and Carr, Earl of Somerset, the next proprietor fell in disgrace.  But the way the latter obtained Sherborne was far from creditable, for, having discovered a technical flaw in the deed in which Sir Walter Raleigh had settled the estate on his son, he solicited it of his royal master, and obtained it.  It was in vain that Lady Raleigh on her knees appealed to James against this injustice, for he only answered, “I mun have the land, I mun have it for Carr.”  But Lady Raleigh was a woman of high spirit, and there on her knees, before King James, she prayed to God that He would punish those who had thus wrongfully exposed her, and her children, to ruin.  She was, in fact, re-echoing the curse uttered centuries beforehand.  And that prayer was not long unanswered, for Carr did not enjoy Sherborne for any length of time.  Committed to the Tower for the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury, he was at last released and restricted to his house in the country, “where in constant companionship with the wife, for the guilty love of whom he had become the murderer of his friend, he passed the remainder of his life, loathing the partner of his crimes, and by her as cordially detested.”

Spelman goes so far as to say that “all those families who took or had Church property presented to them, came, either in their own persons or those of their descendants, to sorrow and misfortune.”  One of the many strange occurrences relating to Sir Anthony Browne, standard-bearer to King Henry VIII., was communicated some years ago in connection with the famous Cowdray Castle, the principal seat of the Montagues.  It is said that at the great festival given in the magnificent hall of the monks at Battle Abbey, on Sir Anthony Browne taking possession of his Sovereign’s gift of that estate, a venerable monk stalked up the hall to the dais, where Sir Anthony Browne sat, and, in prophetic language, denounced him and his posterity for usurping the possessions of the Church, predicting their destruction by fire and water—­a fate which was eventually fulfilled.

One of the last viscounts was, in 1793, drowned when trying to pass the Falls of Schaffhausen on the Rhine, accompanied by Mr. Sedley Burdett, the elder brother of the distinguished Sir Francis.  They had engaged an open boat to take them through the rapids; but it seems the authorities tried to prevent so dangerous an enterprise.  In order, however, to carry out their project, they started two hours earlier than the time previously fixed—­four o’clock in the morning—­and successfully passed the first or upper fall.  But, unhappily, the same good fortune failed them in their next descent, for “the boat was swamped and sunk in passing the lower fall, and was supposed to have been jammed in a cleft of the submerged rock, as neither boat nor adventurers ever appeared again.  In the same week, the ancient seat of the family, Cowdray Castle, was destroyed by fire, and its venerable ruins are the significant monument at once of the fulfilment of the old monk’s prophecy, and of the extinction of the race of the great and powerful noble.”