Sir John Cheke and Sir Thomas Smith. 103 that he woulde needes take hys journey with Sir Peter Carew, from hie Germanie unto Bruxels, and that (as I have credibly hearde of them which knew somewhat) not without the forecasting of his adventured journey by the constellation of starres and disposition of the heavens above. For as he was a man famously expert and trained in the knowledge of sundrie artes and sciences, so was he a little too much addicted to the curious practising of this starre divinitie, which we call Astrologie. But how soever it was, or what soever it was that the starres did promise him, truth was that men heere in earth kept litle promise with him." (Foxe's Actes and Monuments, edit. 1583, p. 1955.) I have only further to remark, in reference to Sir John Cheke, that the poetical production entitled " An Epitaph or Death Dole of the right excellent Prince King Edward the Sixth," which occurs as No. 30 in the catalogue of his literary works given in the Athena? Cantabrigienses, was not his, but a production of "William Baldwyn, one of the authors of the Mirrour of Magistrates. It was originally published with Baldwyn's name in 15GO, under the title of "The Funeralles of King Edward the Sixt ;" but in 1610 was again printed from a second manuscript, and then erroneously assigned to Sir John Choke. It is remarkable that both editions have been reprinted, the former for the lloxburghe Club in 1817, and the latter in Mr. Trollope's History of Christ's Hospital, 1834 ; but the identity of the two books has hitherto been unknown. I now turn to the biography of the second of Henry the Eighth's two great Cambridge scholars, Sir Thomas Smith, a man who was acknowledged by his contemporaries to be highly accomplished in every department of science, and yet whose predilection for astrology is testified by evidence more certain and incon- testable than in the case of Cheke. A volume in the handwriting of Sir Thomas Smith, entirely filled with astrological calculations, is now preserved in the Sloane collection (MS. Addit. 325). He relates therein that he had been first struck with this fancy in the 20th and 21st years of his age ; and, after he had filled many important stations in church and state, it returned to him during his inforced idleness in the days of Queen Mary. " About the months of October, November, and December, 1550, (as he has recorded,) I was assailed with the strongest passion and desire for learning astrology, so that I could scarcely sleep at night from thinking of it." Carew, whose heart could not be broken, nor mind overthrown with any adversities, and yielding to no such matter, comforted the other, and encouraged him to be of a good stomach, persuading him (as though he had been a divine) to patience and good contentation." The Life and Times of Sir Peter Carew, by John Maclean, Esq. F.S.A., 1857, 8vo. p. 65. Also in Archseologia, vol. XXVIH. from Sir T. Phillipps's MS.
