From a memorandum drawn up by Sir Owen Hopton for the use of his successor, Sir Michael Blunt, in the Lieutenancy of the Tower in 1590, we find that the following prisoners were at that time confined in the fortress:—James Fitzgerald, the only son of the Earl of Desmond, who had come from Ireland as a hostage, Florence Macarthy, Sir Thomas Fitzherbert (who died in the Tower in the following year), Sir Thomas Williams, the Bishop of Laughlin, Sir Nicholas White, Sir Brian O’Rourke, “who hath the libertie to walk on the leades over his lodging,” and Sir Francis Darcy. All these prisoners were connected with the war in Ireland, or were suspected of conspiring against the Queen and her government. The year 1592 is a memorable one in the life of the great Sir Walter Raleigh, for it was then that he began his long acquaintance with the prisons of the Tower, and from this time until his execution a quarter of a century later, Raleigh’s days were mainly passed within the walls of that building. Raleigh’s first imprisonment in the Tower was owing to his marriage with Elizabeth Throgmorton, one of the Queen’s ladies, and the daughter of Sir Nicholas Throgmorton. Raleigh had wooed, won, and wedded his wife without Elizabeth’s knowledge or consent. The Queen, then over sixty years of age, was still as jealous and as vain as any young girl of sixteen, and for any of her favourites—and Raleigh at this time was the principal one—to marry without her august permission, and especially to marry one of her ladies, was in her eyes a most heinous crime, an aggravated form of _lése-majestè_, and it was only by the most fulsome flattery, the most grovelling abasement, that Sir Walter gained his freedom. In a letter from Sir Arthur Gorges, a cousin of Raleigh’s, to Sir Robert Cecil, there is an account of an extraordinary scene enacted by Sir Walter whilst in the Tower. “I cannot choose,” writes Gorges, “but advertise you of a strange tragedy that this day had like to have fallen out between the captain of the guard and the lieutenant of the ordnance, if I had not by great chance come at the very instant to have turned it into a comedy. For upon a report of Her Majesty’s being at Sir George Carew’s, Sir Walter Raleigh having gazed and sighed a long time at his study window, from whence he might discover the barges and boats about the Blackfriars stairs, suddenly he brake out into a great distemper, and swore that his enemies had on purpose brought Her Majesty thither to break his gall in sunder with Tantalus’s torment, that when she went away he might see death before his eyes, with many such like conceits. And as a man transported with passion, he swore to Sir George Carew that he would disguise himself, and get into a pair of oars to cure his mind with but a sight of the Queen, or else he protested his heart would break. But the trusty jailor would none of that, for displeasing the higher powers, as he