Sir John Cheke and Sir Thomas Smith. 105 in the public schools, and Greek literature at his rooms. About the 23rd or 24th year of his age his health was somewhat firmer, and he became more cheerful, but not much so. His election to be orator of the university, which occurred in the latter end of this year, he does not mention in his calendar ; but he states that in his 25th year he began to be known to King Henry the Eighth ; and then, shortly after queen Jane's death, he and Cheke declaimed before his majesty on the question whether the King should next marry a foreigner or a countrywoman. In his 27th year, in the month of May, for the sake both of study and pleasure, and to gratify his desire to visit new countries, Smith went into France and Italy. His health was now strong, and life began to be more sweet to him. In his 2t)th year he was recalled home, and passed the Alps on the day before Christmas. "When returned to England, he became professor of Law at Cambridge, endowed with what he terms a large public salary from his sovereign. This large salary was forty pounds, which remains at the present day the stipend of the Law professor, but who probably no longer considers it large. This preferment occurred to Smith at the end of January 1544, when he had lately entered upon his 30th year. During the following summer, he says, " I undertook an honorary disputation * with my competitors, being augmented at once in health, in estimation, and in cheerfulness." In his 31st year he was made vice-chancellor of the university of Cambridge, and before the end of the year chancellor to the bishop of Ely. In the beginning of his 33rd year, being still unmarried, he Avas ordained priest by the same prelate (Thomas Goodrich), a fact unknown to Strype, who presumes that Smith must have been " at least in deacon's orders " when made dean of Carlisle ; at the same period he received a prebend from the dean of Lincoln ; and now, he adds, " I fancied myself supremely happy, to have the command as it were of the university and that province" of Ely. At the end of February 1547, about a month after King Henry's death, Smith was summoned to court. On the 15th of March his son was born, an event he more readily records, though the son was illegitimate, because he had no children by his two subsequent marriages. In the same month of March his mother died. Having doffed his clerical dress, and changed his manner and form of life, he was now made a clerk of the privy council, and master of requests b to the duke of This was, perhaps, the disputation described in one of TIaddon's Latin letters to Coxe, quoted by Strype, and assigned by him " as near as I can guess" to the year 1546. b "In this office (writes Strype,) was Dr. Smith placed, and seems to have been the second Master of Requests to the Protector, as Cecil was the first." But, in fact, Cecill did not obtain this office until Smith's resignation, in Sept. 1548 ? The biographer of Cecill has followed the old error in stating that " Mr. Cecil VOL. XXXVIII. P
