three days, my sorrows were the less, but even now my heart is cast into the depth of all misery. I, that was wont to behold her riding like Alexander, hunting like Diana, walking like Venus, the gentle wind blowing her fair hair about her pure face like a nymph, sometimes sitting in the shade like a goddess, sometimes singing like an angel, sometimes playing like Orpheus.” Elizabeth was always open to flattery, but in this case her “love-stricken swain” was further assisted by the arrival at Dartmouth of his good ship _The Roebuck_, which had taken a great Spanish treasure ship off Flores, with a treasure which Raleigh estimated at half a million pounds. The Queen gave him his liberty and sent him off to arrange the disposal of his capture, and of course got the lion’s share of it. He returned to Court fresh as ever, and this return was a fatal event in the fortunes of another brilliant courtier, in fact the most brilliant, of Elizabeth’s surrounding, Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex. He and Raleigh were bitter enemies. Ireland was again giving trouble. Raleigh advised that the disturbers should remorselessly be trampled out, Essex that justice and good-will should be shown. The discussion between them was firm on both sides, and when we remember that both men were high-spirited, full of ambition, jealous of each other as to the royal favour, we can understand how their selfwill and egotism proved the ruin of them both. Essex was strikingly handsome, brilliant both at Court and in the field. His father had been a personal friend of the Queen, the Earl of Leicester was his step-father, Sir Francis Knollys his grandfather, Walsingham his father-in-law, Lord Burleigh his guardian, Shakespeare his friend. He was now sent to Ireland with the task before him of subduing the factions which kept the country in continual insurrection, and he failed, whilst his enemies traduced him at home. Enraged at learning this, and in despair at his continued illfortune, he returned after two years to England unbidden, hoping to justify his actions in the presence of the Queen. But several charges of misconduct were proved