Ralegh never parted with a scheme before he had another ready to occupy him. Sherborne more than replaced Lismore as an object of affection, and as a subject of care and anxiety also. He had not spared trouble and outlay on it since the Queen in the height of his favour first gave him a foothold as a lessee. We have seen how, to develop his term into the fee, he created and transplanted Bishops. His assiduity was rewarded in 1598 by Bishop Cotton's accommodating acceptance of a surrender of the lease, and grant of the fee to the Crown, subject to the old rent of £260. From the Crown the fee was conveyed to him. The transfer comprised the lordship of the Hundred of Yetminster, with the manor of Sherborne, five other manors in Dorset and Somerset, and the Castle, lodge, and parks of Sherborne and Castleton. Ralegh added to the estate by buying out leases with his own money, and by the purchase of several adjacent properties. Then he set himself seriously to the perfecting of the whole. He did not stint his expenditure. Sir John Harington says that with less money than he bestowed in building, drawing the river into his garden, and buying out leases, he might, without offence to Church or State, have compassed a much better purchase. He had begun by trying to improve the existing castle. In 1594 he altered his plan, and designed a new house at some distance. Only the centre of the present Sherborne Castle, a four-storied edifice with hexagonal towers at the ends, was erected by him. Aubrey described it as a delicate lodge of brick, not big, but very convenient for the bigness, a place to retire to from the Court in summer time, for contemplation. Digby, when he became its owner, added four wings with a tower to each. Pope visited Lord Bristol there, and has sketched the place in one of his graceful letters to Miss Blount. He dwells particularly on the lofty woods clothing the amphitheatre of hills, the irregular lovely gardens, the masses of honeysuckle, the ruins of the old fortress, the sequestered bowling-green, and the grove Ralegh planted, with the stone seat from which he overlooked the town and minster, and dreamt and smoked. The spirit of Ralegh still dominates Sherborne, after all the efforts of the first Lord Bristol to lay it by swelling the lodge into a sumptuous castle, and of the sixth by turning Capability Brown loose into his pleasure grounds.