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He was of excellent birth, and, like her second husband, a widower. His family was, of course, originally Norman. State papers show that a Margaret de St. Low or Laudo parted with certain rights in Cornish property in the reign of Henry III. By the seventeenth century the family seems to have concentrated in Gloucestershire, where it held the manor of Tormarton, twenty-two miles south of the county town. “Livery” of this manor, we read, was granted to William St. Loe by Elizabeth.

William and his brother John had fought bravely in Ireland against Desmond. In 1536 the former—the family name is spelt variously as Seyntlow, Seyntloe, and Santclo—is mentioned in despatches. There is a vivid glimpse in various letters of an attack on the castle of “Carreke Ogunell.”^[3] Says Lord Leonard Grey, writing to Henry VIII in England, “It was taken by assault by William Seyntloe and his men before scaling ladders could arrive.” But the writer is not quite sure if the success was due to “hope of fame or lack of victuals, for a halfpenny loaf was worth 12d., but there was none to be sold.” The castle has marble walls thirteen feet thick. It is the strongest Lord Leonard has ever seen. An Englishman could take it at a rush, in spite of the fact that besides being set in a fine moat, “in an island of fresh water,” the place was guarded with watch towers of hewn marble. But Lord Leonard does not think that any Irishman could have built it!