Page:Archaeologia volume 38 part 1.djvu/131

 Sir John Cheke and Sir Thomas Smith. Ill ambassador to France ; departing from London on the 20th of September, and landing at Calais on the 24th, on which night he slept at Boulogne sur Her. He records the murder of the duke of Guise on the 24th of February following ; and under the date of the 28th of August, he states, " I was detained as a prisoner : the next day sent to the castle of Melun, and released on the 17th of the next month." Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, the English ambassador resident in France, was made a prisoner at the same time, a circumstance noticed by Strype in his Life of Smith, but Strype was not aware that a similar treatment affected the subject of his biography. On the 12th of April 1564 a treaty of peace was concluded at Troyes ; and on the 24th of May Sir Thomas Smith began a journey in order to visit Geneva. Being at Toulouse in January of the following year, he fell sick from the cold, and remained so until the 28th 'of February. On the 1st of March he considered himself well. He continued ambassador in Franco until May 15(50, when on the 10th of that month he received his reward from the French king, and on the next commenced his journey homewards. On the 28th he landed at live ; on the 1st of June had his audience of the Queen, and closed his embassy. About March in the following year (1567) he was again sent into France : but he does not mention the date of his return. In 1568 he began to build in a stronger and handsomer fashion the north and west sides of the mansion of Ilill Hall, which he completed in the next year. At the end of 1571 he was again sent ambassador into France, returning in the following July ; on the 5th of which month he presented himself to the Queen, and on the 13th was again made secretary of state. He had previously, whilst in France, received the appointment of chancellor of the order of the Garter, vacant by the resignation of Lord Burghley. His notes at this place contain a description of the comet which appeared in that year, and was first seen in England at the back of the chair of Cassiopeia. Strype has printed a letter which Smith wrote upon this subject to Sir Francis Walsingham, then ambassador in France. The next year, being the 59th of his life, is the last to which these auto- biographical notes extend. It contains the death of his son, who was slain on the 18th of October, in Ireland, where Sir Thomas Smith had founded an English colony at the Ardes, on the eastern coast of Ulster. On the 4th of December, writes Sir Thomas, " I experienced a return of the same illness which I had suffered at