J42 NOTES TO THE ILLUSTRATIONS. 



Sir Ralph Sadler's love of hawking once nearly involved him 

 in disgrace at Court. He had been appointed to guard the un- 

 fortunate Mary, Queen of Scots, during her imprisonment in the 

 Castle of Tutbury (1584-85), and complaint was made against 

 him by some of her enemies that he was conniving at her escape 

 by permitting her to accompany ];iim to some distance from the 

 castle during his hawking excursions. He admitted that he 

 had sent home for his hawks and falconers, wherewith to 

 divert the miserable life which he passed at Tutbury, and 

 that he had been unable to resist the solicitations of his royal 

 prisoner to permit her to see a sport in which she greatly 

 delighted. But, he added, this was under the strictest precau- 

 tions for the security of her person (Memoirs, vol. i. p. 33). 



Sir Ralph, who was born at Hackney, Middlesex, in 1507, died, 

 at the age of eighty, in 1587, at Standon in Hertfordshire, and 

 was buried in the chancel of the church there, on the south side 

 of which there is a fine monument erected to his memory. An 

 engraving of this is given in Clutterbuck's " Hertfordshire," 

 vol. iii. p. 235. Lloyd, in his "State Worthies," says of him: 

 " Little was his body, but great his soul ; the more vigorous the 

 more contracted " (ed. 1670, p. 96). 



He left three sons, Thomas, Edward, and Henry. The last- 

 named, to whom Symon Latham was falconer (see No. 19, note), 

 married Dorothy Gilbert, of Everley, and on him Sir Ralph 

 bestowed the estate at Everley. The property passed from 

 the Sadlers to the Evelyns of Godstone, Surrey, and West 

 Dean, Wilts ; thence to the family of Barker, who subsequently 

 disposed of it to Sir John D. Astley, Bart., whose tenant, Mr. 

 C. W. Curtis, is now in possession. 



The house unfortunately was partially destroyed by fire in 

 the winter of 1881-82, but has since been rebuilt, and the 

 portrait is still preserved there. It was lent for exhibition by 

 Sir John Astley in the spring of 1890, and hung for a few 

 months during the '* Exhibition of Sports and Arts " in the 

 "Falconry Room" at the Grosvenor Gailery. It is curious 

 that neither the historian of Wiltshire nor the historian of 

 Hertfordshire has been able to discover any other portrait 

 than this of so important a personage. 



For fuller details concerning Sir Ralph Sadler than can here 

 be given, the reader may be referred to the authorities above 



