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occasionally emblazoned in the stained-glass windows of noblemen's houses.

The sixth Earl of Rutland, in whose behalf Shakespeare professionally turned his genius in this curious direction, has not hitherto figured among the associates of the dramatist. But the Earl was a friend of Shakespeare's patron the Earl of Southampton. He belonged to a cultivated section of the nobility which patronised poetry and drama with consistent enthusiasm and generosity, and the disclosure of a direct link between him and the poet can excite no surprise.

When Francis Manners, the sixth Earl of Rutland, consulted 'M^r Shakspeare' about his 'impresa,' he had only enjoyed the title nine months. He had lately succeeded to the earldom on the death, without issue, of his elder brother Roger, the fifth Earl, June 26, 1612. The latter was a peculiarly close friend of the Earl of Southampton. There had been talk of a marriage between Southampton and the Earl's sister Lady Bridget Manners. The two earls were constant visitors together to the London theatres. at the end of the sixteenth century,^[1] and both suffered imprisonment together in the Tower of London for complicity in the Earl of Essex's plot early in 1601. The fifth Earl's wife was daughter of Sir Philip Sidney, and she assiduously cultivated the society of men of letters, constantly entertaining Ben