Note (return) — Replies.

From this passage I think it can be shown, that the reader can draw no other inference than that the Countess of Desmond was dead at the time Sir Walter Raleigh wrote it. In his heading to the chapter he speaks of some of "late memory;" and the words "many years since" evidently mean that she lived many years after 1589.[4] We do not know at what precise period the above passage was penned; but we learn from Sir Walter's Preface, that he composed this great and admirable work whilst a prisoner in the Tower (from which he was liberated in 1616). In that preface he speaks with deep feeling and regret for the loss of Prince Henry. He says the Prince read part of the work; and that he wrote it "for the service of that inestimable" youth. We know that Henry died in November, 1612. The passage, therefore, about the "old Countess," which occurs in a very early part of the book, there can be no doubt, was written before 1612, and the entire work published in 1614. If, therefore (as I think no one can doubt, from the manner in which it is worded), the old lady was dead when Sir Walter wrote about her, it is not possible she could have visited the court of King James in 1614.