lady would consent to be seated until a stool was brought for Guzman, who relates the incident. The Queen came by water, and returned in a coach by way of the Strand. When she was seated in the carriage with Lady Cobham, her maiden Majesty could not resist the opportunity afforded by the condition of her companion to make rather a risky joke to the Ambassador, who, ecclesiastic though he was, retorted fully in the same vein, and carefully repeated the conversation in a letter to his royal master the next day. {286} For the next few years Durham Place gave shelter to many courtiers, ambassadors, and honoured guests of the Queen, and was occasionally lent, as we have seen, for parties and merrymakings, its large size and easy access by land and water making it peculiarly appropriate for such uses. But the elder Earl of Essex, Walter Devereux, made a somewhat longer stay in some of its apartments. It was here, probably enough in the turret-rooms which were Raleigh's favourite abiding-place, that Essex planned that expedition to Ireland with which his name was destined for all time to be linked. From here he started in August, 1573, and, with the exception of one flying visit in 1575, never saw Durham Place again. In 1583 the Queen granted the house to Raleigh. It was in a dilapidated condition, and he spent, as he says, £2,000 in repairing it; certain it is that during twenty years that Raleigh lived there Durham Place reached its apogee of splendour. The Strand had greatly altered for the better since the time when Feria lived at Durham Place. The Bishop of Carlisle's house, on the other side of Ivy Lane, had disappeared, and Robert Cecil had built a splendid house for himself on its site. His father and elder brother, too, across the Strand had another palace, and between them they had paved and made up the roadway for a considerable distance before their properties. But slowly, too, the Strand was becoming a great fashionable thoroughfare, and long-headed Robert Cecil knew well that as shops grew up along its line the street frontage would increase in value. So he cast covetous eyes across his own boundary at Ivy Lane on to the great {287} ramshackle congeries of stables and outhouses which fronted the Strand at Durham Place. As long as his mistress lived he dared not disturb Raleigh, but no sooner had the great Queen passed away than Raleigh was turned out with every circumstance of harshness and insult, and Lord Salisbury got his street frontage, upon which he built Britain's Burse, which was to be a rival to the Royal Exchange.