1620.] FESTIVITIES AT THE PALACE. 223 



gentleman named Maxwell in a duel, and was par- 

 doned at the earnest request of the prince. The 

 Ambassador of the Palatine of Bohemia was amonof 

 the royal guests at the palace during this sojourn at 

 Newmarket.* 



Mr. Chamberlain gives the following version of 

 these incidents to Sir Dudley Carleton : — 



" They pass the time merrily at Newmarket, and 

 the running Masque rages all over the Country where 



the Great Eastern Railway, 3I miles from Bury St. Edmunds, and 79 

 from London. The Marquis of Bristol, who is lord of the manor, and 

 T. R. Mills, Esq., are the principal landowners. Towards the end of the 

 fourteenth century Saxham was held by John Cavendish, Lord Chief 

 Justice of the King's Bench, who was murdered by Wat Tyler's mob 

 during the insurrection at that time. It subsequently was held by the 

 ancient family of Crofts, who had their seat here, where they flourished in 

 great esteem ; several of them were knights, and of them Sir Thomas Crofts 

 was High Sherifif of Suffolk in the thirty-sixth year of Queen Elizabeth's 

 reign. He was the father of Sir John Crofts, knighted in Ireland in 

 1 599, who married Sir Robert Shirley's sister, contemporarily described as 

 " niece to the Lady Cheney" (Davy MS., Col. Suffolk, Thingoe Hundred, 

 Vol. i. Saxham Parva, fo. 4 [20]), and grandfather of William Crofts, 

 descended by females from the ist Lord Wentworth, of Nettlested, as 

 also from the Montacutes, Earls of Salisbury, and Nevils, Earls of West- 

 morland. This William Crofts, having been brought up in the court of 

 England from his youth, became Gentleman of the Horse to the Duke of 

 York, Captain of the Guard to the queen-mother, and Gentleman of the 

 Bedchamber to Charles II. All which places he executed with such 

 approbation, that he was at length sent ambassador to Poland, where he 

 executed his mission so well, that he was, for his good services, advanced 

 to the peerage, by the title of Lord Crofts of Saxham. His lordship 

 married, ist, Dorothy, widow of Sir John Hobart, Bart. ; and 2ndly, 

 Elizabeth, daughter of Lord William Spencer, of Wormleighton ; but 

 having no issue, the Barony of Crofts became, at his lordship's decease 

 in 1677, extinct. Lord Crofts was a frequent Iiabitice at Newmarket, and 

 had the pleasure of frequently entering Charles II. and his jovial circle 

 at Little Saxham, where a " grand apartment " was specially erected for 

 the reception of the king and his hard-drinking companions. This 

 building was pulled down in 1771, though it was said to have appeared 

 as sound then as when it was first erected. 



* Cofferers Aces., Series III., box E., rot. s. d. 



