Does not every thoughtful reader pause over it and say to himself, why does he bring forward Busby and Green and rate them and sentence them to death? What for? treason? rebellion? murder? sedition? some rash crime? No; but for having “disparked” his parks and pulled down “his impress” (_only one_!), and his “household coat,” and tells us what he would like to have done to his enemies at Court if he had had the chance, as they had done when they cut off his patron and his kinsman Essex’s head. Now to return to the reason why he should have written a play to unfold the reasons of his family decay. To Cecil from Anthony Sherley, “The worst sort of the world have taken advantage to lay upon _me_ all sorts of defamation” (p. 37), and again, and therefore to clear himself, he shows how it came to pass, and that his father was not in his right senses who incurred “this great debt” (p. 37, Sherley Brothers). Elizabeth had actually “_distrained_” upon his father’s goods, had carried off even his blankets and sheets, chairs and arras hangings, feather beds, and silver spoons, and left his mother scanty and beggarly supply for her dowry house, not sufficient for the necessities of everyday life. She had seized and sold the vast lands and possessions of his ancestors. (Stemmata Shirleana, Roxburgh Club, p. 251.) “A description of the Manors sold, all save Wiston dowry.” “In 1578 Sir T. Sherley served the office of Sheriff for the counties of Surrey and Sussex. He afterwards became Treasurer at War in the Low Countries, and having fallen under the displeasure of Queen Elizabeth, and become indebted to the Crown, his estates and personal effects, with the exception of the Manor of Wiston, settled on his wife, were seized.” See Lansdowne MSS. Goods seized at Wiston by Sheriff, 1588. Here again I earnestly request comparison with the story in the “Yorkshire Tragedy.” Rowland Whyte, “he owed the Queen more than he was worth; his own doings have undone him.” SCENE IV.—HUSBAND—YORKSHIRE TRAGEDY. “What is there in three dice to make a man draw thrice three thousand acres into the compass of a little round table, and with the gentleman’s palsy in the hand shake out his posterity thieves or beggars? ’Tis done; I have don ’t i’ faith; terrible, horrible misery!—How well was I left! Very well, very well. My lands show’d like a full moon about me; but now the moon’s in the quarter—waning, waning; and I am mad to think that moon was mine; mine and my father’s, and my fore-fathers’; generations, generations.—Down goes the house of us; down, down it sinks. Now is the name a beggar’s; begs in me. That name, which hundreds of years has made this shire famous in me and my posterity, runs out.” To the Rt. Hon. Sir R. Cecil, Knight, from Anthony Sherley: “Arkangell, 1600, June 10.