Unfortunately, the next heir was the son of George Brooke, executed for treason at Winchester, Lord Cobham’s brother, who, at the time of his uncle’s death, was an infant of tender age, and without friends, so negotiations were carried on with the next in succession, Duke Brooke, a cousin of Lord Cobham’s, and this man parted with his prospective rights to the King for about £10,000, which enabled this “specimen of King craft” to enter into possession. Duke Brooke, dying soon after, Charles Brooke, his brother, parted with several other manors to Cecil, Earl of Salisbury. None of these transactions were legal; Henry, Lord Cobham, was not dead, nor the children of George Brooke, William, and his two sisters, Frances and Elizabeth. For some reason they were “restored in blood,” but with the express proviso they should not inherit any of the property of their fathers or their uncles; nor was William to take the title of Lord Cobham. And this was all done with the connivance of Cecil, Lord Burleigh, brother-in-law to Henry, Lord Cobham. No wonder William Brooke became a devoted Parliamentarian in the next reign, and died fighting against the King at Newbury, 1643. Many letters of Henry Brooke have been preserved while in the Tower: “To my very good Lord and Brother-in-law, Lord Burleigh.” He must both have been clever and learned, for during his captivity he translated Seneca’s treatises, _De Providentia, De Ira, De Tranquilitate, De Vita Beata, and De Paupertate_: the original manuscript of one, _De Providentia_, is in the library at Ufford Place, Suffolk, the seat of his representative, Edward Brooke, Esq., written in a beautifully fine hand. Raleigh and Cobham’s “treason” was that known as the Main or Spanish Treason, one of the supposed objects of which was to place the Lady Arabella Stuart on the throne. [Illustration: _The Moat looking West_] Lord Grey de Wilton, a young man of great promise, died in St Thomas’s Tower in 1617, after passing nine years in the Brick Tower. Lord Grey had made an eloquent defence during his trial, which lasted from eight in the morning until eight at night, during which, according to the Hardwicke State Papers, many “subtle traverses and escapes,” took place. When Grey was asked why judgment of death should not be passed against him, he replied, “I have nothing to say.” Then he paused a little, and added, “And yet a word of Tacitus comes into my mind, ‘non eadem omnibus decora,’ the house of the Wiltons have spent many lives in their Princes’ service and Grey cannot beg his.”