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Jonson and Francis Beaumont and corresponding with them.

The sixth Earl of Rutland, who also joined the Earl of Southampton and his own elder brother in the Earl of Essex's plot and had endured imprisonment with them, gave early proof of a resolve to maintain a traditional magnificence and hospitality during his tenure of the earldom. Barely two months after his succession he entertained King James and the Prince of Wales with regal splendour at his house of Belvoir Castle. It was some six months later that he solicited the aid of Shakespeare and Burbage in order to enhance the dignity of his equipment at a ceremonial of the Court. The 'impresa' in the design of which he enlisted Shakespeare's service was intended to adorn his shield at a spectacular tournament in which courtiers were to engage at Whitehall on March 24, 1613. Sir Henry Wotton, who was present on the occasion, noted, in a letter to a friend, the brilliance of the noble jousters' 'imprese,' and offers an interesting illustration of their symbolic subtlety and obscurity. Unluckily neither Wotton nor anyone else described the details of Shakespeare's invention for the Earl of Rutland. This is Wotton's description of the ceremony, which he sent to his friend Sir Edmund Bacon from London on March 31, 1613. 'The day fell out wet, to the disgrace of many fine plumes . . . The two Riches [i.e. Sir Robert Rich and Sir Henry Rich, brothers of the first Earl