t. He planted. He diverted
himself with rural pastimes, especially with falconry. Throughout his
career he always was ready for a hawking match or a bargain for falcons.
He once offered the reversion in fee of an Irish leasehold for a
goshawk. An incident of his Munster estate, which doubtless he valued
highly, was his title to half the produce of an eyrie of hawks in the
wood of Mogelly. Amidst the anxieties of his final expedition he found
spirits and strength for a trial of hawks at Cloyne. The leisure and
opportunities of Sherborne stimulated his ardour for the sport. Cecil
kept falcons. In August 1593, Ralegh wrote to him from Gillingham
Forest, of which he and his brother Carew were joint rangers: 'The
Indian falcon is sick of the backworm, and therefore, if you will be so
bountiful to give another falcon, I will provide you a running gelding.'
He chased another sort of game than herons. In April, 1594, he boasted
that he had caught in the Lady Stourton's house a notable stout villain,
with his copes and bulls. 'He calls himself John Mooney; but he is an
Irishman, and, I think, can say much.' Both his wife and he soon grew
fond of Sherborne, 'his fortune's fold,' as he called it alike in verse
and in a letter of 1593 to Cecil. Thither they always gladly returned,
though they were often called elsewhere. The plague dislodged the family
in 1594. It was, he wrote in September, 1594, raging in the town of
Sherborne 'very hot.' 'Our Bess,' he added, 'is one way sent, her son
another way; and I am in great trouble therewith.' Less alarming
occasions were constantly taking him away. He had to be in Devonshire
and Cornwall, discharging the duties of his Wardenship and Lieutenancy.
Every year he went to Bath for the waters. He resorted to Weymouth for
sea bathing for his wife and child. He was much at all seasons in
London.

[Sidenote: _Durham House._]

[Sidenote: _Mile End and Islington._]

Though banished from the Court he went on frequenting its neighbourhood.
He had more than one London residence. As a student of the law, he may
have lived in Lyon's Inn and the Middle Temple. In the early period of
his attendance on the Queen he had been lodged in the Palace, at
Greenwich, Whitehall, Somerset House, St. James, and Richmond. Since
1584 he possessed a London house of his own. The Church supplied him, as
at Sherborne and Lismore. Durham House, strictly called Duresme Place,
was the town house of the see of Durham. It c