Another summer day, Francis would ride the ten miles north toward Chislehurst (ashes of Napoleon _le petit_!), and turn aside to pay his compliments to the proprietor of Camden Place, Ben Jonson's friend the antiquary. But we may suppose that more gladly and frequently than to any other spot, this dramatist-turned-squire, and settled down for health and leisure, would head his horse for Knole; and, galloping the hills through Chipstead and Sevenoaks up to the old church that crowns the height, would steady to a trot along the stately avenue of the Park amid its beeches and sycamores,--resting his eye on broad sweeps of pasture-land and distant groves, and thinking poetry,--to be greeted within one short half-hour from the time he left the Place, by that most hospitable nobleman of the day, the noblest patron of poetry and art, Richard Sackville, third Earl of Dorset. They would pace--these two lovers of Ben Jonson, and worshippers of the first dramatist-earl--the Great Hall, together, talking of plays, of the burning of the Globe while _Henry VIII_ was on the boards, or of the opening of the new Blackfriars, or of Overbury's poisoning, and the scandalous marriage of Rochester and Lady Essex, or of Sir Henry Nevill's chances in the matter of the Secretaryship, or of Winwood's appointment, or of Raleigh's grievances, or of the new favourite, young Villiers of Brooksby, or of the long existing grievance of Beaumont's Catholic cousins, in and after 1614 all the more acute because of the hopes and fears thronging that other subject of discussion which doubtless would occupy a place in any conversation, the negotiations of Don Diego Sarmiento for a Spanish Marriage. Perhaps they would stretch their legs out to the fire before the old andirons that had once been Henry VIII's, and talk of the tragic romance of young William Seymour and Lady Arabella Stuart, the cousin alike of Robert Pierrepoint and his majesty, James I; or of the indictment and fall of Somerset. Or they would stroll to the chapel, and decipher the carvings of the Crucifixion which Mary, Queen of Scots, had given to the Earl's brother, now dead. Or the Earl would point out some new portrait of that wonderful collection, then forming, of literary men in the dining-room, and Beaumont would pass judgment upon the presentment of some of his own contemporaries. Then down the drive by which the sheep are browsing and the deer, like Agag delicately picking their way, and back to Sundridge of the Isleys, and to Ursula; maybe to an afternoon of lazy writing on scenes that Fletcher has called for--perhaps the posset-night of Sir Roger and Abigail for the beginning of _The Scornful Ladie_. In 1614 or 1615, the poet's first child, a daughter, was born and was appropriately named after the two Elizabeths who had touched most closely upon his life. But the days of wedded happiness--"This is my blisse, Let it run on now!"--were brief. On March 6, 1616, he died,--only thirty-one years of age.[112]