Page:The house of Cecil.djvu/178

 150 THE CECILS

interpreted as showing that Cecil was a " man of gallantry." It occurs in a letter from W. Browne to the Earl of Shrewsbury, 1 and is as follows :

The young Countess of Derby wore about her neck " a picture which was in a dainty tablet." One day the Queen, " espying it, asked what fine jewel that was. The Lady Derby was curious to excuse the showing of it ; but the Queen would not have it, and opening it and finding it to be Mr. Secretary's, snatched it away, and tied it upon her shoe, and walked long with it there ; then she took it thence and pinned it on her elbow, and wore it some time there also." Hearing of this, Cecil " compounded " some verses, and " got Hales to frame a ditty unto it." In reading this story it is well to remember, what, of course, was perfectly well known to Shrewsbury and his correspondent, that the Countess of Derby was a daughter of the Earl of Oxford, and therefore Cecil's own niece.

In September, 1592, Cecil was sent to Dart- mouth as Commissioner to apportion the spoil brought home in the " Great Carrack," the Madre de Dios, captured by Sir John Borough in Raleigh's ship, the Roebuck. The excitement caused by the news of the capture, " the most brilliant feat of privateering ever accomplished by Englishmen," was intense, and the value of the cargo, though not so great as at first estimated, proved to be upwards of 141,000, equivalent to three-quarters of a million in our present currency. Sir Robert

1 September i8th, 1592 (Lodge's Illustrations, III. 146).

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